Service oriented networking

This paper introduces a new paradigm for service oriented networking being developed in the FUSION project(1). Despite recent proposals in the area of information centric networking, a similar treatment of services - where networked software functions, rather than content, are dynamically deployed, replicated and invoked - has received little attention by the network research community to date. Our approach provides the mechanisms required to deploy a replicated service instance in the network and to route client requests to the closest instance in an efficient manner. We address the main issues that such a paradigm raises including load balancing, resource registration, domain monitoring and inter-domain orchestration. We also present preliminary evaluation results of current work

Service-oriented networking architecture

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Information Technology.Demand for new services offered across shared networking infrastructure, such as the Internet, is at an ever increasing level. Everyday, innovative services are continuously being proposed and developed to meet end users' demands. However, the monolithic and inflexible design of current networking infrastructure constrains the deployment of such new services. Current networking infrastructure consists of a fixed set of connectivity functions governed by static overlays of Service Level Agreements between administrative boundaries. This infrastructure hinders new service deployment to a slow process of standardisation and legal agreements, and requires large capital expenditure for the roll out of new network elements. Service-Oriented Networking is a new paradigm aimed at transforming networking infrastructure to meet new demands in a responsive and inexpensive manner. It proposes enabling on-demand introduction of services across shared and heterogeneous networking infrastructure. However, architecting the building blocks of a feasible service-oriented network poses many critical research challenges. The first challenge is in providing an architecture that enables on-demand injection and programmability of services. This architecture must not compromise current scalability and performance levels of networks. Furthermore, due to the heterogeneous nature of networks, this architecture must cater for a large number of platforms with varying capabilities. The second challenge is in enforcing security among services of competing entities on leveraging shared infrastructure. With the possibility of faulty or malicious services being deployed, mechanisms are needed to impose isolation of risk to maintain a robust network. These mechanisms must scale to a large number of entities and should not impose restrictions on programmability that would limit the operations of services. Furthermore, this needs to be achieved without the introduction of checking operations in the path of network traffic which would impede the performance of the network. The third challenge is in guaranteeing Quality of Service (QoS) levels across competing services in a differentiated and fair manner. Providing QoS guarantee would no longer be just a problem of bandwidth allocation but would now involve the allocation of computational resources needed in the fulfilment of a service. The critical issue is in formulating a resource allocation scheme among competing services where resource requirements or availability cannot be predetermined. Again, any mechanism used must be scalable for large numbers of services. Recent research in the fields of Active and Programmable Networks has produced novel architectures which adopt user-extensible software components or programmable network processors to enable rapid service deployment. However, it is currently impractical to adopt such concepts as the associated challenges (outlined above) have only been partially addressed. Meanwhile, commercial platforms are becoming both faster and increasingly more programmable. However, commercial manufacturers have developed their platforms in a proprietary and closed manner, thereby restricting users from deploying new services or customising existing services. This thesis explores a holistic approach to overcoming the challenges of Service-Oriented Networks. Specifically, it presents a new and novel architecture called Serviter: a new Service-Oriented Network Architecture for Shared Networks. With this architecture, a new class of network elements enriched with programmable functionality can be deployed to serve as the fundamental building blocks of a new Service-Oriented Networking model. Under this model, service provisioning responsibilities are divided among manufacturers, network providers, and service providers. Manufacturers' responsibilities focus on the provisioning of increasingly programmable high-performance infrastructure and their system-level drivers. Network providers are responsible for the management of their infrastructure, which would be divided into isolated shares and opened to third party service providers. The service providers are then able to deploy new services within their shares of a domain. These services can then be aggregated across domains to provision end-to-end services through the purchase of dedicated shares, or a collaborative model, spanning the required paths. Serviter enables on-demand service deployment onto commercial programmable platforms leveraging their high performance and scalability characteristics. These characteristics are maintained by enforcing the separation of the control and the forwarding planes. A programmability interface is provided through a layer of System Services. To cater for the heterogeneous nature of networks, the System Services layer is extensible. It enables each manufacturer to utilise a unified programmability approach to develop and deploy new System Services to exploit the functionality of their reprogrammable hardware. The programmability of the underlying modules is offered through a structured and flexible approach of Active Flow Manipulation (AFM) Paths. Users deploy User Services that construct AFM Paths to offer new network services. Serviter introduces novel scalable and simple partitioning techniques to address the issues of network integrity and security. Serviter provides each service provider with a secure, separate, and resource assured partition, representing a 'Virtual Router', to accommodate their services. These partitions span all components and restrict services from constructing AFM Paths on traffic outside of the Virtual Networks associated with their partition. To allocate internal router resources among competing partitions and among services within a partition, Serviter employs a scalable and autonomic resource management model called Control plane-Quality of Service {C-QoS). Due to the difficulty of determining resource availability in heterogeneous infrastructure or service resource requirements, this model is dynamically adaptive to demand and availability patterns on a per resource basis. To demonstrate the significance of the new architecture, this thesis presents an implementation of Serviter along with its deployment onto an advanced commercial networking platform. The implementation is assessed and evaluated for its ability to map on to commercial infrastructure, its partitioning enforcement, and its overall performance and scalability. This platform is used to implement novel services demonstrating Serviter capabilities. It is shown that Serviter is capable of facilitating on-demand deployment of a variety of services constrained by forward plane capabilities. This architecture opens the opportunity for service-oriented networking in large-scale shared networks, putting forth new challenging issues in the complete automation of service deployment - specifically, capability discovery, location selection, and dynamic domain aggregation to provide end-to-end service construction

Service oriented networking

L'utilisation de blogs dans le cadre de la classe semble être un sujet récurrent ces derniers temps. Nos amis québecois ont publié des articles et dossiers sur ce thème. Il ne s'agit pas tant du blog géré par l'enseignant pour sa classe, mais davantage de l'utilisation du blog par l'élève ou l'étudiant, dans le cadre de sa formation. Nous parlons donc de blogs (au pluriel) dans la classe. Le site Internet de Profweb vient de mettre en ligne un dossier intitulé « Bloguer pour enseigner et appr..

Adaptive service discovery on service-oriented and spontaneous sensor systems

Service-oriented architecture, Spontaneous networks, Self-organisation, Self-configuration, Sensor systems, Social patternsNatural and man-made disasters can significantly impact both people and environments. Enhanced effect can be achieved through dynamic networking of people, systems and procedures and seamless integration of them to fulfil mission objectives with service-oriented sensor systems. However, the benefits of integration of services will not be realised unless we have a dependable method to discover all required services in dynamic environments. In this paper, we propose an Adaptive and Efficient Peer-to-peer Search (AEPS) approach for dependable service integration on service-oriented architecture based on a number of social behaviour patterns. In the AEPS network, the networked nodes can autonomously support and co-operate with each other in a peer-to-peer (P2P) manner to quickly discover and self-configure any services available on the disaster area and deliver a real-time capability by self-organising themselves in spontaneous groups to provide higher flexibility and adaptability for disaster monitoring and relief

Service oriented interactive media (SOIM) engines enabled by optimized resource sharing

In the same way as cloud computing, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Content Centric Networking (CCN) triggered a new class of software architectures fundamentally different from traditional desktop software, service oriented networking (SON) suggests a new class of media engine technologies, which we call Service Oriented Interactive Media (SOIM) engines. This includes a new approach for game engines and more generally interactive media engines for entertainment, training, educational and dashboard applications. Porting traditional game engines and interactive media engines to the cloud without fundamentally changing the architecture, as done frequently, can enable already various advantages of cloud computing for such kinds of applications, for example simple and transparent upgrading of content and unified user experience on all end-user devices. This paper discusses a new architecture for game engines and interactive media engines fundamentally designed for cloud and SON. Main advantages of SOIM engines are significantly higher resource efficiency, leading to a fraction of cloud hosting costs. SOIM engines achieve these benefits by multilayered data sharing, efficiently handling many input and output channels for video, audio, and 3D world synchronization, and smart user session and session slot management. Architecture and results of a prototype implementation of a SOIM engine are discussed

A Case for Peering of Content Delivery Networks

The proliferation of Content Delivery Networks (CDN) reveals that existing content networks are owned and operated by individual companies. As a consequence, closed delivery networks are evolved which do not cooperate with other CDNs and in practice, islands of CDNs are formed. Moreover, the logical separation between contents and services in this context results in two content networking domains. But present trends in content networks and content networking capabilities give rise to the interest in interconnecting content networks. Finding ways for distinct content networks to coordinate and cooperate with other content networks is necessary for better overall service. In addition to that, meeting the QoS requirements of users according to the negotiated Service Level Agreements between the user and the content network is a burning issue in this perspective. In this article, we present an open, scalable and Service-Oriented Architecture based system to assist the creation of open Content and Service Delivery Networks (CSDN) that scale and support sharing of resources with other CSDNs.Comment: Short Article (Submitted in DS Online as Work in Progress

Training needs for women-owned SMEs in England

Originality/value – The study offers original primary research into the contributory growth factors for women-owned enterprises in a representative area of Britain, identifies key issues, maps survival and success factors, and assesses women entrepreneurs' training needs and preferences.Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate the needs and preferences for training among growth-oriented women-owned SMEs in the East of England. Design/methodology/approach – Quantitative data were collected through 108 on-line questionnaires, and the means analysed using SPSS. Qualitative data collected in response to open-ended questions were inductively analysed and interpreted. Findings – Only one fourth of respondents received growth-oriented training in the previous two years, with an average duration of 3-5 days per year. Programmes most in demand concerned innovation and opportunity recognition, business evaluation and growth considerations, developing strategic customers and customers care, customer relationship management, as well as selling, networking and negotiation skills. High demand for these programmes corresponds to others results identifying contributory factors to higher enterprise performance and growth: product/service quality, new product/service development, appropriate marketing, effective use of websites, selling skills and informal networking. Research limitations/implications – The scope of the project is limited to service sectors and sole proprietorships. Geographic scope is limited to the East of England. These limits nonetheless provide a reasonable base and rationale for the scope of the study. Practical implications – With a better understanding of the capacity building requirements of women entrepreneurs in growth businesses, appropriately designed training programmes can be developed to help women achieve higher levels of entrepreneurial success