Customizing Data-plane Processing in Edge Routers

While OpenFlow enables the customization of the control plane of a router, currently no solutions are available for the customization of the data plane. This paper presents a prototype that offers to third parties (even end-users) the possibility to install their own applications on the data plane of a router, particularly the ones operating at the edge of the network. This paper presents the motivation of the idea, the reason why we use OpenFlow even if it does not seem appropriate for the data plane, the architecture and the implementation of our prototype, and a first characterization of the system running in our la

SDN/NFV-enabled satellite communications networks: opportunities, scenarios and challenges

In the context of next generation 5G networks, the satellite industry is clearly committed to revisit and revamp the role of satellite communications. As major drivers in the evolution of (terrestrial) fixed and mobile networks, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) technologies are also being positioned as central technology enablers towards improved and more flexible integration of satellite and terrestrial segments, providing satellite network further service innovation and business agility by advanced network resources management techniques. Through the analysis of scenarios and use cases, this paper provides a description of the benefits that SDN/NFV technologies can bring into satellite communications towards 5G. Three scenarios are presented and analysed to delineate different potential improvement areas pursued through the introduction of SDN/NFV technologies in the satellite ground segment domain. Within each scenario, a number of use cases are developed to gain further insight into specific capabilities and to identify the technical challenges stemming from them.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Management Driven Hybrid Multicast Framework for Content Aware Networks

The need for better adaptation of networks to transported flows has led to research on new approaches such as content aware networks and network aware applications. In parallel, recent developments of multimedia and content oriented services and applications such as IPTV, video streaming, video on demand, and Internet TV reinforced interest in multicast technologies. IP multicast has not been widely deployed due to interdomain and QoS support problems; therefore, alternative solutions have been investigated. This article proposes a management driven hybrid multicast solution that is multi-domain and media oriented, and combines overlay multicast, IP multicast, and P2P. The architecture is developed in a content aware network and network aware application environment, based on light network virtualization. The multicast trees can be seen as parallel virtual content aware networks, spanning a single or multiple IP domains, customized to the type of content to be transported while fulfilling the quality of service requirements of the service provider

Differential virtualization for large-scale system modeling

Today’s computer networks become more complex than ever with a vast number of connected host systems running a variety of different operating systems and services. Academia and industry alike realize that education in managing such complex systems is extremely important for computer professionals because, with computers, there are many levels of detailed configuration. Configuration points can occur during all facets of computer systems including system design, implementation, and maintenance stages. In order to explore various hypotheses regarding configurations, system modeling is employed – computer professionals and researchers build test environments. Modeling environments require observable systems that are easily configurable at an accelerated rate. Observation abilities increase through re-use and preservation of models. Historical modeling solutions do not efficiently utilize computing resources and require high preservation or restoration cost as the number of modeled systems increases. This research compares a workstation-oriented, virtualization modeling solution using system differences to a workstation-oriented, imaging modeling solution using full system states. The solutions are compared based on computing resource utilization and administrative cost with respect to the number of modeled systems. Our experiments have shown that upon increasing the number of models from 30 to 60, the imaging solution requires an additional 75 minutes; whereas, the difference-based virtualization solution requires an additional three (3) minutes. The imaging solution requires 151 minutes to prepare 60 models, while the difference-based, virtualization solution requires 7 minutes to prepare 60 models. Therefore, the cost for model archival and restoration in the difference-based virtualization modeling solution is lower than that in the full system imaging-based modeling solution. In addition, by using a virtualization solution, multiple systems can be modeled on a single workstation, thus increasing workstation resource utilization. Since virtualization abstracts hardware, virtualized models are less dependent on physical hardware. Thus, by lowering hardware dependency, a virtualized model is further re-usable than a traditional system image. If an organization must perform system modeling and the organization has sufficient workstation resources, using a differential virtualization approach will decrease the time required for model preservation, increase resource utilization, and therefore provide an efficient, scalable, and modular modeling solution

HaDeS: a Scalable Service Oriented Deployment System for Large Scale Installations

Building large computational facilities requires scalable and flexible deployment tools that can cope with massive loads. Classical installation methods are not very flexible, since they are usually limited in the number of OS supported, rely on transfer solutions that impose constraints on network topology, and do not scale very well. Here we describe HaDeS (Hardware Deployment System), a new deployment system for large scale installation designed to be agnostic with respect to the network topology and the OS deployed and to scale with the number of nodes being deployed.251-25

The SATIN component system - a metamodel for engineering adaptable mobile systems

Mobile computing devices, such as personal digital assistants and mobile phones, are becoming increasingly popular, smaller, and more capable. We argue that mobile systems should be able to adapt to changing requirements and execution environments. Adaptation requires the ability-to reconfigure the deployed code base on a mobile device. Such reconfiguration is considerably simplified if mobile applications are component-oriented rather than monolithic blocks of code. We present the SATIN (system adaptation targeting integrated networks) component metamodel, a lightweight local component metamodel that offers the flexible use of logical mobility primitives to reconfigure the software system by dynamically transferring code. The metamodel is implemented in the SATIN middleware system, a component-based mobile computing middleware that uses the mobility primitives defined in the metamodel to reconfigure both itself and applications that it hosts. We demonstrate the suitability of SATIN in terms of lightweightedness, flexibility, and reusability for the creation of adaptable mobile systems by using it to implement, port, and evaluate a number of existing and new applications, including an active network platform developed for satellite communication at the European space agency. These applications exhibit different aspects of adaptation and demonstrate the flexibility of the approach and the advantages gaine

Design and Implementation of CI/CD over LoRaWAN : Continuous Integration and Deployment in LoRaWAN Edge Computing Applications

The recent rise of IoT devices in commercial and industrial spaces has created a demand for energy-efficient and reliable communication solutions. Communication solutions used on IoT devices vary depending on the applications. Wireless Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies have proven benefits, including long-range, low power, and low-cost communication alternatives for IoT devices. These benefits come at the cost of limitations, such as lower data rates. At the same time, the demand for faster, cheaper, and more reliable software deployment is becoming more critical than ever before. This thesis aims to find a way of having an automated process where software could be remotely deployed into LoRa nodes and investigate whether it is possible to implement a DevOps pipeline with both Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) over LoRaWAN. For this thesis, an IoT LoRaWAN Edge computing application was chosen to determine how to design and implement a CI/CD pipeline to ensure a dependable and a continuous software deployment to the LoRaWAN nodes. Designing and implementing a Continuous Deployment pipeline for this IoT application was made possible with the integration of DevOps tools like GitHub and a TeamCity automation server. Additionally, a series of scripts have been designed and developed for this case, including automated tests, integration to cloud services, and file fragmentation and defragmentation tools. For software deployment and verification to the LoRaWAN network, a program was designed to communicate with the LoRaWAN network server over the WebSocket communication protocol. The implementation of DevOps in LoRaWAN applications is affected by the limitations of the LoRaWAN protocol. This thesis argues that these limitations can be eliminated using modular software and file fragmentation techniques. The implementation presented in this work can be extended for various time-critical use cases. The solution presented in this thesis also opens the door to combining LoRaWAN with other LPWAN technologies, like NB-IoT, that can be activated on demand

Extensible Modeling and Simulation Framework (XMSF) Opportunities for Web-Based Modeling and Simulation

Technical Opportunities Workshop Whitepaper, 14 June 2002Purpose: As the Department of Defense (DoD) is engaged in both warfighting and institutional transformation for the new millennium, DoD Modeling & Simulation (M&S) also needs to identify and adopt transformational technologies which provide direct tactical relevance to warfighters. Because the only software systems that composably scale to worldwide scope utilize the World Wide Web, it is evident that an extensible Web-based framework shows great promise to scale up the capabilities of M&S systems to meet the needs of training, analysis, acquisition, and the operational warfighter. By embracing commercial web technologies as a shared-communications platform and a ubiquitous-delivery framework, DoD M&S can fully leverage mainstream practices for enterprise-wide software development

A HyperNet Architecture

Network virtualization is becoming a fundamental building block of future Internet architectures. By adding networking resources into the “cloud”, it is possible for users to rent virtual routers from the underlying network infrastructure, connect them with virtual channels to form a virtual network, and tailor the virtual network (e.g., load application-specific networking protocols, libraries and software stacks on to the virtual routers) to carry out a specific task. In addition, network virtualization technology allows such special-purpose virtual networks to co-exist on the same set of network infrastructure without interfering with each other. Although the underlying network resources needed to support virtualized networks are rapidly becoming available, constructing a virtual network from the ground up and using the network is a challenging and labor-intensive task, one best left to experts. To tackle this problem, we introduce the concept of a HyperNet, a pre-built, pre-configured network package that a user can easily deploy or access a virtual network to carry out a specific task (e.g., multicast video conferencing). HyperNets package together the network topology configuration, software, and network services needed to create and deploy a custom virtual network. Users download HyperNets from HyperNet repositories and then “run” them on virtualized network infrastructure much like users download and run virtual appliances on a virtual machine. To support the HyperNet abstraction, we created a Network Hypervisor service that provides a set of APIs that can be called to create a virtual network with certain characteristics. To evaluate the HyperNet architecture, we implemented several example Hyper-Nets and ran them on our prototype implementation of the Network Hypervisor. Our experiments show that the Hypervisor API can be used to compose almost any special-purpose network – networks capable of carrying out functions that the current Internet does not provide. Moreover, the design of our HyperNet architecture is highly extensible, enabling developers to write high-level libraries (using the Network Hypervisor APIs) to achieve complicated tasks