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

SDN and NFV for satellite infrastructures

The integration of SDN and NFV enablers into the satellite network could prove to be an essential means to save on physical sites, improve the time to bring new services to the market and open new ways to improve network resiliency, availability and efficiency. It can be considered that the above two enablers can play a central role in the integration of satellite to terrestrial technologies by using federated management of the network resources.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

On the virtualization and dynamic orchestration of satellite communication services

Key features of satellite communications such as wide-scale coverage, broadcast/multicast support and high availability, together with significant amounts of new satellite capacity coming online, anticipate new opportunities for satellite communications services as an integral part within upcoming 5G systems. To materialize these opportunities, satellite communications services have to be provisioned and operated in a more flexible, agile and cost-effective manner than done today. In this context, this paper describes a solution for the virtualization and dynamic orchestration of satellite communication services that builds on the introduction of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies within the satellite ground segment systems. Along with the description of the main system architecture traits, the flowchart of a general procedure for the dynamic instantiation of virtualized satellite networks on top of a SDN/NFV-enabled satellite ground segment system is provided. The paper also presents experimental results for the dynamic customization of satellite network services through the implementation of a set of virtualized satellite network functions that can be orchestrated over general purpose open virtual platforms.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The Road Ahead for Networking: A Survey on ICN-IP Coexistence Solutions

In recent years, the current Internet has experienced an unexpected paradigm shift in the usage model, which has pushed researchers towards the design of the Information-Centric Networking (ICN) paradigm as a possible replacement of the existing architecture. Even though both Academia and Industry have investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of ICN, achieving the complete replacement of the Internet Protocol (IP) is a challenging task. Some research groups have already addressed the coexistence by designing their own architectures, but none of those is the final solution to move towards the future Internet considering the unaltered state of the networking. To design such architecture, the research community needs now a comprehensive overview of the existing solutions that have so far addressed the coexistence. The purpose of this paper is to reach this goal by providing the first comprehensive survey and classification of the coexistence architectures according to their features (i.e., deployment approach, deployment scenarios, addressed coexistence requirements and architecture or technology used) and evaluation parameters (i.e., challenges emerging during the deployment and the runtime behaviour of an architecture). We believe that this paper will finally fill the gap required for moving towards the design of the final coexistence architecture.Comment: 23 pages, 16 figures, 3 table

Implementation and Provisioning of Federated Networks in Hybrid Clouds (pre-print)

Federated cloud networking is needed to allow the seamless and efficient interconnection of resources distributed among different clouds. This work introduces a new cloud network federation framework for the automatic provision of Layer 2 (L2) and layer 3 (L3) virtual networks to interconnect geographically distributed cloud infrastructures in a hybrid cloud scenario. After a revision of existing encapsulation technologies to implement L2 and L3 overlay networks, the paper analyzes the main topologies that can be used to construct federated network overlays within hybrid clouds. In order to demonstrate the proposed solution and compare the different topologies, the article shows a proof-of-concept of a real federated network deployment in a hybrid cloud, which spans a local private cloud, managed with OpenNebula, and two public clouds, two different regions of mazon EC2. Results show that L2 and L3 overlay connectivity can be achieved with a minimal bandwidth overhead, lower than 10%