Toward a Programmable FIB Caching Architecture

The current Internet routing ecosystem is neither sustainable nor economical. More than 711K IPv4 routes and more than 41K IPv6 routes exist in current global Forwarding Information Base (FIBs) with growth rates increasing. This rapid growth has serious consequences, such as creating the need for costly FIB memory upgrades and increased potential for Internet service outages. And while FIB memories are power-hungry and prohibitively expensive, more than 70\% of the routes in FIBs carry no traffic for long time periods, a wasteful use of these expensive resources. Taking advantage of the emerging concept of programmable data plane, we design a programmable FIB caching architecture to address the existing concerns. Our preliminary evaluation results show that the architecture can significantly mitigate the global routing scalability and poor FIB utilization issues

Reconfigurable network systems and software-defined networking

Modern high-speed networks have evolved from relatively static networks to highly adaptive networks facilitating dynamic reconfiguration. This evolution has influenced all levels of network design and management, introducing increased programmability and configuration flexibility. This influence has extended from the lowest level of physical hardware interfaces to the highest level of network management by software. A key representative of this evolution is the emergence of softwaredefined networking (SDN). In this paper, we review the current state of the art in reconfigurable network systems, covering hardware reconfiguration, SDN, and the interplay between them. We take a top-down approach, starting with a tutorial on software-defined networks. We then continue to discuss programming languages as the linking element between different levels of software and hardware in the network. We review electronic switching systems, highlighting programmability and reconfiguration aspects, and describe the trends in reconfigurable network elements. Finally, we describe the state of the art in the integration of photonic transceiver and switching elements with electronic technologies, and consider the implications for SDN and reconfigurable network systems.This work was jointly supported by the UKs Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Internet Project EP/H040536/1, an EPSRC Research Fellowship grant to Philip Watts (EP/I004157/2), and DARPA and AFRL under contract FA8750-11-C-0249.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from IEEE via http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2015.243573

Towards generic satellite payloads: software radio

Satellite payloads are becoming much more complex with the evolution towards multimedia applications. Moreover satellite lifetime increases while standard and services evolve faster, necessitating a hardware platform that can evolves for not developing new systems on each change. The same problem occurs in terrestrial systems like mobile networks and a foreseen solution is the software defined radio technology. In this paper we describe a way of introducing this concept at satellite level to offer to operators the required flexibility in the system. The digital functions enabling this technology, the hardware components implementing the functions and the reconfiguration processes are detailed. We show that elements of the software radio for satellites exist and that this concept is feasible

Cross-Layer Platform for Dynamic, Energy-Efficient Optical Networks

The design of the next-generation Internet infrastructure is driven by the need to sustain the massive growth in bandwidth demands. Novel, energy-efficient, optical networking technologies and architectures are required to effectively meet the stringent performance requirements with low cost and ultrahigh energy efficiencies. In this thesis, a cross-layer communications platform is proposed to enable greater intelligence and functionality on the physical layer. Providing the optical layer with advanced networking capabilities will facilitate the dynamic management and optimization of optical switching based on performance monitoring measurements and higher-layer attributes. The cross-layer platform aims to create a new framework for networks to incorporate packet-scale measurement subsystems and techniques for monitoring the health of the optical channel. This will allow for quality-of-service- and energy-aware routing schemes, as well as an enhanced awareness of the optical data signals. This thesis first presents the design and development of an optical packet switching fabric. Leveraging a networking test-bed environment to validate networking hypotheses, advanced switching functionalities are demonstrated, including the support for quality-of-service based routing and packet multicasting. The investigated cross-layering is based on emerging optical technologies, enabling packet protection techniques and packet-rate switching fabric reconfiguration. Coupled with fast performance monitoring, the platform will achieve significant performance gains within the endeavor of all-optical switching. Allowing for a more intelligent, programmable optical layer aims to support greater flexibility with respect to bandwidth allocation and potentially a significant reduction in the network's energy consumption. The ultimate deliverable of this work is a high-performance, cross-layer enabled optical network node. The experimental demonstration of an initial prototype creates a dynamic network element with distributed control plane management, featuring fast packet-rate optical switching capabilities and embedded physical-layer performance monitoring modules. The cross-layer box enables an intelligent traffic delivery system that can dynamically manipulate optical switching on a packet-granular scale. With the goal of achieving advanced multi-layer routing and control algorithms, the network node requires an intelligent co-optimization across all the layers. The proposed cross-layer design should drive optical technologies and architectures in an innovative way, in order to fulfill the void between the design of basic photonic devices and the networking protocols that use them. The performance of the entire network -- from the optical components, to the routing algorithms and user applications -- should be optimized in concert. This contribution to the area of cross-layer network design creates an adaptable optical pipe that is extremely flexible and intelligent aware of both the physical optical signals and higher-layer requirements. The impact of this work will be seen in the realization of dynamic, energy-efficient optical communication links in future networking infrastructures

FPGA based technical solutions for high throughput data processing and encryption for 5G communication: A review

The field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices are ideal solutions for high-speed processing applications, given their flexibility, parallel processing capability, and power efficiency. In this review paper, at first, an overview of the key applications of FPGA-based platforms in 5G networks/systems is presented, exploiting the improved performances offered by such devices. FPGA-based implementations of cloud radio access network (C-RAN) accelerators, network function virtualization (NFV)-based network slicers, cognitive radio systems, and multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channel characterizers are the main considered applications that can benefit from the high processing rate, power efficiency and flexibility of FPGAs. Furthermore, the implementations of encryption/decryption algorithms by employing the Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+MPSoC ZCU102 FPGA platform are discussed, and then we introduce our high-speed and lightweight implementation of the well-known AES-128 algorithm, developed on the same FPGA platform, and comparing it with similar solutions already published in the literature. The comparison results indicate that our AES-128 implementation enables efficient hardware usage for a given data-rate (up to 28.16 Gbit/s), resulting in higher efficiency (8.64 Mbps/slice) than other considered solutions. Finally, the applications of the ZCU102 platform for high-speed processing are explored, such as image and signal processing, visual recognition, and hardware resource management

ENERGY EFFICIENT WIRED NETWORKING

This research proposes a new dynamic energy management framework for a backbone Internet Protocol over Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (IP over DWDM) network. Maintaining the logical IP-layer topology is a key constraint of our architecture whilst saving energy by infrastructure sleeping and virtual router migration. The traffic demand in a Tier 2/3 network typically has a regular diurnal pattern based on people‟s activities, which is high in working hours and much lighter during hours associated with sleep. When the traffic demand is light, virtual router instances can be consolidated to a smaller set of physical platforms and the unneeded physical platforms can be put to sleep to save energy. As the traffic demand increases the sleeping physical platforms can be re-awoken in order to host virtual router instances and so maintain quality of service. Since the IP-layer topology remains unchanged throughout virtual router migration in our framework, there is no network disruption or discontinuities when the physical platforms enter or leave hibernation. However, this migration places extra demands on the optical layer as additional connections are needed to preserve the logical IP-layer topology whilst forwarding traffic to the new virtual router location. Consequently, dynamic optical connection management is needed for the new framework. Two important issues are considered in the framework, i.e. when to trigger the virtual router migration and where to move virtual router instances to? For the first issue, a reactive mechanism is used to trigger the virtual router migration by monitoring the network state. Then, a new evolutionary-based algorithm called VRM_MOEA is proposed for solving the destination physical platform selection problem, which chooses the appropriate location of virtual router instances as traffic demand varies. A novel hybrid simulation platform is developed to measure the performance of new framework, which is able to capture the functionality of the optical layer, the IP layer data-path and the IP/optical control plane. Simulation results show that the performance of network energy saving depends on many factors, such as network topology, quiet and busy thresholds, and traffic load; however, savings of around 30% are possible with typical medium-sized network topologies