SDN/NFV-enabled satellite communications networks: opportunities, scenarios and challenges

In the context of next generation 5G networks, the satellite industry is clearly committed to revisit and revamp the role of satellite communications. As major drivers in the evolution of (terrestrial) fixed and mobile networks, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) technologies are also being positioned as central technology enablers towards improved and more flexible integration of satellite and terrestrial segments, providing satellite network further service innovation and business agility by advanced network resources management techniques. Through the analysis of scenarios and use cases, this paper provides a description of the benefits that SDN/NFV technologies can bring into satellite communications towards 5G. Three scenarios are presented and analysed to delineate different potential improvement areas pursued through the introduction of SDN/NFV technologies in the satellite ground segment domain. Within each scenario, a number of use cases are developed to gain further insight into specific capabilities and to identify the technical challenges stemming from them.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Coordinating heterogeneous IoT devices by means of the centralized vision of the SDN controller

The IoT (Internet of Things) has become a reality during recent years. The desire of having everything connected to the Internet results in clearly identified benefits that will impact on socio economic development. However, the exponential growth in the number of IoT devices and their heterogeneity open new challenges that must be carefully studied. Coordination among devices to adapt them to their users' context usually requires high volumes of data to be exchanged with the cloud. In order to reduce unnecessary communications and network overhead, this paper proposes a novel network architecture based on the Software-Defined Networking paradigm that allows IoT devices coordinate and adapt them within the scope of a particular context.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

DISCO: Distributed Multi-domain SDN Controllers

Modern multi-domain networks now span over datacenter networks, enterprise networks, customer sites and mobile entities. Such networks are critical and, thus, must be resilient, scalable and easily extensible. The emergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) protocols, which enables to decouple the data plane from the control plane and dynamically program the network, opens up new ways to architect such networks. In this paper, we propose DISCO, an open and extensible DIstributed SDN COntrol plane able to cope with the distributed and heterogeneous nature of modern overlay networks and wide area networks. DISCO controllers manage their own network domain and communicate with each others to provide end-to-end network services. This communication is based on a unique lightweight and highly manageable control channel used by agents to self-adaptively share aggregated network-wide information. We implemented DISCO on top of the Floodlight OpenFlow controller and the AMQP protocol. We demonstrated how DISCO's control plane dynamically adapts to heterogeneous network topologies while being resilient enough to survive to disruptions and attacks and providing classic functionalities such as end-point migration and network-wide traffic engineering. The experimentation results we present are organized around three use cases: inter-domain topology disruption, end-to-end priority service request and virtual machine migration

Towards a software defined multi-domain architecture for the internet of things

The emerging communication networks tend to aggregate heterogeneous networking infrastructures as well as data flows with very distinct requisites. This implies that the complete satisfaction of Quality of Service (QoS) metrics is very difficult to achieve, using the legacy management solutions. Alternatively, the Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm offers a logical centralized management of the necessary network resources for data flows, namely the ones originated in sensor devices. Therefore, this work investigates a solution that meets the QoS requirements of traffic from remote Internet of Thing (IoT) devices. To achieve this goal, we have designed a SDN-based solution that manages a network topology formed by several domains. We assume each network domain is controlled by its own SDN controller. In addition, our solution assumes that the several SDN controllers need to be orchestrated among them to maximize the management efficiency of the available end-to-end network resources. This orchestration is done via an SDN transit domain ruled by the ONOS SDN-IP application. We have emulated network topologies with IoT devices to evaluate the proposed solution in terms of its functionality, robustness against network failures, and QoS support. Analyzing the obtained results, our solution can support a cross-controller SDN domain communication. It is also capable of reacting automatically to topology failures. In addition, it can prioritize the traffic within the network infrastructure, providing to the end users strong guarantees on the desired quality for the exchange of data associated to the applications they aim to use.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio