Dynamic Virtual Network Restoration with Optimal Standby Virtual Router Selection

Title form PDF of title page, viewed on September 4, 2015Dissertation advisor: Deep MedhiVitaIncludes bibliographic references (pages 141-157)Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Computing and Engineering and Department of Mathematics and Statistics. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2015Network virtualization technologies allow service providers to request partitioned, QoS guaranteed and fault-tolerant virtual networks provisioned by the substrate network provider (i.e., physical infrastructure provider). A virtualized networking environment (VNE) has common features such as partition, flexibility, etc., but fault-tolerance requires additional efforts to provide survivability against failures on either virtual networks or the substrate network. Two common survivability paradigms are protection (proactive) and restoration (reactive). In the protection scheme, the substrate network provider (SNP) allocates redundant resources (e.g., nodes, paths, bandwidths, etc) to protect against potential failures in the VNE. In the restoration scheme, the SNP dynamically allocates resources to restore the networks, and it usually occurs after the failure is detected. In this dissertation, we design a restoration scheme that can be dynamically implemented in a centralized manner by an SNP to achieve survivability against node failures in the VNE. The proposed restoration scheme is designed to be integrated with a protection scheme, where the SNP allocates spare virtual routers (VRs) as standbys for the virtual networks (VN) and they are ready to serve in the restoration scheme after a node failure has been identified. These standby virtual routers (S-VR) are reserved as a sharedbackup for any single node failure, and during the restoration procedure, one of the S-VR will be selected to replace the failed VR. In this work, we present an optimal S-VR selection approach to simultaneously restore multiple VNs affected by failed VRs, where these VRs may be affected by failures within themselves or at their substrate host (i.e., power outage, hardware failures, maintenance, etc.). Furthermore, the restoration scheme is embedded into a dynamic reconfiguration scheme (DRS), so that the affected VNs can be dynamically restored by a centralized virtual network manager (VNM). We first introduce a dynamic reconfiguration scheme (DRS) against node failures in a VNE, and then present an experimental study by implementing this DRS over a realistic VNE using GpENI testbed. For this experimental study, we ran the DRS to restore one VN with a single-VR failure, and the results showed that with a proper S-VR selection, the performance of the affected VN could be well restored. Next, we proposed an Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model with dual–goals to optimally select S-VRs to restore all VNs affected by VR failures while load balancing. We also present a heuristic algorithm based on the model. By considering a number of factors, we present numerical studies to show how the optimal selection is affected. The results show that the proposed heuristic’s performance is close to the optimization model when there were sufficient standby virtual routers for each virtual network and the substrate nodes have the capability to support multiple standby virtual routers to be in service simultaneously. Finally, we present the design of a software-defined resilient VNE with the optimal S-VR selection model, and discuss a prototype implementation on the GENI testbed.Introduction -- Literature survey -- Dynamic reconfiguration scheme in a VNE -- An experimental study on GpENI-VNI -- Optimal standby virtual router selection model -- Prototype design and implementation on GENI -- Conclusion and future work -- Appendix A. Resource Specification (RSpec) in GENI -- Appendix B. Optimal S-VR Selection Model in AMP

A Survey on the Contributions of Software-Defined Networking to Traffic Engineering

Since the appearance of OpenFlow back in 2008, software-defined networking (SDN) has gained momentum. Although there are some discrepancies between the standards developing organizations working with SDN about what SDN is and how it is defined, they all outline traffic engineering (TE) as a key application. One of the most common objectives of TE is the congestion minimization, where techniques such as traffic splitting among multiple paths or advanced reservation systems are used. In such a scenario, this manuscript surveys the role of a comprehensive list of SDN protocols in TE solutions, in order to assess how these protocols can benefit TE. The SDN protocols have been categorized using the SDN architecture proposed by the open networking foundation, which differentiates among data-controller plane interfaces, application-controller plane interfaces, and management interfaces, in order to state how the interface type in which they operate influences TE. In addition, the impact of the SDN protocols on TE has been evaluated by comparing them with the path computation element (PCE)-based architecture. The PCE-based architecture has been selected to measure the impact of SDN on TE because it is the most novel TE architecture until the date, and because it already defines a set of metrics to measure the performance of TE solutions. We conclude that using the three types of interfaces simultaneously will result in more powerful and enhanced TE solutions, since they benefit TE in complementary ways.European Commission through the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (GN4) under Grant 691567 Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the Secure Deployment of Services Over SDN and NFV-based Networks Project S&NSEC under Grant TEC2013-47960-C4-3-

A Logically Centralized Approach for Control and Management of Large Computer Networks

Management of large enterprise and Internet Service Provider networks is a complex, error-prone, and costly challenge. It is widely accepted that the key contributors to this complexity are the bundling of control and data forwarding in traditional routers and the use of fully distributed protocols for network control. To address these limitations, the networking research community has been pursuing the vision of simplifying the functional role of a router to its primary task of packet forwarding. This enables centralizing network control at a decision plane where network-wide state can be maintained, and network control can be centrally and consistently enforced. However, scalability and fault-tolerance concerns with physical centralization motivate the need for a more flexible and customizable approach. This dissertation is an attempt at bridging the gap between the extremes of distribution and centralization of network control. We present a logically centralized approach for the design of network decision plane that can be realized by using a set of physically distributed controllers in a network. This approach is aimed at giving network designers the ability to customize the level of control and management centralization according to the scalability, fault-tolerance, and responsiveness requirements of their networks. Our thesis is that logical centralization provides a robust, reliable, and efficient paradigm for management of large networks and we present several contributions to prove this thesis. For network planning, we describe techniques for optimizing the placement of network controllers and provide guidance on the physical design of logically centralized networks. For network operation, algorithms for maintaining dynamic associations between the decision plane and network devices are presented, along with a protocol that allows a set of network controllers to coordinate their decisions, and present a unified interface to the managed network devices. Furthermore, we study the trade-offs in decision plane application design and provide guidance on application state and logic distribution. Finally, we present results of extensive numerical and simulative analysis of the feasibility and performance of our approach. The results show that logical centralization can provide better scalability and fault-tolerance while maintaining performance similarity with traditional distributed approach

Performance Evaluation of MPLS in a Virtualized Service Provider Core (with/without Class of Service)

The last decade has witnessed a major change in the types of traffic scaling the Internet. With the development of real-time applications several challenges were faced within traditional IP networks. Some of these challenges are delay, increased costs faced by the service provider and customer, limited scalability, separate infrastructure costs and high administrative overheads to manage large networks etc. To combat these challenges, researchers have steered towards finding alternate solutions. Over the recent years, we have seen an introduction of a number of virtualized platforms and solutions being offered in the networking industry. Virtual load balancers, virtual firewalls, virtual routers, virtual intrusion detection and preventions systems are just a few examples within the Network Function Virtualization world! Service Providers are trying to find solutions where they could reduce operational expenses while at the same time meet the growing bandwidth demands of their customers. The main aim of this thesis is to evaluate the performance of voice, data and video traffic in a virtualized service provider core. Observations are made on how these traffic types perform on congested vs uncongested links and how Quality of Service treats traffic in a virtualized Service Provider Core using Round Trip Time as a performance metric. This thesis also tries to find if resiliency features such as Fast Reroute provide an additional advantage in failover scenarios within virtualized service provider cores. Juniper Networks vSRX are used to replicate virtual routers in a virtualized service provider core. Twenty-Four tests are carried out to gain a better understanding of how real-time applications and resiliency methods perform in virtualized networks. It is observed that a trade-off exists when introducing QoS on congested primary and secondary label switched paths. What can be observed thru the graphs is having Quality of Service enabled drops more packets however gives us the advantage of lower Round Trip Time for in-profile traffic. On the hand, having Quality of Service disabled, permits more traffic but leads to bandwidth contention between the three traffic classes leading to higher Round-Trip Times. The true benefit of QoS is seen in traffic congestion scenarios. The test bed built in this thesis, shows us that Fast Reroute does not add a significant benefit to aid in the reduction of packet loss during failover scenarios between primary and secondary paths. However, in certain scenarios fast reroute does seem to reduce packet loss specifically for data traffic

QoS Provisioning in Converged Satellite and Terrestrial Networks: A Survey of the State-of-the-Art

It has been widely acknowledged that future networks will need to provide significantly more capacity than current ones in order to deal with the increasing traffic demands of the users. Particularly in regions where optical fibers are unlikely to be deployed due to economical constraints, this is a major challenge. One option to address this issue is to complement existing narrow-band terrestrial networks with additional satellite connections. Satellites cover huge areas, and recent developments have considerably increased the available capacity while decreasing the cost. However, geostationary satellite links have significantly different link characteristics than most terrestrial links, mainly due to the higher signal propagation time, which often renders them not suitable for delay intolerant traffic. This paper surveys the current state-of-the-art of satellite and terrestrial network convergence. We mainly focus on scenarios in which satellite networks complement existing terrestrial infrastructures, i.e., parallel satellite and terrestrial links exist, in order to provide high bandwidth connections while ideally achieving a similar end user quality-of-experience as in high bandwidth terrestrial networks. Thus, we identify the technical challenges associated with the convergence of satellite and terrestrial networks and analyze the related work. Based on this, we identify four key functional building blocks, which are essential to distribute traffic optimally between the terrestrial and the satellite networks. These are the traffic requirement identification function, the link characteristics identification function, as well as the traffic engineering function and the execution function. Afterwards, we survey current network architectures with respect to these key functional building blocks and perform a gap analysis, which shows that all analyzed network architectures require adaptations to effectively support converged satellite and terrestrial networks. Hence, we conclude by formulating several open research questions with respect to satellite and terrestrial network convergence.This work was supported by the BATS Research Project through the European Union Seventh Framework Programme under Contract 317533

Towards Automated Network Configuration Management

Modern networks are designed to satisfy a wide variety of competing goals related to network operation requirements such as reachability, security, performance, reliability and availability. These high level goals are realized through a complex chain of low level configuration commands performed on network devices. As networks become larger, more complex and more heterogeneous, human errors become the most significant threat to network operation and the main cause of network outage. In addition, the gap between high-level requirements and low-level configuration data is continuously increasing and difficult to close. Although many solutions have been introduced to reduce the complexity of configuration management, network changes, in most cases, are still manually performed via low--level command line interfaces (CLIs). The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has introduced NETwork CONFiguration (NETCONF) protocol along with its associated data--modeling language, YANG, that significantly reduce network configuration complexity. However, NETCONF is limited to the interaction between managers and agents, and it has weak support for compliance to high-level management functionalities. We design and develop a network configuration management system called AutoConf that addresses the aforementioned problems. AutoConf is a distributed system that manages, validates, and automates the configuration of IP networks. We propose a new framework to augment NETCONF/YANG framework. This framework includes a Configuration Semantic Model (CSM), which provides a formal representation of domain knowledge needed to deploy a successful management system. Along with CSM, we develop a domain--specific language called Structured Configuration language to specify configuration tasks as well as high--level requirements. CSM/SCL together with NETCONF/YANG makes a powerful management system that supports network--wide configuration. AutoConf supports two levels of verifications: consistency verification and behavioral verification. We apply a set of logical formalizations to verifying the consistency and dependency of configuration parameters. In behavioral verification, we present a set of formal models and algorithms based on Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) to capture the behaviors of forwarding control lists that are deployed in firewalls, routers, and NAT devices. We also adopt an enhanced version of Dyna-Q algorithm to support dynamic adaptation of network configuration in response to changes occurred during network operation. This adaptation approach maintains a coherent relationship between high level requirements and low level device configuration. We evaluate AutoConf by running several configuration scenarios such as interface configuration, RIP configuration, OSPF configuration and MPLS configuration. We also evaluate AutoConf by running several simulation models to demonstrate the effectiveness and the scalability of handling large-scale networks

A Cognitive Routing framework for Self-Organised Knowledge Defined Networks

This study investigates the applicability of machine learning methods to the routing protocols for achieving rapid convergence in self-organized knowledge-defined networks. The research explores the constituents of the Self-Organized Networking (SON) paradigm for 5G and beyond, aiming to design a routing protocol that complies with the SON requirements. Further, it also exploits a contemporary discipline called Knowledge-Defined Networking (KDN) to extend the routing capability by calculating the “Most Reliable” path than the shortest one. The research identifies the potential key areas and possible techniques to meet the objectives by surveying the state-of-the-art of the relevant fields, such as QoS aware routing, Hybrid SDN architectures, intelligent routing models, and service migration techniques. The design phase focuses primarily on the mathematical modelling of the routing problem and approaches the solution by optimizing at the structural level. The work contributes Stochastic Temporal Edge Normalization (STEN) technique which fuses link and node utilization for cost calculation; MRoute, a hybrid routing algorithm for SDN that leverages STEN to provide constant-time convergence; Most Reliable Route First (MRRF) that uses a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) to approximate route-reliability as the metric of MRRF. Additionally, the research outcomes include a cross-platform SDN Integration framework (SDN-SIM) and a secure migration technique for containerized services in a Multi-access Edge Computing environment using Distributed Ledger Technology. The research work now eyes the development of 6G standards and its compliance with Industry-5.0 for enhancing the abilities of the present outcomes in the light of Deep Reinforcement Learning and Quantum Computing