Can open-source projects (re-) shape the SDN/NFV-driven telecommunication market?

Telecom network operators face rapidly changing business needs. Due to their dependence on long product cycles they lack the ability to quickly respond to changing user demands. To spur innovation and stay competitive, network operators are investigating technological solutions with a proven track record in other application domains such as open source software projects. Open source software enables parties to learn, use, or contribute to technology from which they were previously excluded. OSS has reshaped many application areas including the landscape of operating systems and consumer software. The paradigmshift in telecommunication systems towards Software-Defined Networking introduces possibilities to benefit from open source projects. Implementing the control part of networks in software enables speedier adaption and innovation, and less dependencies on legacy protocols or algorithms hard-coded in the control part of network devices. The recently proposed concept of Network Function Virtualization pushes the softwarization of telecommunication functionalities even further down to the data plane. Within the NFV paradigm, functionality which was previously reserved for dedicated hardware implementations can now be implemented in software and deployed on generic Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) hardware. This paper provides an overview of existing open source initiatives for SDN/NFV-based network architectures, involving infrastructure to orchestration-related functionality. It situates them in a business process context and identifies the pros and cons for the market in general, as well as for individual actors

Robust control tools for traffic monitoring in TCP/AQM networks

Several studies have considered control theory tools for traffic control in communication networks, as for example the congestion control issue in IP (Internet Protocol) routers. In this paper, we propose to design a linear observer for time-delay systems to address the traffic monitoring issue in TCP/AQM (Transmission Control Protocol/Active Queue Management) networks. Due to several propagation delays and the queueing delay, the set TCP/AQM is modeled as a multiple delayed system of a particular form. Hence, appropriate robust control tools as quadratic separation are adopted to construct a delay dependent observer for TCP flows estimation. Note that, the developed mechanism enables also the anomaly detection issue for a class of DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. At last, simulations via the network simulator NS-2 and an emulation experiment validate the proposed methodology

Optical router for optical fiber sensor networks based on a liquid crystal cell

Optical fiber sensor networks are evolving rapidly. They are used because of the inert nature of optical fibers allowing no electromagnetic interference and safe applications in inflammable atmospheres; other relevant characteristics are their low weights and wide bandwidths as a transmission medium. In any case, it is very interesting to have specific components such as optical routers for selecting a certain path in a network with no optical to electrical and electrical to optical conversions. In this paper, we propose an all-optical router based on liquid crystals, polarizers, and a spatial split polarization beam splitter. The implemented device is designed to operate with visible light and it has been tested with plastic optical fibers. It has a crosstalk of 14 dB between selected ON channels and nonoperative OFF channels and 11-dB insertion losses. An average switch time of 100 ms is measured. The device checks the optical power level in each channel and, in case of failure, automatically switches to an operative channel while an alarm is activated.Publicad

Multicast Mobility in Mobile IP Version 6 (MIPv6) : Problem Statement and Brief Survey

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Smart grid architecture for rural distribution networks: application to a Spanish pilot network

This paper presents a novel architecture for rural distribution grids. This architecture is designed to modernize traditional rural networks into new Smart Grid ones. The architecture tackles innovation actions on both the power plane and the management plane of the system. In the power plane, the architecture focuses on exploiting the synergies between telecommunications and innovative technologies based on power electronics managing low scale electrical storage. In the management plane, a decentralized management system is proposed based on the addition of two new agents assisting the typical Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system of distribution system operators. Altogether, the proposed architecture enables operators to use more effectively—in an automated and decentralized way—weak rural distribution systems, increasing the capability to integrate new distributed energy resources. This architecture is being implemented in a real Pilot Network located in Spain, in the frame of the European Smart Rural Grid project. The paper also includes a study case showing one of the potentialities of one of the principal technologies developed in the project and underpinning the realization of the new architecture: the so-called Intelligent Distribution Power Router.Postprint (published version

Multistage Switching Architectures for Software Routers

Software routers based on personal computer (PC) architectures are becoming an important alternative to proprietary and expensive network devices. However, software routers suffer from many limitations of the PC architecture, including, among others, limited bus and central processing unit (CPU) bandwidth, high memory access latency, limited scalability in terms of number of network interface cards, and lack of resilience mechanisms. Multistage PC-based architectures can be an interesting alternative since they permit us to i) increase the performance of single software routers, ii) scale router size, iii) distribute packet manipulation and control functionality, iv) recover from single-component failures, and v) incrementally upgrade router performance. We propose a specific multistage architecture, exploiting PC-based routers as switching elements, to build a high-speed, largesize,scalable, and reliable software router. A small-scale prototype of the multistage router is currently up and running in our labs, and performance evaluation is under wa

Energy-efficient traffic engineering

The energy consumption in telecommunication networks is expected to grow considerably, especially in core networks. In this chapter, optimization of energy consumption is approached from two directions. In a first study, multilayer traffic engineering (MLTE) is used to assign energy-efficient paths and logical topology to IP traffic. The relation with traditional capacity optimization is explained, and the MLTE strategy is applied for daily traffic variations. A second study considers the core network below the IP layer, giving a detailed power consumption model. Optical bypass is evaluated as a technique to achieve considerable power savings over per-hop opticalelectronicoptical regeneration. Document type: Part of book or chapter of boo

Power consumption modeling in optical multilayer networks

The evaluation of and reduction in energy consumption of backbone telecommunication networks has been a popular subject of academic research for the last decade. A critical parameter in these studies is the power consumption of the individual network devices. It appears that across different studies, a wide range of power values for similar equipment is used. This is a result of the scattered and limited availability of power values for optical multilayer network equipment. We propose reference power consumption values for Internet protocol/multiprotocol label switching, Ethernet, optical transport networking and wavelength division multiplexing equipment. In addition we present a simplified analytical power consumption model that can be used for large networks where simulation is computationally expensive or unfeasible. For illustration and evaluation purpose, we apply both calculation approaches to a case study, which includes an optical bypass scenario. Our results show that the analytical model approximates the simulation result to over 90% or higher and that optical bypass potentially can save up to 50% of power over a non-bypass scenario