Roaming Edge vNFs using Glasgow Network Functions

While the network edge is becoming more important for the provision of customized services in next generation mobile networks, current NFV architectures are unsuitable to meet the increasing future demand. They rely on commodity servers with resource-hungry Virtual Machines that are unable to provide the high network function density and mobility requirements necessary for upcoming wide-area and 5G networks. In this demo, we showcase Glasgow Network Functions (GNF), a virtualization framework suitable for next generation mobile networks that exploits lightweight network functions (NFs) deployed at the edge and transparently following users' devices as they roam between cells

Dynamic virtual private network provisioning from multiple cloud infrastructure service providers

The Cloud infrastructure service providers currently provision basic virtualized computing resources as on demand and dynamic services but there is no common framework in existence that allows the seamless provisioning of even these basic services across multiple cloud service providers, although this is not due to any inherent incompatibility or proprietary nature of the foundation technologies on which these cloud platforms are built. We present a solution idea which aims to provide a dynamic and service oriented provisioning of secure virtual private networks on top of multiple cloud infrastructure service providers. This solution leverages the benefits of peer to peer overlay networks, i.e., the flexibility and scalability to handle the churn of nodes joining and leaving the VPNs and can adapt the topology of the VPN as per the requirements of the applications utilizing its intercloud secure communication framework

Container network functions: bringing NFV to the network edge

In order to cope with the increasing network utilization driven by new mobile clients, and to satisfy demand for new network services and performance guarantees, telecommunication service providers are exploiting virtualization over their network by implementing network services in virtual machines, decoupled from legacy hardware accelerated appliances. This effort, known as NFV, reduces OPEX and provides new business opportunities. At the same time, next generation mobile, enterprise, and IoT networks are introducing the concept of computing capabilities being pushed at the network edge, in close proximity of the users. However, the heavy footprint of today's NFV platforms prevents them from operating at the network edge. In this article, we identify the opportunities of virtualization at the network edge and present Glasgow Network Functions (GNF), a container-based NFV platform that runs and orchestrates lightweight container VNFs, saving core network utilization and providing lower latency. Finally, we demonstrate three useful examples of the platform: IoT DDoS remediation, on-demand troubleshooting for telco networks, and supporting roaming of network functions

EFFICIENT LOAD BALANCING IN PEER-TO-PEER SYSTEMS USING VIRTUAL SERVERS

Load balancing is a critical issue for the efficient operation of peer-to- peer networks. With the notion of virtual servers, peers participating in a heterogeneous, structured peer-to-peer (P2P) network may host different numbers of virtual servers, and by migrating virtual servers, peers can balance their loads proportional to their capacities. Peers participating in a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) are often heterogeneous. The existing and decentralized load balance algorithms designed for the heterogeneous, structured P2P networks either explicitly construct auxiliary networks to manipulate global information or implicitly demand the P2P substrates organized in a hierarchical fashion. Without relying on any auxiliary networks and independent of the geometry of the P2P substrates, this paper present ,a novel efficient, proximity-aware load balancing algorithm by using the concept of common virtual servers, that is unique in that each participating peer is based on the partial knowledge of the system to estimate the probability distributions of the capacities of peers and the loads of virtual servers. The movement cost can be reduced by using common virtual serve

A cloud-based virtual computing laboratory for teaching computer networks

This paper presents a novel ‘Cloud-based’ solution for teaching computer networks in an educational context. One key advantage of the system is its ability to commission and decommission virtual infrastructures comprised of routers, switches and virtual machines on demand. It makes use of hardware located in different physical locations, VMWare software to manage the virtual resources and NetLab+ to manage the configuration of multiple different virtual scenarios. The key features of the cloud infrastructure are described and evaluated

Network Virtualization Over Elastic Optical Networks: A Survey of Allocation Algorithms

Network virtualization has emerged as a paradigm for cloud computing services by providing key functionalities such as abstraction of network resources kept hidden to the cloud service user, isolation of different cloud computing applications, flexibility in terms of resources granularity, and on‐demand setup/teardown of service. In parallel, flex‐grid (also known as elastic) optical networks have become an alternative to deal with the constant traffic growth. These advances have triggered research on network virtualization over flex‐grid optical networks. Effort has been focused on the design of flexible and virtualized devices, on the definition of network architectures and on virtual network allocation algorithms. In this chapter, a survey on the virtual network allocation algorithms over flexible‐grid networks is presented. Proposals are classified according to a taxonomy made of three main categories: performance metrics, operation conditions and the type of service offered to users. Based on such classification, this work also identifies open research areas as multi‐objective optimization approaches, distributed architectures, meta‐heuristics, reconfiguration and protection mechanisms for virtual networks over elastic optical networks