Towards an SDN network control application for differentiated traffic routing

In the last years, Software Defined Networking has emerged as a promising paradigm to foster network innovation and address the issues coming from the ossification of the TCP/IP architecture. The clean separation between control and data plane, the definition of northbound and southbound interfaces are key features of the Software Defined Networking paradigm. Moreover, a centralised control plane allows network operators to deploy advanced control and management strategies. Effective traffic engineering and resources management policies allow to achieve a better utilisation of network resources and improve endto- end service performance. This paper deals with the architectural design and experimental validation of a control application that enables differentiated routing for traffic flows belonging to different service classes. The new control application makes routing decisions leveraging on OpenFlow network statistics, i.e., taking advantage of real-time network status information. Moreover, a Deep Packet Inspection module has been developed and integrated in the control application to detect VoIP traffic with Session Initiation Protocol signalling, enforcing this way policies for a differentiated treatment of VoIP traffic. Finally, a functional validation is performed in emulated environment.This work was supported by the EPSRC INTERNET Project EP/H040536/1.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2015.724925

Delivery, distribution and prediction of multimedia contents in software-defined networks

Orientador: Varese Salvador TimoteoTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de TecnologiaResumo: Nos últimos anos, aplicações e serviços multimídia, tais como para o acesso e compartilhamento de conteúdos de áudio e vídeo ou para realização de jogos online, dentre outras, tornaram-se extremamente populares. Por outro lado, esses novos serviços e aplicações tornaram o fluxo de tráfego de rede, além de mais intenso, mais detalhado e complexo, exigindo abordagens específicas para comunicações multimídia. Diante desse cenário, este trabalho propõe e explora, enquanto recursos de um gateway multimídia no âmbito de Redes Definidas por Software (SDN) OpenFlow, algumas abordagens que objetivam aprimorar comunicações multimídia no que se refere ao encaminhamento, à distribuição e à predição de seus conteúdos ao longo de rede. Para esse propósito, no âmbito de um gateway multimídia em SDN, os seguintes aspectos são especialmente discutidos neste trabalho: (I) identificação, classificação e encaminhamento diferenciado de fluxos de tráfego multimídia; (II) encaminhamento por fluxos com suporte à Qualidade de Serviço (QoS); (III) cache de conteúdos multimídia; e, (IV) predição de conteúdos multimídia. Nesse contexto, para efeitos de experimentação e avaliação acerca das abordagens empregadas neste trabalho, um ambiente de emulação e um ambiente de simulação são utilizados para a obtenção de resultados experimentais. Em linhas gerais, os resultados obtidos mostram que tais abordagens, enquanto recursos de um gateway multimídia no âmbito de SDNs OpenFlow, são capazes de fornecer recursos para aprimorar comunicações multimídia ao longo da rede, nesse caso, com ênfase no encaminhamento, na distribuição e na predição de conteúdos multimídiaAbstract: In the last few years, multimedia applications and services, such as for multimedia sharing services for audio and video contents, and for online gaming, among others, are becoming more and more popular. On the other hand, these multimedia applications and services increase the network traffic load and make the traffic profiles more detailed and complex, requiring the use of specific approaches for multimedia communications. In this scenario, this work proposes and explores, as resources of a multimedia gateway in the context of OpenFlow Software-Defined Networks (SDN), some approaches and resources that aim to enhance multimedia communications over the network, with focus on multimedia routing, multimedia distribution and multimedia content prediction. For this purpose, in the context of a multimedia gateway in OpenFlow SDN, the following aspects are especially considered and discussed in this work: (I) identification, classification and differentiated routing of multimedia traffic flows; (II) per-flow routing with Quality of Service (QoS) support; (III) multimedia content caching; and, (IV) multimedia content prediction. In this context, for experimentation and evaluation purposes of the approaches proposed in this work, an emulation environment and a simulation environment are used to obtain experimental results. In summary, the obtained results show that the approaches proposed in this work, as resources of a multimedia gateway in OpenFlow SDN, are able to provide resources to enhance multimedia communications over the network, in this case, with emphasis on multimedia routing, multimedia distribution and multimedia content predictionDoutoradoSistemas de Informação e ComunicaçãoDoutor em TecnologiaCAPE