Hybrid SDN Evolution: A Comprehensive Survey of the State-of-the-Art

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an evolutionary networking paradigm which has been adopted by large network and cloud providers, among which are Tech Giants. However, embracing a new and futuristic paradigm as an alternative to well-established and mature legacy networking paradigm requires a lot of time along with considerable financial resources and technical expertise. Consequently, many enterprises can not afford it. A compromise solution then is a hybrid networking environment (a.k.a. Hybrid SDN (hSDN)) in which SDN functionalities are leveraged while existing traditional network infrastructures are acknowledged. Recently, hSDN has been seen as a viable networking solution for a diverse range of businesses and organizations. Accordingly, the body of literature on hSDN research has improved remarkably. On this account, we present this paper as a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey which expands upon hSDN from many different perspectives

Exploiting the power of multiplicity: a holistic survey of network-layer multipath

The Internet is inherently a multipath network: For an underlying network with only a single path, connecting various nodes would have been debilitatingly fragile. Unfortunately, traditional Internet technologies have been designed around the restrictive assumption of a single working path between a source and a destination. The lack of native multipath support constrains network performance even as the underlying network is richly connected and has redundant multiple paths. Computer networks can exploit the power of multiplicity, through which a diverse collection of paths is resource pooled as a single resource, to unlock the inherent redundancy of the Internet. This opens up a new vista of opportunities, promising increased throughput (through concurrent usage of multiple paths) and increased reliability and fault tolerance (through the use of multiple paths in backup/redundant arrangements). There are many emerging trends in networking that signify that the Internet's future will be multipath, including the use of multipath technology in data center computing; the ready availability of multiple heterogeneous radio interfaces in wireless (such as Wi-Fi and cellular) in wireless devices; ubiquity of mobile devices that are multihomed with heterogeneous access networks; and the development and standardization of multipath transport protocols such as multipath TCP. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive survey of the literature on network-layer multipath solutions. We will present a detailed investigation of two important design issues, namely, the control plane problem of how to compute and select the routes and the data plane problem of how to split the flow on the computed paths. The main contribution of this paper is a systematic articulation of the main design issues in network-layer multipath routing along with a broad-ranging survey of the vast literature on network-layer multipathing. We also highlight open issues and identify directions for future work

Enhancing performance of conventional computer networks employing selected SDN principles

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis research is related to computer networks. In this thesis, three main issues are addressed which affect the performance of any computer network: congestion, efficient resources utilization and link failure. Those issues are related to each other in many situations. Many approaches have been suggested to deal with those issues as well as many solutions were applied. Despite all the improvements of the technology and the proposed solutions, those issues continue to be a burden on the system’s performance. This effect is related to the increase of the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements in modern networks. The basic idea of this research is evolving the intelligence of a conventional computer network when dealing with those issues by adding some features of the Software Defined Networking (SDN). This adoption upgrades the conventional computer network system to be more dynamic and higher self-organizing when dealing with those issues. This idea is applied on a system represented by a computer network that uses the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing protocol. The first improvement deals with the distribution of Internet Protocol (IP) routed flows. The second improvement deals with tunnel establishment that serves Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) routed flows and the third improvement deals with bandwidth reservation when applying network restoration represented by Fast Re-route (FRR) mechanism to sooth the effect of link failure in OSPF/MPLS routed network. This idea is also applied on another system that uses the Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) to improve the performance of its routing algorithm. Adopting the SDN notion is achieved by adding an intelligent controller to the system and creating a dialog of messages between the controller and the conventional routers. This requires upgrading the routers to respond to the new modified system.Our proposed approaches are presented with simulations of different configurations which produce fine results

Resilience support in software-defined networking:a survey

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an architecture for computer networking that provides a clear separation between network control functions and forwarding operations. The abstractions supported by this architecture are intended to simplify the implementation of several tasks that are critical to network operation, such as routing and network management. Computer networks have an increasingly important societal role, requiring them to be resilient to a range of challenges. Previously, research into network resilience has focused on the mitigation of several types of challenges, such as natural disasters and attacks. Capitalizing on its benefits, including increased programmability and a clearer separation of concerns, significant attention has recently focused on the development of resilience mechanisms that use software-defined networking approaches. In this article, we present a survey that provides a structured overview of the resilience support that currently exists in this important area. We categorize the most recent research on this topic with respect to a number of resilience disciplines. Additionally, we discuss the lessons learned from this investigation, highlight the main challenges faced by SDNs moving forward, and outline the research trends in terms of solutions to mitigate these challenges

Towards the transversal detection of DDoS network attacks in 5G multi-tenant overlay networks

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Currently, there is no any effective security solution which can detect cyber-attacks against 5G networks where multitenancy and user mobility are some unique characteristics that impose significant challenges over such security solutions. This paper focuses on addressing a transversal detection system to be able to protect at the same time, infrastructures, tenants and 5G users in both edge and core network segments of the 5G multi-tenant infrastructures. A novel approach which significantly extends the capabilities of a commonly used IDS, to accurately identify attacking nodes in a 5G network, regardless of multiple network traffic encapsulations, has been proposed in this paper. The proposed approach is suitable to be deployed in almost all 5G network segments including the Mobile Edge Computing. Both architectural design and data models are described in this contribution. Empirical experiments have been carried out a realistic 5G multi-tenant infrastructures to intensively validate the design of the proposed approach regarding scalability and flexibility

Traffic Re-engineering: Extending Resource Pooling Through the Application of Re-feedback

Parallelism pervades the Internet, yet efficiently pooling this increasing path diversity has remained elusive. With no holistic solution for resource pooling, each layer of the Internet architecture attempts to balance traffic according to its own needs, potentially at the expense of others. From the edges, traffic is implicitly pooled over multiple paths by retrieving content from different sources. Within the network, traffic is explicitly balanced across multiple links through the use of traffic engineering. This work explores how the current architecture can be realigned to facilitate resource pooling at both network and transport layers, where tension between stakeholders is strongest. The central theme of this thesis is that traffic engineering can be performed more efficiently, flexibly and robustly through the use of re-feedback. A cross-layer architecture is proposed for sharing the responsibility for resource pooling across both hosts and network. Building on this framework, two novel forms of traffic management are evaluated. Efficient pooling of traffic across paths is achieved through the development of an in-network congestion balancer, which can function in the absence of multipath transport. Network and transport mechanisms are then designed and implemented to facilitate path fail-over, greatly improving resilience without requiring receiver side cooperation. These contributions are framed by a longitudinal measurement study which provides evidence for many of the design choices taken. A methodology for scalably recovering flow metrics from passive traces is developed which in turn is systematically applied to over five years of interdomain traffic data. The resulting findings challenge traditional assumptions on the preponderance of congestion control on resource sharing, with over half of all traffic being constrained by limits other than network capacity. All of the above represent concerted attempts to rethink and reassert traffic engineering in an Internet where competing solutions for resource pooling proliferate. By delegating responsibilities currently overloading the routing architecture towards hosts and re-engineering traffic management around the core strengths of the network, the proposed architectural changes allow the tussle surrounding resource pooling to be drawn out without compromising the scalability and evolvability of the Internet

Vers une utilisation de la diversité de chemins dans l'internet

In this thesis we consider a new service where carriers offer additional routes to their customers (w.r.t. to the BGP default route) as a free or value-added service. These alternate routes can be used by customers to optimize their communications, by bypassing some congested points in the Internet (e.g. a “tussled” peeringpoints), to help them to meet their traffic engineering objectives (better delays etc.) or just for robustness purposes (e.g, shift to a disjoint alternate route if needed). First we propose a simple architecture that allows a network service provider to benefit from the diversity it currently receives. Then we extend this architecture in order to make the propagation of the Internet path diversity possible, not only to direct neighbors but also to their neighbors and so on. We take advantage of this advance to relax the route selection processes of autonomous systems in order to make them be able to set up new routing paradigms. Nevertheless announcing additional paths can lead to scalability issues, so each carrier could receive more paths than what it could manage. We quantify this issue and we underline easy adaptations and small path filterings which make the number of paths drop to a manageable amount. Last but not least we set up an auction-type route allocation framework, which gives to network service providers the opportunities first to propagate to their neighbors only the paths the said neighbors are interested in and second to leverage a new routing selection paradigm based on commercial agreements and negotiationsNous considérons, dans cette thèse, un nouveau service par lequel les opérateurs de télécommunications offrent des routes supplémentaires à leurs clients (en plus de la route par défaut) comme un service gratuit ou à valeur ajoutée. Ces routes supplémentaires peuvent être utilisées par des clients afin d’optimiser leurs communications, en outrepassant des points de congestion d’Internet, ou les aider à atteindre leurs objectifs d’ingénierie de trafic (meilleurs délais etc.) ou dans un but de robustesse. Nous proposons d’abord une architecture simple permettant à un opérateur de télécommunication de bénéficier de la diversité de chemin qu’il reçoit déjà. Nous étendons ensuite cette architecture afin de rendre possible la propagation de cette diversité de chemin, non seulement aux voisins directs mais aussi, de proche en proche, aux autres domaines. Nous profitons de cette occasion pour relaxer la sélection des routes des différents domaines afin de leur permettre de mettre en place de nouveaux paradigmes de routage. Néanmoins, annoncer des chemins additionnels peut entrainer des problèmes de passage à l’échelle car chaque opérateur peut potentiellement recevoir plus de chemins que ce qu’il peut gérer. Nous quantifions ce problème et mettons en avant des modifications et filtrages simples permettant de réduire ce nombre à un niveau acceptable. En dernier, nous proposons un processus, inspiré des ventes aux enchères, permettant aux opérateurs de propager aux domaines voisins seulement les chemins qui intéressent les dits voisins. De plus, ce processus permet de mettre en avant un nouveau paradigme de propagation de routes, basé sur des négociations et accords commerciau