Performance benchmarking of SDN experimental platforms

There is a huge number of SDN experimental platforms available such as simulators, emulators and actual testbeds, each of them having different performance metrics. This paper presents a series of performance tests, that can be performed in each of the available platforms, in order to evaluate and rank them in various performance categories. These tests cover performance categories such as experiment setup/teardown time, resources needed in the form of CPU and RAM, as well as the fair use and fair share of those resources by the experimental platform. In addition, ping delay, response failure rate and scalability are also measured. All the performance tests presented in this paper have been implemented in Mininet emulator in order to evaluate its performance. After the data analysis, the most noticeable results are (i) response failure increases as the number of links increases, in some cases by 95%, (ii) CPU load balancing is more efficient as the number of nodes increases and (iii) initial ping delay is huge compared to average ping delay, in some cases up to 1725 times larger. Finally, performance results indicate that Mininet has several scalability issues

Performance benchmarking of SDN experimental platforms

There is a huge number of SDN experimental platforms available such as simulators, emulators and actual testbeds, each of them having different performance metrics. This paper presents a series of performance tests, that can be performed in each of the available platforms, in order to evaluate and rank them in various performance categories. These tests cover performance categories such as experiment setup/teardown time, resources needed in the form of CPU and RAM, as well as the fair use and fair share of those resources by the experimental platform. In addition, ping delay, response failure rate and scalability are also measured. All the performance tests presented in this paper have been implemented in Mininet emulator in order to evaluate its performance. After the data analysis, the most noticeable results are (i) response failure increases as the number of links increases, in some cases by 95%, (ii) CPU load balancing is more efficient as the number of nodes increases and (iii) initial ping delay is huge compared to average ping delay, in some cases up to 1725 times larger. Finally, performance results indicate that Mininet has several scalability issues

Addressing the Challenges in Federating Edge Resources

This book chapter considers how Edge deployments can be brought to bear in a global context by federating them across multiple geographic regions to create a global Edge-based fabric that decentralizes data center computation. This is currently impractical, not only because of technical challenges, but is also shrouded by social, legal and geopolitical issues. In this chapter, we discuss two key challenges - networking and management in federating Edge deployments. Additionally, we consider resource and modeling challenges that will need to be addressed for a federated Edge.Comment: Book Chapter accepted to the Fog and Edge Computing: Principles and Paradigms; Editors Buyya, Sriram

Improving the performance of software-defined networks using dynamic flow installation and management techniques

As computer networks evolve, they become more complex, introducing several challenges in the areas of performance and management. Such problems can lead to stagnation in network innovation. Software Defined Networks (SDN) framework could be one of the best candidates for improving and revolutionising networking by giving the full control to the network administrators to implement new management and performance optimisation techniques. This thesis examines performance issues faced in SDN due to the introduction of the SDN Controller. These issues include the extra delay due to the round-trip time between the switch and the controller as well as the fact that some packets arrive at the destination out-of-order. We propose a novel dynamic flow installation and management algorithm (OFPE) using the SDN protocol OpenFlow, which preserves the controller to a non-overloaded CPU state and allow it to dynamically add and adjust flow table rules to reduce packet delay and out-of-order packets. In addition, we propose OFPEX, an extension to OFPE algorithm that includes techniques for managing multi-switch environments as well as methods that make use of the packets interarrival time in categorising and serving packet flows. Such techniques allow topology awareness, helping the controller to install flow table rules in such a way to form optimal routes for high priority flows thus increasing network performance. For the performance evaluation of the proposed algorithms, both hardware testbed as well as emulation experiments have been conducted. The performance results indicate that OFPE algorithm achieves a significant enhancement in performance in the form of reduced delay by up to 92.56% (depending on the scenario), reduced packet loss by up to 55.32% and reduced out-of-order packets by up to 69.44%. Furthermore, we propose a novel placement algorithm for distributed Mininet implementations which uses weights in order to distribute the experiment components to the appropriately distributed machines. The proposed algorithm uses static code analysis in order to examine the experimental code as well as it measures the capabilities of physical components in order to create a weights table which is then used to distribute the experiment components properly. The performance results of the proposed algorithm evaluation indicated reductions in delay and packet loss of up to 65.51% and 86.35% respectively, as well as a decrease in the standard deviation of CPU usage by up to 88.63%. These results indicate that the proposed algorithm distributes the experiment components evenly across the available resources. Finally, we propose a series of Benchmarking tests that can be used to rate all the available SDN experimental platforms. These tests allow the selection of the appropriate experimental platform according to the scenario needs as well as they indicate the resources needed by each platform

A unifying orchestration operating platform for 5G

5G will revolutionize the way ICT and Telecommunications infrastructures work. Indeed, businesses can greatly benefit from innovation introduced by 5G and exploit the new deep integration between ICT and networking capabilities to generate new value-added services. Although a plethora of solutions for virtual resources and infrastructures management and orchestration already exists (e.g., OpenDaylight, ONOS, OpenStack, Apache Mesos, Open Source MANO, Docker Swarm, LXD/LXC, etc.), they are still not properly integrated to match the 5G requirements. In this paper, we present the 5G Operating Platform (5G-OP) which has been conceived to fill in this gap and integrate management, control and orchestration of computing, storage and networking resources down to the end-user devices and terminals (e.g., smart phone, machines, robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, etc.). The 5G-OP is an overarching framework capable to provide agnostic interfaces and a universal set of abstractions in order to implement seamless 5G infrastructure control and orchestration. The functional structure of the 5G-OP, including the horizontal and vertical interworking of functions in it, has been designed to allow Network Operators and Service Providers to exploit diverse roles and business strategies. Moreover, the functional decoupling of the 5G-OP from the underneath management, control and orchestration solutions allows pursuing faster innovation cycles, being ready for the emergence of new service models

Fatias de rede fim-a-fim : da extração de perfis de funções de rede a SLAs granulares

Orientador: Christian Rodolfo Esteve RothenbergTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de ComputaçãoResumo: Nos últimos dez anos, processos de softwarização de redes vêm sendo continuamente diversi- ficados e gradativamente incorporados em produção, principalmente através dos paradigmas de Redes Definidas por Software (ex.: regras de fluxos de rede programáveis) e Virtualização de Funções de Rede (ex.: orquestração de funções virtualizadas de rede). Embasado neste processo o conceito de network slice surge como forma de definição de caminhos de rede fim- a-fim programáveis, possivelmente sobre infrastruturas compartilhadas, contendo requisitos estritos de desempenho e dedicado a um modelo particular de negócios. Esta tese investiga a hipótese de que a desagregação de métricas de desempenho de funções virtualizadas de rede impactam e compõe critérios de alocação de network slices (i.e., diversas opções de utiliza- ção de recursos), os quais quando realizados devem ter seu gerenciamento de ciclo de vida implementado de forma transparente em correspondência ao seu caso de negócios de comu- nicação fim-a-fim. A verificação de tal assertiva se dá em três aspectos: entender os graus de liberdade nos quais métricas de desempenho de funções virtualizadas de rede podem ser expressas; métodos de racionalização da alocação de recursos por network slices e seus re- spectivos critérios; e formas transparentes de rastrear e gerenciar recursos de rede fim-a-fim entre múltiplos domínios administrativos. Para atingir estes objetivos, diversas contribuições são realizadas por esta tese, dentre elas: a construção de uma plataforma para automatização de metodologias de testes de desempenho de funções virtualizadas de redes; a elaboração de uma metodologia para análises de alocações de recursos de network slices baseada em um algoritmo classificador de aprendizado de máquinas e outro algoritmo de análise multi- critério; e a construção de um protótipo utilizando blockchain para a realização de contratos inteligentes envolvendo acordos de serviços entre domínios administrativos de rede. Por meio de experimentos e análises sugerimos que: métricas de desempenho de funções virtualizadas de rede dependem da alocação de recursos, configurações internas e estímulo de tráfego de testes; network slices podem ter suas alocações de recursos coerentemente classificadas por diferentes critérios; e acordos entre domínios administrativos podem ser realizados de forma transparente e em variadas formas de granularidade por meio de contratos inteligentes uti- lizando blockchain. Ao final deste trabalho, com base em uma ampla discussão as perguntas de pesquisa associadas à hipótese são respondidas, de forma que a avaliação da hipótese proposta seja realizada perante uma ampla visão das contribuições e trabalhos futuros desta teseAbstract: In the last ten years, network softwarisation processes have been continuously diversified and gradually incorporated into production, mainly through the paradigms of Software Defined Networks (e.g., programmable network flow rules) and Network Functions Virtualization (e.g., orchestration of virtualized network functions). Based on this process, the concept of network slice emerges as a way of defining end-to-end network programmable paths, possibly over shared network infrastructures, requiring strict performance metrics associated to a par- ticular business case. This thesis investigate the hypothesis that the disaggregation of network function performance metrics impacts and composes a network slice footprint incurring in di- verse slicing feature options, which when realized should have their Service Level Agreement (SLA) life cycle management transparently implemented in correspondence to their fulfilling end-to-end communication business case. The validation of such assertive takes place in three aspects: the degrees of freedom by which performance of virtualized network functions can be expressed; the methods of rationalizing the footprint of network slices; and transparent ways to track and manage network assets among multiple administrative domains. In order to achieve such goals, a series of contributions were achieved by this thesis, among them: the construction of a platform for automating methodologies for performance testing of virtual- ized network functions; an elaboration of a methodology for the analysis of footprint features of network slices based on a machine learning classifier algorithm and a multi-criteria analysis algorithm; and the construction of a prototype using blockchain to carry out smart contracts involving service level agreements between administrative systems. Through experiments and analysis we suggest that: performance metrics of virtualized network functions depend on the allocation of resources, internal configurations and test traffic stimulus; network slices can have their resource allocations consistently analyzed/classified by different criteria; and agree- ments between administrative domains can be performed transparently and in various forms of granularity through blockchain smart contracts. At the end of his thesis, through a wide discussion we answer all the research questions associated to the investigated hypothesis in such way its evaluation is performed in face of wide view of the contributions and future work of this thesisDoutoradoEngenharia de ComputaçãoDoutor em Engenharia ElétricaFUNCAM