59 research outputs found

    Deployment of NFV and SFC scenarios

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    Aquest ítem conté el treball original, defensat públicament amb data de 24 de febrer de 2017, així com una versió millorada del mateix amb data de 28 de febrer de 2017. Els canvis introduïts a la segona versió són 1) correcció d'errades 2) procediment del darrer annex.Telecommunications services have been traditionally designed linking hardware devices and providing mechanisms so that they can interoperate. Those devices are usually specific to a single service and are based on proprietary technology. On the other hand, the current model works by defining standards and strict protocols to achieve high levels of quality and reliability which have defined the carrier-class provider environment. Provisioning new services represent challenges at different levels because inserting the required devices involve changes in the network topology. This leads to slow deployment times and increased operational costs. To overcome the current burdens network function installation and insertion processes into the current service topology needs to be streamlined to allow greater flexibility. The current service provider model has been disrupted by the over-the-top Internet content providers (Facebook, Netflix, etc.), with short product cycles and fast development pace of new services. The content provider irruption has meant a competition and stress over service providers' infrastructure and has forced telco companies to research new technologies to recover market share with flexible and revenue-generating services. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Service Function Chaining (SFC) are some of the initiatives led by the Communication Service Providers to regain the lost leadership. This project focuses on experimenting with some of these already available new technologies, which are expected to be the foundation of the new network paradigms (5G, IOT) and support new value-added services over cost-efficient telecommunication infrastructures. Specifically, SFC scenarios have been deployed with Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV), a Linux Foundation project. Some use cases of the NFV technology are demonstrated applied to teaching laboratories. Although the current implementation does not achieve a production degree of reliability, it provides a suitable environment for the development of new functional improvements and evaluation of the performance of virtualized network infrastructures

    An investigation into the readiness of open source software to build a Telco Cloud for virtualising network functions

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    Cloud computing offers new mechanisms that change the way networks can be created and managed. The increased demand for multimedia and Internet of Things (IoT) services using the Internet Protocol is also fueling the need to look more into a networking approach that is less reliant on physical hardware components and allows new networks and network components to be created on-demand. Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) is a networking paradigm that decouples network functions from the hardware on which they run on. This offers new approaches to telecommunication providers who are looking to new ways of improving Quality of Service (QoS) in cost effective ways. Cloud technologies have given way to more specialised cloud environments such as the telco cloud. The telco cloud is a cloud environment where telecommunication services are hosted utilising NFV techniques. As the use of telecommunication standards moves towards 5G, network services will be provided in a virtualised manner in order to keep up with the demand. Open source software is a driver for innovation as it is has a collaborative culture to support it. This research investigates the readiness of open source tools to build a telco cloud that supports functions such as autoscaling and fault tolerance. Currently available open source software was explored for the different aspects involved in building a cloud from the ground up. The ETSI NFV MANO framework is also discussed as it is a widely used guiding standard for implementing NFV. Guided by the ETSI NFV MANO framework, open source software was used in an experiment to build a resilient cloud environment in which a virtualised IP Multimedia Subsystem (vIMS) network was deployed. Through this experimentation, it is evident that open source tools are mature enough to build the cloud environment and its ETSI NFV MANO compliant orchestration. However, features such as autoscaling and fault tolerance are still fairly immature and experimental

    Live migration of virtual machine and container based mobile core network components: A comprehensive study

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    With the increasing demand for openness, flexibility, and monetization, the Network Function Virtualization (NFV) of mobile network functions has become the embracing factor for most mobile network operators. Early reported field deployments of virtualized Evolved Packet Core (EPC) - the core network (CN) component of 4G LTE and 5G non-standalone mobile networks - reflect this growing trend. To best meet the requirements of power management, load balancing, and fault tolerance in the cloud environment, the need for live migration of these virtualized components cannot be shunned. Virtualization platforms of interest include both Virtual Machines (VMs) and Containers, with the latter option offering more lightweight characteristics. This paper's first contribution is the proposal of a framework that enables migration of containerised virtual EPC components using an open-source migration solution which does not fully support the mobile network protocol stack yet. The second contribution is an experimental-based comprehensive analysis of live migration in two virtualization technologies - VM and Container - with the additional scrutinization on the container migration approach. The presented experimental comparison accounts for several system parameters and configurations: flavor (image) size, network characteristics, processor hardware architecture model, and the CPU load of the backhaul network components. The comparison reveals that the live migration completion time and also the end-user service interruption time of the virtualized EPC components is reduced approximately by 70% in the container platform when using the proposed framework.This work was supported in part by the NSF under Grant CNS-1405405, Grant CNS-1409849, Grant ACI-1541461, and Grant CNS-1531039T; and in part by the EU Commission through the 5GROWTH Project under Grant 856709

    Plataforma de gestão M2M

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    Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaThe Internet of Things is still a fast growing area and topic of interest. New solutions and implementations keep emerging, both in service oriented solutions or device oriented solutions with M2M communications, therefore promoting the creation of new business models. Thus, as a natural evolution, came the possibility to abstract sensor management from service creation. Allowing a delegation of sensor management from the sensor providers, to focus on content creation through services. However, this delegation brings new concerns regarding access control. Consequently, this dissertation proposes a possible solution to this problem, enclosed in a service oriented platform interconnected with an ETSI M2M solution. Promoting interoperability between sensors and allowing a great elasticity in service creation.A Internet das Coisas continua a ser uma área em grande crescimento e de grande interesse. Estão constantemente a surgir novas soluções e inplementações, tanto ao nível dos serviços como ao nível das comunicações Máquina-a-Máquina, promovendo assim o aparecimento de novos modelos de negócio. Desta forma surgiu naturalmente a possibilidade de abstrair a gestão de sensores da criação de serviços. Permitindo assim, uma delagação da gestão por parte de empresas detentoras de sensores, para se focarem no conteúdo com a criação de serviços. Contudo esta divisão acarreta algumas preocupações de segurança quanto ao controlo de acesso. Nesse sentido, esta dissertação propõe uma possível solução para o mesmo, englobada numa plataforma orientada ao serviços interligada com uma solução ETSI M2M. Promovendo a interoperabilidade entre sensores e permitindo assim uma grande elasticidade na criação de serviços

    Dependable IPTV Hosting

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    This research focuses on the challenges of hosting 3rd party RESTful applications that have to meet specific dependability standards. To provide a proof of concept I have implemented an architecture and framework for the use case of internet protocol television. Delivering TV services via internet protocols over high-speed connections is commonly referred to as IPTV (internet protocol television). Similar to the app-stores of smartphones, IPTV platforms enable the emergence of IPTV services in which 3rd party developers provide services to consumer that add value to the IPTV experience. A key issue in the IPTV ecosystem is that currently telecommunications IPTV providers do not have a system that allows 3rd party developers to create applications that meet their standards. The main challenges are that the 3rd party applications must be dependable, scalable and adhere to service level agreements. This research provides an architecture and framework to overcome these challenges

    Hard Multi-Tenancy Kubernetes approaches in a local 5G deployment: Testing and evaluation of the available solutions

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    With its capabilities, the fifth mobile network generation (5G) provides new opportunities and applications, which were not possible to exploit previously. In addition to novel technologies, also infrastructure management has been influenced by 5G. Micro-Operator business model was identified by University of Oulu and Nokia Oulu in 2017. They observed that TelCo stakeholders actors are no longer based only on a small group of Mobile Network Operators, but new actors are becoming relevant. Specifically, Micro-Operators are involved in the deployment of scalable services within local 5G deployments. In most cases, micro-operators deploy their containerized application by exploiting Kubernetes Orchestrator capabilities. At the same time, they share a pool of resources, which usually are provided by the infrastructure owner. Since current standards require strict data privacy and security mechanisms, hard multi-tenancy should be enforced in the design phase. Many solutions are available within the Kubernetes environment. Thus, it would be interesting to analyse how each approach affects network performance, which are very critical metrics in 5G requirements. In the context of this thesis, test and evaluation strategy consisted of deploying a set of applications with every identified hard multi-tenancy approach. The choice of the applications was based on the 5G application classes: extreme multi broadband, massive scale communication, ultra-reliable low latency communication. Once the deployment configurations were defined, data of specific critical application network performance metrics was collected for each of the approaches. By looking at the retrieved data, it is possible to observe that network performance is mainly affected by the application protocol and the corresponding transport protocol. Nevertheless, it is not possible to perform design choices only by looking at network performance. In conclusion, further investigation on other design characteristics may be require

    Open source tools for Linux distribution development and maintenance in corporate environment

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    In this thesis, we will look into utilizing open source software build tools in an enterprise environment. We will aim at providing a complete set of tools starting from developer support and leading to software delivery. We will discuss the different tools that we will use to offer more reliable, easy to use and efficient process of composing software products. Many open source projects will be utilized and we will examine the required steps to be able to successfully operate them in a closed environment. We will also look into providing a completely new base image for in-house cloud platform building. The process of internally composing the operating system from open source components will be discussed in depth

    Infrastructure sharing of 5G mobile core networks on an SDN/NFV platform

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    When looking towards the deployment of 5G network architectures, mobile network operators will continue to face many challenges. The number of customers is approaching maximum market penetration, the number of devices per customer is increasing, and the number of non-human operated devices estimated to approach towards the tens of billions, network operators have a formidable task ahead of them. The proliferation of cloud computing techniques has created a multitude of applications for network services deployments, and at the forefront is the adoption of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV). Mobile network operators (MNO) have the opportunity to leverage these technologies so that they can enable the delivery of traditional networking functionality in cloud environments. The benefit of this is reductions seen in the capital and operational expenditures of network infrastructure. When going for NFV, how a Virtualised Network Function (VNF) is designed, implemented, and placed over physical infrastructure can play a vital role on the performance metrics achieved by the network function. Not paying careful attention to this aspect could lead to the drastically reduced performance of network functions thus defeating the purpose of going for virtualisation solutions. The success of mobile network operators in the 5G arena will depend heavily on their ability to shift from their old operational models and embrace new technologies, design principles and innovation in both the business and technical aspects of the environment. The primary goal of this thesis is to design, implement and evaluate the viability of data centre and cloud network infrastructure sharing use case. More specifically, the core question addressed by this thesis is how virtualisation of network functions in a shared infrastructure environment can be achieved without adverse performance degradation. 5G should be operational with high penetration beyond the year 2020 with data traffic rates increasing exponentially and the number of connected devices expected to surpass tens of billions. Requirements for 5G mobile networks include higher flexibility, scalability, cost effectiveness and energy efficiency. Towards these goals, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation have been adopted in recent proposals for future mobile networks architectures because they are considered critical technologies for 5G. A Shared Infrastructure Management Framework was designed and implemented for this purpose. This framework was further enhanced for performance optimisation of network functions and underlying physical infrastructure. The objective achieved was the identification of requirements for the design and development of an experimental testbed for future 5G mobile networks. This testbed deploys high performance virtualised network functions (VNFs) while catering for the infrastructure sharing use case of multiple network operators. The management and orchestration of the VNFs allow for automation, scalability, fault recovery, and security to be evaluated. The testbed developed is readily re-creatable and based on open-source software
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