Service-oriented networking architecture

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Information Technology.Demand for new services offered across shared networking infrastructure, such as the Internet, is at an ever increasing level. Everyday, innovative services are continuously being proposed and developed to meet end users' demands. However, the monolithic and inflexible design of current networking infrastructure constrains the deployment of such new services. Current networking infrastructure consists of a fixed set of connectivity functions governed by static overlays of Service Level Agreements between administrative boundaries. This infrastructure hinders new service deployment to a slow process of standardisation and legal agreements, and requires large capital expenditure for the roll out of new network elements. Service-Oriented Networking is a new paradigm aimed at transforming networking infrastructure to meet new demands in a responsive and inexpensive manner. It proposes enabling on-demand introduction of services across shared and heterogeneous networking infrastructure. However, architecting the building blocks of a feasible service-oriented network poses many critical research challenges. The first challenge is in providing an architecture that enables on-demand injection and programmability of services. This architecture must not compromise current scalability and performance levels of networks. Furthermore, due to the heterogeneous nature of networks, this architecture must cater for a large number of platforms with varying capabilities. The second challenge is in enforcing security among services of competing entities on leveraging shared infrastructure. With the possibility of faulty or malicious services being deployed, mechanisms are needed to impose isolation of risk to maintain a robust network. These mechanisms must scale to a large number of entities and should not impose restrictions on programmability that would limit the operations of services. Furthermore, this needs to be achieved without the introduction of checking operations in the path of network traffic which would impede the performance of the network. The third challenge is in guaranteeing Quality of Service (QoS) levels across competing services in a differentiated and fair manner. Providing QoS guarantee would no longer be just a problem of bandwidth allocation but would now involve the allocation of computational resources needed in the fulfilment of a service. The critical issue is in formulating a resource allocation scheme among competing services where resource requirements or availability cannot be predetermined. Again, any mechanism used must be scalable for large numbers of services. Recent research in the fields of Active and Programmable Networks has produced novel architectures which adopt user-extensible software components or programmable network processors to enable rapid service deployment. However, it is currently impractical to adopt such concepts as the associated challenges (outlined above) have only been partially addressed. Meanwhile, commercial platforms are becoming both faster and increasingly more programmable. However, commercial manufacturers have developed their platforms in a proprietary and closed manner, thereby restricting users from deploying new services or customising existing services. This thesis explores a holistic approach to overcoming the challenges of Service-Oriented Networks. Specifically, it presents a new and novel architecture called Serviter: a new Service-Oriented Network Architecture for Shared Networks. With this architecture, a new class of network elements enriched with programmable functionality can be deployed to serve as the fundamental building blocks of a new Service-Oriented Networking model. Under this model, service provisioning responsibilities are divided among manufacturers, network providers, and service providers. Manufacturers' responsibilities focus on the provisioning of increasingly programmable high-performance infrastructure and their system-level drivers. Network providers are responsible for the management of their infrastructure, which would be divided into isolated shares and opened to third party service providers. The service providers are then able to deploy new services within their shares of a domain. These services can then be aggregated across domains to provision end-to-end services through the purchase of dedicated shares, or a collaborative model, spanning the required paths. Serviter enables on-demand service deployment onto commercial programmable platforms leveraging their high performance and scalability characteristics. These characteristics are maintained by enforcing the separation of the control and the forwarding planes. A programmability interface is provided through a layer of System Services. To cater for the heterogeneous nature of networks, the System Services layer is extensible. It enables each manufacturer to utilise a unified programmability approach to develop and deploy new System Services to exploit the functionality of their reprogrammable hardware. The programmability of the underlying modules is offered through a structured and flexible approach of Active Flow Manipulation (AFM) Paths. Users deploy User Services that construct AFM Paths to offer new network services. Serviter introduces novel scalable and simple partitioning techniques to address the issues of network integrity and security. Serviter provides each service provider with a secure, separate, and resource assured partition, representing a 'Virtual Router', to accommodate their services. These partitions span all components and restrict services from constructing AFM Paths on traffic outside of the Virtual Networks associated with their partition. To allocate internal router resources among competing partitions and among services within a partition, Serviter employs a scalable and autonomic resource management model called Control plane-Quality of Service {C-QoS). Due to the difficulty of determining resource availability in heterogeneous infrastructure or service resource requirements, this model is dynamically adaptive to demand and availability patterns on a per resource basis. To demonstrate the significance of the new architecture, this thesis presents an implementation of Serviter along with its deployment onto an advanced commercial networking platform. The implementation is assessed and evaluated for its ability to map on to commercial infrastructure, its partitioning enforcement, and its overall performance and scalability. This platform is used to implement novel services demonstrating Serviter capabilities. It is shown that Serviter is capable of facilitating on-demand deployment of a variety of services constrained by forward plane capabilities. This architecture opens the opportunity for service-oriented networking in large-scale shared networks, putting forth new challenging issues in the complete automation of service deployment - specifically, capability discovery, location selection, and dynamic domain aggregation to provide end-to-end service construction

A new paradigm for SpeckNets:inspiration from fungal colonies

In this position paper, we propose the development of a new biologically inspired paradigm based on fungal colonies, for the application to pervasive adaptive systems. Fungal colonies have a number of properties that make them an excellent candidate for inspiration for engineered systems. Here we propose the application of such inspiration to a speckled computing platform. We argue that properties from fungal colonies map well to properties and requirements for controlling SpeckNets and suggest that an existing mathematical model of a fungal colony can developed into a new computational paradigm

The potential of programmable logic in the middle: cache bleaching

Consolidating hard real-time systems onto modern multi-core Systems-on-Chip (SoC) is an open challenge. The extensive sharing of hardware resources at the memory hierarchy raises important unpredictability concerns. The problem is exacerbated as more computationally demanding workload is expected to be handled with real-time guarantees in next-generation Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). A large body of works has approached the problem by proposing novel hardware re-designs, and by proposing software-only solutions to mitigate performance interference. Strong from the observation that unpredictability arises from a lack of fine-grained control over the behavior of shared hardware components, we outline a promising new resource management approach. We demonstrate that it is possible to introduce Programmable Logic In-the-Middle (PLIM) between a traditional multi-core processor and main memory. This provides the unique capability of manipulating individual memory transactions. We propose a proof-of-concept system implementation of PLIM modules on a commercial multi-core SoC. The PLIM approach is then leveraged to solve long-standing issues with cache coloring. Thanks to PLIM, colored sparse addresses can be re-compacted in main memory. This is the base principle behind the technique we call Cache Bleaching. We evaluate our design on real applications and propose hypervisor-level adaptations to showcase the potential of the PLIM approach.Accepted manuscrip

Network Slicing

Network slicing is emerging as a key enabling technology to support new service needs, business cases, and the evolution of programmable networking. As an end-to-end concept involving network functions in different domains and administrations, network slicing calls for new standardization efforts, design methodologies, and deployment strategies. This chapter aims at addressing the main aspects of network slicing with relevant challenges and practical solutions

Management and Service-aware Networking Architectures (MANA) for Future Internet Position Paper: System Functions, Capabilities and Requirements

Future Internet (FI) research and development threads have recently been gaining momentum all over the world and as such the international race to create a new generation Internet is in full swing: GENI, Asia Future Internet, Future Internet Forum Korea, European Union Future Internet Assembly (FIA). This is a position paper identifying the research orientation with a time horizon of 10 years, together with the key challenges for the capabilities in the Management and Service-aware Networking Architectures (MANA) part of the Future Internet (FI) allowing for parallel and federated Internet(s)

Network architecture for large-scale distributed virtual environments

Distributed Virtual Environments (DVEs) provide 3D graphical computer generated environments with stereo sound, supporting real-time collaboration between potentially large numbers of users distributed around the world. Early DVEs has been used over local area networks (LANs). Recently with the Internet's development into the most common embedding for DVEs these distributed applications have been moved towards an exploiting IP networks. This has brought the scalability challenges into the DVEs evolution. The network bandwidth resource is the more limited resource of the DVE system and to improve the DVE's scalability it is necessary to manage carefully this resource. To achieve the saving in the network bandwidth the different types of the network traffic that is produced by the DVEs have to be considered. DVE applications demand· exchange of the data that forms different types of traffic such as a computer data type, video and audio, and a 3D data type to keep the consistency of the application's state. The problem is that the meeting of the QoS requirements of both control and continuous media traffic already have been covered by the existing research. But QoS for transfer of the 3D information has not really been considered. The 3D DVE geometry traffic is very bursty in nature and places a high demands on the network for short intervals of time due to the quite large size of the 3D models and the DVE application requirements to transmit a 3D data as quick as possible. The main motivation in carrying out the work presented in this thesis is to find a solution to improve the scalability of the DVE applications by a consideration the QoS requirements of the 3D DVE geometrical data type. In this work we are investigating the possibility to decrease the network bandwidth utilization by the 3D DVE traffic using the level of detail (LOD) concept and the active networking approach. The background work of the thesis surveys the DVE applications and the scalability requirements of the DVE systems. It also discusses the active networks and multiresolution representation and progressive transmission of the 3D data. The new active networking approach to the transmission of the 3D geometry data within the DVE systems is proposed in this thesis. This approach enhances the currently applied peer-to-peer DVE architecture by adding to the peer-to-peer multicast neny_ork layer filtering of the 3D flows an application level filtering on the active intermediate nodes. The active router keeps the application level information about the placements of users. This information is used by active routers to prune more detailed 3D data flows (higher LODs) in the multicast tree arches that are linked to the distance DVE participants. The exploration of possible benefits of exploiting the proposed active approach through the comparison with the non-active approach is carried out using the simulation­based performance modelling approach. Complex interactions between participants in DVE application and a large number of analyzed variables indicate that flexible simulation is more appropriate than mathematical modelling. To build a test bed will not be feasible. Results from the evaluation demonstrate that the proposed active approach shows potential benefits to the improvement of the DVE's scalability but the degree of improvement depends on the users' movement pattern. Therefore, other active networking methods to support the 3D DVE geometry transmission may also be required

Hybrid switching : converging packet and TDM flows in a single platform

Optical fibers have brought fast and reliable data transmission to today’s network. The immense fiber build-out over the last few years has generated a wide array of new access technologies, transport and network protocols, and next-generation services in the Local Area Network (LAN), Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), and Wide Area Network (WAN). All these different technologies, protocols, and services were introduced to address particular telecommunication needs. To remain competitive in the market, the service providers must offer most of these services, while maintaining their own profitability. However, offering a large variety of equipment, protocols, and services posses a big challenge for service carriers because it requires a huge investment in different technology platforms, lots of training of staff, and the management of all these networks. In today’s network, service providers use SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork) as a basic TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) transport network. SONET was primarily designed to carry voice traffic from telephone networks. However, with the explosion of traffic in the Internet, the same SONET based TDM network is optimized to support increasing demand for packet based Internet network services (data, voice, video, teleconference etc.) at access networks and LANs. Therefore the service providers need to support their Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure as well as in the legacy telephony infrastructure. Supporting both TDM and packet services in the present condition needs multilayer operations which is complex, expensive, and difficult to manage. A hybrid switch is a novel architecture that combines packets (IP) and TDM switching in a unified access platform and provides seamless integration of access networks and LANs with MAN/WAN networks. The ability to fully integrate these two capabilities in a single chassis will allow service providers to deploy a more cost effective and flexible architecture that can support a variety of different services. This thesis develops a hybrid switch which is capable of offering bundled services for TDM switching and packet routing. This is done by dividing the switch’s bandwidth into VT1.5 (Virtual Tributary -1.5) channels and providing SONET based signaling for routing the data and controlling the switch’s resources. The switch is a TDM based architecture which allows each switch’s port to be independently configured for any mixture of packet and TDM traffic, including 100% packet and 100% TDM. This switch allows service providers to simplify their edge networks by consolidating the number of separate boxes needed to provide fast and reliable access. This switch also reduces the number of network management systems needed, and decreases the resources needed to install, provision and maintain the network because of its ability to “collapse” two network layers into one platform. The scope of this thesis includes system architecture, logic implementation, and verification testing, and performance evaluation of the hybrid switch. The architecture consists of ingress/egress ports, an arbiter and a crossbar. Data from ingress ports is carried to the egress ports via VT1.5 channels which are switched at the cross point of the crossbar. The crossbar setup and channel assignments at ingress port are done by the arbiter. The design was tested by simulation and the hardware cost was estimated. The performance results showed that the switch is non-blocking, provide differentiated service, and has an overall effective throughput of 80%. This result is a significant step towards the goal of building a switch that can support multiprotocol and provide different network capabilities into one platform. The long-term goal of this project is to develop a prototype of the hybrid switch with broadband capability

Resource slicing in virtual wireless networks: a survey

New architectural and design approaches for radio access networks have appeared with the introduction of network virtualization in the wireless domain. One of these approaches splits the wireless network infrastructure into isolated virtual slices under their own management, requirements, and characteristics. Despite the advances in wireless virtualization, there are still many open issues regarding the resource allocation and isolation of wireless slices. Because of the dynamics and shared nature of the wireless medium, guaranteeing that the traffic on one slice will not affect the traffic on the others has proven to be difficult. In this paper, we focus on the detailed definition of the problem, discussing its challenges. We also provide a review of existing works that deal with the problem, analyzing how new trends such as software defined networking and network function virtualization can assist in the slicing. We will finally describe some research challenges on this topic.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Service management for multi-domain Active Networks

The Internet is an example of a multi-agent system. In our context, an agent is synonymous with network operators, Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers. ISPs mutually interact for connectivity's sake, but the fact remains that two peering agents are inevitably self-interested. Egoistic behaviour manifests itself in two ways. Firstly, the ISPs are able to act in an environment where different ISPs would have different spheres of influence, in the sense that they will have control and management responsibilities over different parts of the environment. On the other hand, contention occurs when an ISP intends to sell resources to another, which gives rise to at least two of its customers sharing (hence contending for) a common transport medium. The multi-agent interaction was analysed by simulating a game theoretic approach and the alignment of dominant strategies adopted by agents with evolving traits were abstracted. In particular, the contention for network resources is arbitrated such that a self-policing environment may emerge from a congested bottleneck. Over the past 5 years, larger ISPs have simply peddled as fast as they could to meet the growing demand for bandwidth by throwing bandwidth at congestion problems. Today, the dire financial positions of Worldcom and Global Crossing illustrate, to a certain degree, the fallacies of over-provisioning network resources. The proposed framework in this thesis enables subscribers of an ISP to monitor and police each other's traffic in order to establish a well-behaved norm in utilising limited resources. This framework can be expanded to other inter-domain bottlenecks within the Internet. One of the main objectives of this thesis is also to investigate the impact on multi-domain service management in the future Internet, where active nodes could potentially be located amongst traditional passive routers. The advent of Active Networking technology necessitates node-level computational resource allocations, in addition to prevailing resource reservation approaches for communication bandwidth. Our motivation is to ensure that a service negotiation protocol takes account of these resources so that the response to a specific service deployment request from the end-user is consistent and predictable. To promote the acceleration of service deployment by means of Active Networking technology, a pricing model is also evaluated for computational resources (e.g., CPU time and memory). Previous work in these areas of research only concentrate on bandwidth (i.e., communication) - related resources. Our pricing approach takes account of both guaranteed and best-effort service by adapting the arbitrage theorem from financial theory. The central tenet for our approach is to synthesise insights from different disciplines to address problems in data networks. The greater parts of research experience have been obtained during direct and indirect participation in the 1ST-10561 project known as FAIN (Future Active IP Networks) and ACTS-AC338 project called MIAMI (Mobile Intelligent Agent for Managing the Information Infrastructure). The Inter-domain Manager (IDM) component was integrated as an integral part of the FAIN policy-based network management systems (PBNM). Its monitoring component (developed during the MIAMI project) learns about routing changes that occur within a domain so that the management system and the managed nodes have the same topological view of the network. This enabled our reservation mechanism to reserve resources along the existing route set up by whichever underlying routing protocol is in place

Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model