164 research outputs found
SDN Architecture and Southbound APIs for IPv6 Segment Routing Enabled Wide Area Networks
The SRv6 architecture (Segment Routing based on IPv6 data plane) is a
promising solution to support services like Traffic Engineering, Service
Function Chaining and Virtual Private Networks in IPv6 backbones and
datacenters. The SRv6 architecture has interesting scalability properties as it
reduces the amount of state information that needs to be configured in the
nodes to support the network services. In this paper, we describe the
advantages of complementing the SRv6 technology with an SDN based approach in
backbone networks. We discuss the architecture of a SRv6 enabled network based
on Linux nodes. In addition, we present the design and implementation of the
Southbound API between the SDN controller and the SRv6 device. We have defined
a data-model and four different implementations of the API, respectively based
on gRPC, REST, NETCONF and remote Command Line Interface (CLI). Since it is
important to support both the development and testing aspects we have realized
an Intent based emulation system to build realistic and reproducible
experiments. This collection of tools automate most of the configuration
aspects relieving the experimenter from a significant effort. Finally, we have
realized an evaluation of some performance aspects of our architecture and of
the different variants of the Southbound APIs and we have analyzed the effects
of the configuration updates in the SRv6 enabled nodes
ENERO: Efficient Real-Time WAN Routing Optimization with Deep Reinforcement Learning
Wide Area Networks (WAN) are a key infrastructure in today's society. During
the last years, WANs have seen a considerable increase in network's traffic and
network applications, imposing new requirements on existing network
technologies (e.g., low latency and high throughput). Consequently, Internet
Service Providers (ISP) are under pressure to ensure the customer's Quality of
Service and fulfill Service Level Agreements. Network operators leverage
Traffic Engineering (TE) techniques to efficiently manage network's resources.
However, WAN's traffic can drastically change during time and the connectivity
can be affected due to external factors (e.g., link failures). Therefore, TE
solutions must be able to adapt to dynamic scenarios in real-time. In this
paper we propose Enero, an efficient real-time TE solution based on a two-stage
optimization process. In the first one, Enero leverages Deep Reinforcement
Learning (DRL) to optimize the routing configuration by generating a long-term
TE strategy. To enable efficient operation over dynamic network scenarios
(e.g., when link failures occur), we integrated a Graph Neural Network into the
DRL agent. In the second stage, Enero uses a Local Search algorithm to improve
DRL's solution without adding computational overhead to the optimization
process. The experimental results indicate that Enero is able to operate in
real-world dynamic network topologies in 4.5 seconds on average for topologies
up to 100 edges.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure
Hybrid SDN Evolution: A Comprehensive Survey of the State-of-the-Art
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an evolutionary networking paradigm
which has been adopted by large network and cloud providers, among which are
Tech Giants. However, embracing a new and futuristic paradigm as an alternative
to well-established and mature legacy networking paradigm requires a lot of
time along with considerable financial resources and technical expertise.
Consequently, many enterprises can not afford it. A compromise solution then is
a hybrid networking environment (a.k.a. Hybrid SDN (hSDN)) in which SDN
functionalities are leveraged while existing traditional network
infrastructures are acknowledged. Recently, hSDN has been seen as a viable
networking solution for a diverse range of businesses and organizations.
Accordingly, the body of literature on hSDN research has improved remarkably.
On this account, we present this paper as a comprehensive state-of-the-art
survey which expands upon hSDN from many different perspectives
Segment Routing: a Comprehensive Survey of Research Activities, Standardization Efforts and Implementation Results
Fixed and mobile telecom operators, enterprise network operators and cloud
providers strive to face the challenging demands coming from the evolution of
IP networks (e.g. huge bandwidth requirements, integration of billions of
devices and millions of services in the cloud). Proposed in the early 2010s,
Segment Routing (SR) architecture helps face these challenging demands, and it
is currently being adopted and deployed. SR architecture is based on the
concept of source routing and has interesting scalability properties, as it
dramatically reduces the amount of state information to be configured in the
core nodes to support complex services. SR architecture was first implemented
with the MPLS dataplane and then, quite recently, with the IPv6 dataplane
(SRv6). IPv6 SR architecture (SRv6) has been extended from the simple steering
of packets across nodes to a general network programming approach, making it
very suitable for use cases such as Service Function Chaining and Network
Function Virtualization. In this paper we present a tutorial and a
comprehensive survey on SR technology, analyzing standardization efforts,
patents, research activities and implementation results. We start with an
introduction on the motivations for Segment Routing and an overview of its
evolution and standardization. Then, we provide a tutorial on Segment Routing
technology, with a focus on the novel SRv6 solution. We discuss the
standardization efforts and the patents providing details on the most important
documents and mentioning other ongoing activities. We then thoroughly analyze
research activities according to a taxonomy. We have identified 8 main
categories during our analysis of the current state of play: Monitoring,
Traffic Engineering, Failure Recovery, Centrally Controlled Architectures, Path
Encoding, Network Programming, Performance Evaluation and Miscellaneous...Comment: SUBMITTED TO IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIAL
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Seamless Application Delivery Using Software Defined Exchanges
One of the main challenges in delivering content over the Internet today is the absence of a centralized monitoring and control system [38]. Software Defined Networking has paved the way to provide a much needed control over network traffic. OpenFlow is now being standardized as part of the Open Networking Foundation, and Software Defined Exchanges (SDXes) provide a framework to use OpenFlow for multi-domain routing. Prototype deployments of Software Defined Exchanges have recently come into existence as a platform for Future Internet Architecture to eliminate the need for core routing technology used in today’s Internet. In this work, we look at how application delivery, in particular, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) and Nowcasting take advantage of a Software Defined Exchange. We compare unsophisticated controllers to more sophisticated ones which we call a ”load balancer” and find that implementing a good controller for inter-domain routing can result in better network utilization and application performance. We then design, develop and evaluate a prototype for a Content Distribution Network (CDN) that uses resources at SDXes to provide higher quality bitrates for a DASH client
Implementation of Blockchain-Assisted Source Routing for Traffic Management in Software-Defined Networks
The control and infrastructure layers are split into Software-Defined Networks (SDNs). With the control and infrastructure planes split, new network applications may be developed with more simplicity and greater independence. On the other hand, the disadvantages of SDN create a slew of questions. In large-scale networks, such as Wide Area Networks (WANs) covering huge areas, more propagation delays substantially contribute to network convergence time. In addition, traditional SDN restricts network design flexibility due to the influence of controller location on network performance in large-scale networks. SDN-based source routing (SR) has emerged as a viable solution to the issues above, where the packet header field is used to specify a packet's route. This study presents an SR-based End-to-End (E2E) traffic management framework called SoRBlock. In SoRBlock, inter-domain routing uses blockchain technology, while intra-domain routing relies on the SR technique in SDNs. The simulation results show that the proposed SR-based SoRBlock framework outperforms the traditional hierarchical routing approach, HRA, in SDN networks by lowering path setup time (PST) and the number of controller messages. While the same (i.e., identical origin and target) service requests were used for all runs in the simulations, the proposed SoRBlock architecture presents almost three times less total PST between 45ms and 65ms than the HRA method between 130ms and 200ms due to the HRA approach's increased node-controller and controller-controller latencies. On the other hand, SoRBlock shows two times less PST ([75ms – 90ms]) than HRA ([150ms – 175ms]) when different service requests (i.e., different origin and target) were used. Concerning Controller Messages Processed (CMP), the HRA deals nearly 50% more controller messages between 7 and 15 than the SoRBlock between 3 and 10 when the number of domains varies, while the CMP in the SoRBlock scheme ([10 - 17]) approaches that in the HRA framework ([15 - 20]) regarding the ratio while the count of nodes rises in domains
Hybrid IP/SDN routing for inter-data center communications
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and dedicated inter-Data Center Wide Area Networks have been exploring Software-Defined Networking (SDN) features to achieve a high utilization of the available resources. This work proposes a scalable hybrid IP/SDN routing model, and optimization procedures fostered by Evolutionary Computation algorithms, to achieve near optimal network resources utilization under changing traffic requirements.This work has been supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Hybrid IP/SDN networking: open implementation and experiment management tools
The introduction of SDN in large-scale IP provider networks is still an open
issue and different solutions have been suggested so far. In this paper we
propose a hybrid approach that allows the coexistence of traditional IP routing
with SDN based forwarding within the same provider domain. The solution is
called OSHI - Open Source Hybrid IP/SDN networking as we have fully implemented
it combining and extending Open Source software. We discuss the OSHI system
architecture and the design and implementation of advanced services like Pseudo
Wires and Virtual Switches. In addition, we describe a set of Open Source
management tools for the emulation of the proposed solution using either the
Mininet emulator or distributed physical testbeds. We refer to this suite of
tools as Mantoo (Management tools). Mantoo includes an extensible web-based
graphical topology designer, which provides different layered network "views"
(e.g. from physical links to service relationships among nodes). The suite can
validate an input topology, automatically deploy it over a Mininet emulator or
a distributed SDN testbed and allows access to emulated nodes by opening
consoles in the web GUI. Mantoo provides also tools to evaluate the performance
of the deployed nodes.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transaction of Network and Service
Management - December 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNSM.2015.250762
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