Building Programmable Wireless Networks: An Architectural Survey

In recent times, there have been a lot of efforts for improving the ossified Internet architecture in a bid to sustain unstinted growth and innovation. A major reason for the perceived architectural ossification is the lack of ability to program the network as a system. This situation has resulted partly from historical decisions in the original Internet design which emphasized decentralized network operations through co-located data and control planes on each network device. The situation for wireless networks is no different resulting in a lot of complexity and a plethora of largely incompatible wireless technologies. The emergence of "programmable wireless networks", that allow greater flexibility, ease of management and configurability, is a step in the right direction to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the wireless networks. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the architectures proposed in literature for building programmable wireless networks focusing primarily on three popular techniques, i.e., software defined networks, cognitive radio networks, and virtualized networks. This survey is a self-contained tutorial on these techniques and its applications. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges in building next-generation programmable wireless networks and identify open research issues and future research directions.Comment: 19 page

SwitchWare: Accelerating Network Evolution (White Paper)

We propose the development of a set of software technologies ( SwitchWare ) which will enable rapid development and deployment of new network services. The key insight is that by making the basic network service selectable on a per user (or even per packet) basis, the need for formal standardization is eliminated. Additionally, by making the basic network service programmable, the deployment times, today constrained by capital funding limitations, are tremendously reduced (to the order of software distribution times). Finally, by constructing an advanced, robust programming environment, even the service development time can be reduced. A SwitchWare switch consists of input and output ports controlled by a software-programmable element; programs are contained in sequences of messages sent to the SwitchWare switch\u27s input ports, which interpret the messages as programs. We call these Switchlets . This accelerates the pace of network evolution, as evolving user needs can be immediately reflected in the network infrastructure. Immediate reconfigurability enhances the adaptability of the network infrastructure in the face of unexpected situations. We call a network built from SwitchWare switches an active network

A proposal for secured, efficient and scalable layer 2 network virtualisation mechanism

El contenidos de los capítulos 3 y 4 está sujeto a confidencialidad. 291 p.La Internet del Futuro ha emergido como un esfuerzo investigador para superar estas limitaciones identificadas en la actual Internet. Para ello es necesario investigar en arquitecturas y soluciones novedosas (evolutivas o rompedoras), y las plataformas de experimentación surgen para proporcionar un entorno realista para validar estas nuevas propuestas a gran escala.Debido a la necesidad de compartir la misma infraestructura y recursos para testear simultáneamente diversas propuestas de red, la virtualización de red es la clave del éxito. Se propone una nueva taxonomía para poder analizar y comparar las diferentes propuestas. Se identifican tres tipos: el Nodo Virtual (vNode), la Virtualización posibilitada por SDN (SDNeV) y el overlay.Además, se presentan las plataformas experimentales más relevantes, con un foco especial en la forma en la que cada una de ellas permite la investigación en propuestas de red, las cuales no cumplen todos estos requisitos impuestos: aislamiento, seguridad, flexibilidad, escalabilidad, estabilidad, transparencia, soporte para la investigación en propuestas de red. Por lo tanto, una nueva plataforma de experimentación ortogonal a la experimentación es necesaria.Las principales contribuciones de esta tesis, sustentadas sobre tecnología SDN y NFV, son también los elementos clave para construir la plataforma de experimentación: la Virtualización de Red basada en Prefijos de Nivel 2 (Layer 2 Prefix-based Network Virtualisation, L2PNV), un Protocolo para la Configuración de Direcciones MAC (MAC Address Configuration Protocol, MACP), y un sistema de Control de Acceso a Red basado en Flujos (Flow-based Network Access Control, FlowNAC).Como resultado, se ha desplegado en la Universidad del Pais Vasco (UPV/EHU) una nueva plataforma experimental, la Plataforma Activada por OpenFlow de EHU (EHU OpenFlow Enabled Facility, EHU-OEF), para experimentar y validar estas propuestas realizadas

A survey of network virtualization

a b s t r a c t Due to the existence of multiple stakeholders with conflicting goals and policies, alterations to the existing Internet architecture are now limited to simple incremental updates; deployment of any new, radically different technology is next to impossible. To fend off this ossification, network virtualization has been propounded as a diversifying attribute of the future inter-networking paradigm. By introducing a plurality of heterogeneous network architectures cohabiting on a shared physical substrate, network virtualization promotes innovations and diversified applications. In this paper, we survey the existing technologies and a wide array of past and state-of-the-art projects on network virtualization followed by a discussion of major challenges in this area

A proposal for secured, efficient and scalable layer 2 network virtualisation mechanism

El contenidos de los capítulos 3 y 4 está sujeto a confidencialidad. 291 p.La Internet del Futuro ha emergido como un esfuerzo investigador para superar estas limitaciones identificadas en la actual Internet. Para ello es necesario investigar en arquitecturas y soluciones novedosas (evolutivas o rompedoras), y las plataformas de experimentación surgen para proporcionar un entorno realista para validar estas nuevas propuestas a gran escala.Debido a la necesidad de compartir la misma infraestructura y recursos para testear simultáneamente diversas propuestas de red, la virtualización de red es la clave del éxito. Se propone una nueva taxonomía para poder analizar y comparar las diferentes propuestas. Se identifican tres tipos: el Nodo Virtual (vNode), la Virtualización posibilitada por SDN (SDNeV) y el overlay.Además, se presentan las plataformas experimentales más relevantes, con un foco especial en la forma en la que cada una de ellas permite la investigación en propuestas de red, las cuales no cumplen todos estos requisitos impuestos: aislamiento, seguridad, flexibilidad, escalabilidad, estabilidad, transparencia, soporte para la investigación en propuestas de red. Por lo tanto, una nueva plataforma de experimentación ortogonal a la experimentación es necesaria.Las principales contribuciones de esta tesis, sustentadas sobre tecnología SDN y NFV, son también los elementos clave para construir la plataforma de experimentación: la Virtualización de Red basada en Prefijos de Nivel 2 (Layer 2 Prefix-based Network Virtualisation, L2PNV), un Protocolo para la Configuración de Direcciones MAC (MAC Address Configuration Protocol, MACP), y un sistema de Control de Acceso a Red basado en Flujos (Flow-based Network Access Control, FlowNAC).Como resultado, se ha desplegado en la Universidad del Pais Vasco (UPV/EHU) una nueva plataforma experimental, la Plataforma Activada por OpenFlow de EHU (EHU OpenFlow Enabled Facility, EHU-OEF), para experimentar y validar estas propuestas realizadas

Active networks: an evolution of the internet

Active Networks can be seen as an evolution of the classical model of packet-switched networks. The traditional and ”passive” network model is based on a static definition of the network node behaviour. Active Networks propose an “active” model where the intermediate nodes (switches and routers) can load and execute user code contained in the data units (packets). Active Networks are a programmable network model, where bandwidth and computation are both considered shared network resources. This approach opens up new interesting research fields. This paper gives a short introduction of Active Networks, discusses the advantages they introduce and presents the research advances in this field

Identity Management and Resource Allocation in the Network Virtualization Environment

Due to the existence of multiple stakeholders with conflicting goals and policies, alterations to the existing Internet architecture are now limited to simple incremental updates; deployment of any new, radically different technology is next to impossible. To fend off this ossification, network virtualization has been propounded as a diversifying attribute of the future inter-networking paradigm. In this talk, we provide an overview of the network virtualization environment (NVE) and address two basic problems in this emerging field of networking research. The identity management problem is primarily concerned with ensuring interoperability across heterogeneous identifier spaces for locating and identifying end hosts in different virtual networks. We describe the architectural and the functional components of a novel identity management framework (iMark) that enables end-to-end connectivity across heterogeneous virtual networks in the NVE without revoking their autonomy. The virtual network embedding problem deals with the mapping of virtual nodes and links onto physical network resources. We argue that the separation of the node mapping and the link mapping phases in the existing algorithms considerably reduces the solution space and degrades embedding quality. We propose coordinated node and link mapping to devise two algorithms (D-ViNE and R-ViNE) for the online version of the problem under realistic assumptions and compare their performance with the existing heuristics

Active networking : one view of the past, present, and future

All distributed computing systems face the architectural question of the location (and nature) of programmability in the telecommunications networks, computers, and other peripheral devices comprising them. The perspective of this paper is that network elements should be as programmable as possible, to enable the most flexible distributed computing systems. There has been a persistent confluence among operating systems, programming languages, networking and distributed systems. We demonstrate how these interactions led to what is called active networking , and in the spirit of vox audita perit, littera scripta manet (the spoken word perishes, but the written word remains), include an account of how it was made to happen. Lessons are drawn both from the broader research agenda, and the specific goals pursued in the SwitchWare project. We speculate on likely futures for active networking