Deliverable JRA1.1: Evaluation of current network control and management planes for multi-domain network infrastructure

This deliverable includes a compilation and evaluation of available control and management architectures and protocols applicable to a multilayer infrastructure in a multi-domain Virtual Network environment.The scope of this deliverable is mainly focused on the virtualisation of the resources within a network and at processing nodes. The virtualization of the FEDERICA infrastructure allows the provisioning of its available resources to users by means of FEDERICA slices. A slice is seen by the user as a real physical network under his/her domain, however it maps to a logical partition (a virtual instance) of the physical FEDERICA resources. A slice is built to exhibit to the highest degree all the principles applicable to a physical network (isolation, reproducibility, manageability, ...). Currently, there are no standard definitions available for network virtualization or its associated architectures. Therefore, this deliverable proposes the Virtual Network layer architecture and evaluates a set of Management- and Control Planes that can be used for the partitioning and virtualization of the FEDERICA network resources. This evaluation has been performed taking into account an initial set of FEDERICA requirements; a possible extension of the selected tools will be evaluated in future deliverables. The studies described in this deliverable define the virtual architecture of the FEDERICA infrastructure. During this activity, the need has been recognised to establish a new set of basic definitions (taxonomy) for the building blocks that compose the so-called slice, i.e. the virtual network instantiation (which is virtual with regard to the abstracted view made of the building blocks of the FEDERICA infrastructure) and its architectural plane representation. These definitions will be established as a common nomenclature for the FEDERICA project. Other important aspects when defining a new architecture are the user requirements. It is crucial that the resulting architecture fits the demands that users may have. Since this deliverable has been produced at the same time as the contact process with users, made by the project activities related to the Use Case definitions, JRA1 has proposed a set of basic Use Cases to be considered as starting point for its internal studies. When researchers want to experiment with their developments, they need not only network resources on their slices, but also a slice of the processing resources. These processing slice resources are understood as virtual machine instances that users can use to make them behave as software routers or end nodes, on which to download the software protocols or applications they have produced and want to assess in a realistic environment. Hence, this deliverable also studies the APIs of several virtual machine management software products in order to identify which best suits FEDERICA’s needs.Postprint (published version

Automated System to Debug Under-performing Network Flows in Wide Area Networks

Locating the cause of performance losses in large high performance Wide Area Networks (WAN) is an extremely challenging problem. This is because WANs comprise several distributed sub-networks (Autonomous Networks), with their own independent network monitoring systems. Each individual monitoring system has limited or no access to network devices outside its own network. Moreover, conventional network monitoring systems are designed only to provide information about the health of individual network devices, and do not provide sufficient information to monitor endto- end performance – thus, adding severe overhead on debugging end-toend performance issues. In this thesis, an automated tool is designed that requires no special access to network devices and no special software installations on the network devices or end hosts. The system detects performance losses and locates the most likely problem nodes (routers/links) in the network. A key component of this system is the novel hybrid network monitoring/data collection system. The monitoring/data collection sub-system is designed to obtain the best of both active and passive monitoring techniques. Then, pattern analysis algorithms are designed. They locate the causes of performance loss using the data collected from above sub-system. This system is being tested on the GLORIAD (Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development) network. One of the future goals is to in tegrate this system into the GLORIAD’s network monitoring tool set, to provide end-to-end network monitoring and problem mitigation capabilities

In-band network monitoring technique to support SDN-based wireless networks

Most industrial applications demand determinism in terms of latency, reliability, and throughput. This goes hand in hand with the increased complexity of real-time network programability possibilities. To ensure network performance low-overhead, high-granularity, and timely network verification techniques need to be deployed. The first cornerstone of network verification ability is to enable end-to-end network monitoring, including end devices too. To achieve this, this article shows a novel and low overhead in-band network telemetry and monitoring technique for wireless networks focusing on IEEE 802.11 networks. A design of in-band network telemetry enabled node architecture is proposed and its proof of concept implementation is realized. The PoC realization is used to monitor a real-life SDN-based wireless network, enabling on-the-fly (re)configuration capabilities based on monitoring data. In addition, the proposed monitoring technique is validated in terms of monitoring accuracy, monitoring overhead, and network (re)configuration accuracy. It is shown that the proposed in-band monitoring technique has 6 times lower overhead than other active monitoring techniques on a single-hop link. Besides this, it is demonstrated that (re)configuration decisions taken based on monitored data fulfill targeted application requirements, validating the suitability of the proposed monitoring technique

Operational support systems for satellite communications

The role of satellite communications is changing from providing bandwidth linking network operators interconnections towards providing IP enabled communications to end users. This migration from few high-value routes towards many low-value routes means that integration and automation of processes with terrestrial networks becomes critical in driving down unit costs. Integration and automation is necessary on all planes: user, control and management. In satellite communications, management aspects, underpinned by Operational Support Systems (OSS) have received the least research attention, making this a valuable topic for study. In most areas, OSS for satellite systems are similar to other domains. However there are some notable areas of difference which have been the focus of this research. The eTOM business framework, developed by the TMF, has been used to highlight aspects of OSS unique to satellite. Since satellite capacity represents the highest operational cost of a satellite route, effective management while minimising the overhead traffic is critical. The transmission of IP packets is assumed and the real-time measurement of QoS parameters such as packet delay and loss emerged as the most important differences. A number of approaches to QoS measurement are feasible, however the use of trace packets is most promising especially for high network loads. An experiment compares the results from simulations, mathematical models and from a test network, using Poisson and self-similar traffic flows. The relationship between measurement accuracy and trace packet intensity is explored and the measurement response time to steps in traffic load is estimated. It is discovered that measurement accuracy improves as the queue load increases, in contrast to alternative approaches such as sampling of user packets. The response time to steps depends upon the degree of self-similarity and is generally longer than the times recommended by standards. A pragmatic approach to management of different modes is proposed where the measurement method is changed depending on the load

\STATMOND: A Peer-To-Peer Status And Performance Monitor For Dynamic Resource Allocation On Parallel Computers

This thesis presents a decentralized tool STATMOND - to monitor the status of a peer-to-peer network. STATMOND provides an accurate measurement scheme for parameters such as CPU load and memory utilization on Linux clusters. The services of STATMOND are ubiquitous in that each computer measures and for- wards its data over the network and also maintains the data of other nodes in memory. The data are periodically updated, and users on any node can ‘see‘ the status and performance of the network based on these parameters. This thesis describes the problems confronting cluster computing, the necessity of monitoring tools and how STATMOND can be a step towards better allocation of resources for dynamic computing

Management, Optimization and Evolution of the LHCb Online Network

The LHCb experiment is one of the four large particle detectors running at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. It is a forward single-arm spectrometer dedicated to test the Standard Model through precision measurements of Charge-Parity (CP) violation and rare decays in the b quark sector. The LHCb experiment will operate at a luminosity of 2x10^32cm-2s-1, the proton-proton bunch crossings rate will be approximately 10 MHz. To select the interesting events, a two-level trigger scheme is applied: the rst level trigger (L0) and the high level trigger (HLT). The L0 trigger is implemented in custom hardware, while HLT is implemented in software runs on the CPUs of the Event Filter Farm (EFF). The L0 trigger rate is dened at about 1 MHz, and the event size for each event is about 35 kByte. It is a serious challenge to handle the resulting data rate (35 GByte/s). The Online system is a key part of the LHCb experiment, providing all the IT services. It consists of three major components: the Data Acquisition (DAQ) system, the Timing and Fast Control (TFC) system and the Experiment Control System (ECS). To provide the services, two large dedicated networks based on Gigabit Ethernet are deployed: one for DAQ and another one for ECS, which are referred to Online network in general. A large network needs sophisticated monitoring for its successful operation. Commercial network management systems are quite expensive and dicult to integrate into the LHCb ECS. A custom network monitoring system has been implemented based on a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system called PVSS which is used by LHCb ECS. It is a homogeneous part of the LHCb ECS. In this thesis, it is demonstrated how a large scale network can be monitored and managed using tools originally made for industrial supervisory control. The thesis is organized as the follows: Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to LHC and the B physics on LHC, then describes all sub-detectors and the trigger and DAQ system of LHCb from structure to performance. Chapter 2 first introduces the LHCb Online system and the dataflow, then focuses on the Online network design and its optimization. In Chapter 3, the SCADA system PVSS is introduced briefly, then the architecture and implementation of the network monitoring system are described in detail, including the front-end processes, the data communication and the supervisory layer. Chapter 4 first discusses the packet sampling theory and one of the packet sampling mechanisms: sFlow, then demonstrates the applications of sFlow for the network trouble-shooting, the traffic monitoring and the anomaly detection. In Chapter 5, the upgrade of LHC and LHCb is introduced, the possible architecture of DAQ is discussed, and two candidate internetworking technologies (high speed Ethernet and InfniBand) are compared in different aspects for DAQ. Three schemes based on 10 Gigabit Ethernet are presented and studied. Chapter 6 is a general summary of the thesis

Real Time Control for Intelligent 6G Networks

The benefits of telemetry for optical networking have been shown in the literature, and several telemetry architectures have been defined. In general, telemetry data is collected from observation points in the devices and sent to a central system running besides the Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller. In this project, we try to develop a telemetry architecture that supports intelligent data aggregation and nearby data collection. Several frameworks and technologies have been explored to ensure that they fit well into the architecture's composition. A description of these different technologies is presented in this work, along with a comparison between their main features and downsides. Some intelligent techniques, aka. Algorithms have been stated and tested within architecture, showing their benefits by reducing the amount of data processed. In the design of this architecture, the main issues related to distributed systems have been faced, and some initial solutions have been proposed. In particular, several security solutions have been explored to deal with threats but also with scalability and performance issues, trying to find a balance between performance and security. Finally, two use cases are presented, showing a real implementation of the architecture that has been presented at conferences and validated within the project's development