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

Resource Orchestration in Softwarized Networks

Network softwarization is an emerging research area that is envisioned to revolutionize the way network infrastructure is designed, operated, and managed today. Contemporary telecommunication networks are going through a major transformation, and softwarization is recognized as a crucial enabler of this transformation by both academia and industry. Softwarization promises to overcome the current ossified state of Internet network architecture and evolve towards a more open, agile, flexible, and programmable networking paradigm that will reduce both capital and operational expenditures, cut-down time-to-market of new services, and create new revenue streams. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are two complementary networking technologies that have established themselves as the cornerstones of network softwarization. SDN decouples the control and data planes to provide enhanced programmability and faster innovation of networking technologies. It facilitates simplified network control, scalability, availability, flexibility, security, cost-reduction, autonomic management, and fine-grained control of network traffic. NFV utilizes virtualization technology to reduce dependency on underlying hardware by moving packet processing activities from proprietary hardware middleboxes to virtualized entities that can run on commodity hardware. Together SDN and NFV simplify network infrastructure by utilizing standardized and commodity hardware for both compute and networking; bringing the benefits of agility, economies of scale, and flexibility of data centers to networks. Network softwarization provides the tools required to re-architect the current network infrastructure of the Internet. However, the effective application of these tools requires efficient utilization of networking resources in the softwarized environment. Innovative techniques and mechanisms are required for all aspects of network management and control. The overarching goal of this thesis is to address several key resource orchestration challenges in softwarized networks. The resource allocation and orchestration techniques presented in this thesis utilize the functionality provided by softwarization to reduce operational cost, improve resource utilization, ensure scalability, dynamically scale resource pools according to demand, and optimize energy utilization

Novel Resource and Energy Management for 5G Integrated Backhaul/Fronthaul (5G-Crosshaul)

The integration of both fronthaul and backhaul into a single transport network (namely, 5G-Crosshaul) is envisioned for the future 5G transport networks. This requires a fully integrated and unified management of the fronthaul and backhaul resources in a cost-efficient, scalable and flexible way through the deployment of an SDN/NFV control framework. This paper presents the designed 5G-Crosshaul architecture, two selected SDN/NFV applications targeting for cost-efficient resource and energy usage: the Resource Management Application (RMA) and the Energy Management and Monitoring Application (EMMA). The former manages 5G-Crosshaul resources (network, computing and storage resources). The latter is a special version of RMA with the focus on the objectives of optimizing the energy consumption and minimizing the energy footprint of the 5G-Crosshaul infrastructure. Besides, EMMA is applied to the mmWave mesh network and the high speed train scenarios. In particular, we present the key application design with their main components and the interactions with each other and with the control plane, and then we present the proposed application optimization algorithms along with initial results. The first results demonstrate that the proposed RMA is able to cost-efficiently utilize the Crosshaul resources of heterogeneous technologies, while EMMA can achieve significant energy savings through energy-efficient routing of traffic flows. For experiments in real system, we also set up Proof of Concepts (PoCs) for both applications in order to perform real trials in the field.© 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works

An IoT Endpoint System-on-Chip for Secure and Energy-Efficient Near-Sensor Analytics

Near-sensor data analytics is a promising direction for IoT endpoints, as it minimizes energy spent on communication and reduces network load - but it also poses security concerns, as valuable data is stored or sent over the network at various stages of the analytics pipeline. Using encryption to protect sensitive data at the boundary of the on-chip analytics engine is a way to address data security issues. To cope with the combined workload of analytics and encryption in a tight power envelope, we propose Fulmine, a System-on-Chip based on a tightly-coupled multi-core cluster augmented with specialized blocks for compute-intensive data processing and encryption functions, supporting software programmability for regular computing tasks. The Fulmine SoC, fabricated in 65nm technology, consumes less than 20mW on average at 0.8V achieving an efficiency of up to 70pJ/B in encryption, 50pJ/px in convolution, or up to 25MIPS/mW in software. As a strong argument for real-life flexible application of our platform, we show experimental results for three secure analytics use cases: secure autonomous aerial surveillance with a state-of-the-art deep CNN consuming 3.16pJ per equivalent RISC op; local CNN-based face detection with secured remote recognition in 5.74pJ/op; and seizure detection with encrypted data collection from EEG within 12.7pJ/op.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication to the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems - I: Regular Paper

Software defined networking: meeting carrier grade requirements

Software Defined Networking is a networking paradigm which allows network operators to manage networking elements using software running on an external server. This is accomplished by a split in the architecture between the forwarding element and the control element. Two technologies which allow this split for packet networks are ForCES and Openflow. We present energy efficiency and resilience aspects of carrier grade networks which can be met by Openflow. We implement flow restoration and run extensive experiments in an emulated carrier grade network. We show that Openflow can restore traffic quite fast, but its dependency on a centralized controller means that it will be hard to achieve 50 ms restoration in large networks serving many flows. In order to achieve 50 ms recovery, protection will be required in carrier grade networks

Control-data separation architecture for cellular radio access networks: a survey and outlook

Conventional cellular systems are designed to ensure ubiquitous coverage with an always present wireless channel irrespective of the spatial and temporal demand of service. This approach raises several problems due to the tight coupling between network and data access points, as well as the paradigm shift towards data-oriented services, heterogeneous deployments and network densification. A logical separation between control and data planes is seen as a promising solution that could overcome these issues, by providing data services under the umbrella of a coverage layer. This article presents a holistic survey of existing literature on the control-data separation architecture (CDSA) for cellular radio access networks. As a starting point, we discuss the fundamentals, concepts, and general structure of the CDSA. Then, we point out limitations of the conventional architecture in futuristic deployment scenarios. In addition, we present and critically discuss the work that has been done to investigate potential benefits of the CDSA, as well as its technical challenges and enabling technologies. Finally, an overview of standardisation proposals related to this research vision is provided