Container network functions: bringing NFV to the network edge

In order to cope with the increasing network utilization driven by new mobile clients, and to satisfy demand for new network services and performance guarantees, telecommunication service providers are exploiting virtualization over their network by implementing network services in virtual machines, decoupled from legacy hardware accelerated appliances. This effort, known as NFV, reduces OPEX and provides new business opportunities. At the same time, next generation mobile, enterprise, and IoT networks are introducing the concept of computing capabilities being pushed at the network edge, in close proximity of the users. However, the heavy footprint of today's NFV platforms prevents them from operating at the network edge. In this article, we identify the opportunities of virtualization at the network edge and present Glasgow Network Functions (GNF), a container-based NFV platform that runs and orchestrates lightweight container VNFs, saving core network utilization and providing lower latency. Finally, we demonstrate three useful examples of the platform: IoT DDoS remediation, on-demand troubleshooting for telco networks, and supporting roaming of network functions

Algorithms for advance bandwidth reservation in media production networks

Media production generally requires many geographically distributed actors (e.g., production houses, broadcasters, advertisers) to exchange huge amounts of raw video and audio data. Traditional distribution techniques, such as dedicated point-to-point optical links, are highly inefficient in terms of installation time and cost. To improve efficiency, shared media production networks that connect all involved actors over a large geographical area, are currently being deployed. The traffic in such networks is often predictable, as the timing and bandwidth requirements of data transfers are generally known hours or even days in advance. As such, the use of advance bandwidth reservation (AR) can greatly increase resource utilization and cost efficiency. In this paper, we propose an Integer Linear Programming formulation of the bandwidth scheduling problem, which takes into account the specific characteristics of media production networks, is presented. Two novel optimization algorithms based on this model are thoroughly evaluated and compared by means of in-depth simulation results

An experimental study on latency-aware and self-adaptive service chaining orchestration in distributed NFV and SDN infrastructures

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) changed radically the way 5G networks will be deployed and services will be delivered to vertical applications (i.e., through dynamic chaining of virtualized functions deployed in distributed clouds to best address latency requirements). In this work, we present a service chaining orchestration system, namely LASH-5G, running on top of an experimental set-up that reproduces a typical 5G network deployment with virtualized functions in geographically distributed edge clouds. LASH-5G is built upon a joint integration effort among different orchestration solutions and cloud deployments and aims at providing latency-aware, adaptive and reliable service chaining orchestration across clouds and network resource domains interconnected through SDN. In this paper, we provide details on how this orchestration system has been deployed and it is operated on top of the experimentation infrastructure provided within the Fed4FIRE+ facility and we present performance results assessing the effectiveness of the proposed orchestration approach

Availability-driven NFV orchestration

Virtual Network Functions as a Service (VNFaaS) is a promising business whose technical directions consist of providing network functions as a Service instead of delivering standalone network appliances, leveraging a virtualized environment named NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) to provide higher scalability and reduce maintenance costs. Operating the NFVI under stringent availability guarantees is fundamental to ensure the proper functioning of the VNFaaS against software attacks and failures, as well as common physical device failures. Indeed the availability of a VNFaaS relies on the failure rate of its single components, namely the physical servers, the hypervisor, the VNF software, and the communication network. In this paper, we propose a versatile orchestration model able to integrate an elastic VNF protection strategy with the goal to maximize the availability of an NFVI system serving multiple VNF demands. The elasticity derives from (i) the ability to use VNF protection only if needed, or (ii) to pass from dedicated protection scheme to shared VNF protection scheme when needed for a subset of the VNFs, (iii) to integrate traffic split and load-balancing as well as mastership role election in the orchestration decision, (iv) to adjust the placement of VNF masters and slaves based on the availability of the different system and network components involved. We propose a VNF orchestration algorithm based on Variable Neighboring Search, able to integrate both protection schemes in a scalable way and capable to scale, while outperforming standard online policies

Dynamic, Latency-Optimal vNF Placement at the Network Edge

Future networks are expected to support low-latency, context-aware and user-specific services in a highly flexible and efficient manner. One approach to support emerging use cases such as, e.g., virtual reality and in-network image processing is to introduce virtualized network functions (vNF)s at the edge of the network, placed in close proximity to the end users to reduce end-to-end latency, time-to-response, and unnecessary utilisation in the core network. While placement of vNFs has been studied before, it has so far mostly focused on reducing the utilisation of server resources (i.e., minimising the number of servers required in the network to run a specific set of vNFs), and not taking network conditions into consideration such as, e.g., end-to-end latency, the constantly changing network dynamics, or user mobility patterns. In this paper, we formulate the Edge vNF placement problem to allocate vNFs to a distributed edge infrastructure, minimising end-to-end latency from all users to their associated vNFs. We present a way to dynamically re-schedule the optimal placement of vNFs based on temporal network-wide latency fluctuations using optimal stopping theory. We then evaluate our dynamic scheduler over a simulated nation-wide backbone network using real-world ISP latency characteristics. We show that our proposed dynamic placement scheduler minimises vNF migrations compared to other schedulers (e.g., periodic and always-on scheduling of a new placement), and offers Quality of Service guarantees by not exceeding a maximum number of latency violations that can be tolerated by certain applications

Hardware-accelerator aware VNF-chain recovery

Hardware-accelerators in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) environments have aided telecommunications companies (telcos) to reduce their expenditures by offloading compute-intensive VNFs to hardware-accelerators. To fully utilize the benefits of hardware-accelerators, VNF-chain recovery models need to be adapted. In this paper, we present an ILP model for optimizing prioritized recovery of VNF-chains in heterogeneous NFV environments following node failures. We also propose an accelerator-aware heuristic for solving prioritized VNF-chain recovery problems of large-size in a reasonable time. Evaluation results show that the performance of heuristic matches with that of ILP in regard to restoration of high and medium priority VNF-chains and a small penalty occurs only for low-priority VNF-chains

Intent-based zero-touch service chaining layer for software-defined edge cloud networks

Edge Computing, along with Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization, are causing network infrastructures to become as distributed clouds extended to the edge with services provided as dynamically established sequences of virtualized functions (i.e., dynamic service chains) thereby elastically addressing different processing requirements of application data flows. However, service operators and application developers are not inclined to deal with descriptive configuration directives to establish and operate services, especially in case of service chains. Intent-based Networking is emerging as a novel approach that simplifies network management and automates the implementation of network operations required by applications. This paper presents an intent-based zero-touch service chaining layer that provides the programmable provision of service chain paths in edge cloud networks. In addition to the dynamic and elastic deployment of data delivery services, the intent-based layer offers an automated adaptation of the service chains paths according to the application's goals expressed in the intent to recover from sudden congestion events in the SDN network. Experiments have been carried out in an emulated network environment to show the feasibility of the approach and to evaluate the performance of the intent layer in terms of network resource usage and adaptation overhead

Towards 5G Software-Defined Ecosystems: Technical Challenges, Business Sustainability and Policy Issues

Techno-economic drivers are creating the conditions for a radical change of paradigm in the design and operation of future telecommunications infrastructures. In fact, SDN, NFV, Cloud and Edge-Fog Computing are converging together into a single systemic transformation termed “Softwarization” that will find concrete exploitations in 5G systems. The IEEE SDN Initiative1 has elaborated a vision, an evolutionary path and some techno-economic scenarios of this transformation: specifically, the major technical challenges, business sustainability and policy issues have been investigated. This white paper presents: 1) an overview on the main techno-economic drivers steering the “Softwarization” of telecommunications; 2) an introduction to the Open Mobile Edge Cloud vision (covered in a companion white paper); 3) the main technical challenges in terms of operations, security and policy; 4) an analysis of the potential role of open source software; 5) some use case proposals for proof-of-concepts; and 6) a short description of the main socio-economic impacts being produced by “Softwarization”. Along these directions, IEEE SDN is also developing of an open catalogue of software platforms, toolkits, and functionalities aiming at a step-by-step development and aggregation of test-beds/field-trials on SDNNFV- 5G