Algorithms for advance bandwidth reservation in media production networks

Media production generally requires many geographically distributed actors (e.g., production houses, broadcasters, advertisers) to exchange huge amounts of raw video and audio data. Traditional distribution techniques, such as dedicated point-to-point optical links, are highly inefficient in terms of installation time and cost. To improve efficiency, shared media production networks that connect all involved actors over a large geographical area, are currently being deployed. The traffic in such networks is often predictable, as the timing and bandwidth requirements of data transfers are generally known hours or even days in advance. As such, the use of advance bandwidth reservation (AR) can greatly increase resource utilization and cost efficiency. In this paper, we propose an Integer Linear Programming formulation of the bandwidth scheduling problem, which takes into account the specific characteristics of media production networks, is presented. Two novel optimization algorithms based on this model are thoroughly evaluated and compared by means of in-depth simulation results

System architecture and deployment scenarios for SESAME: small cEllS coordinAtion for Multi-tenancy and Edge services

The surge of the Internet traffic with exabytes of data flowing over operators’ mobile networks has created the need to rethink the paradigms behind the design of the mobile network architecture. The inadequacy of the 4G UMTS Long term Evolution (LTE) and even of its advanced version LTE-A is evident, considering that the traffic will be extremely heterogeneous in the near future and ranging from 4K resolution TV to machine-type communications. To keep up with these changes, academia, industries and EU institutions have now engaged in the quest for new 5G technology. In this paper we present the innovative system design, concepts and visions developed by the 5G PPP H2020 project SESAME (Small cEllS coordinAtion for Multi-tenancy and Edge services). The innovation of SESAME is manifold: i) combine the key 5G small cells with cloud technology, ii) promote and develop the concept of Small Cells-as-a-Service (SCaaS), iii) bring computing and storage power at the mobile network edge through the development of non-x86 ARM technology enabled micro-servers, and iv) address a large number of scenarios and use cases applying mobile edge computing

Network functions virtualization: the long road to commercial deployments

Network operators are under pressure to offer efficient network-based services while keeping service deployment costs to a minimum. Network functions virtualization (NFV) can potentially revolutionize network-based services bringing low-deployment costs for network operators. The NFV has been introduced to ultimately extend the non-proprietary and open-standard-based model to network and service deployments, significant improvements to today’s proprietary locked implementations. Notwithstanding the continuous efforts of both academia and industry to support the NFV paradigm, the current NFV solutions offered are still in its infancy. In this survey, we provide a detailed background of NFV to establish a comprehensive understanding of the subject, ranging from the basics to more advanced topics. Moreover, we offer a comprehensive overview of the NFV main concepts, standardization efforts, the benefits of NFV, and discussions of the NFV architecture as defined by the European telecommunications standardization institute (ETSI). Furthermore, we discuss the NFV applicability and current open source projects. We then highlight NFV requirements, design considerations, and developmental architectural impairments and barriers to commercial NFV deployments. Finally, we conclude enumerating future directions for NFV developmentpublishe

NFV and SDN-based differentiated traffic treatment for residential networks

Producción CientíficaResidential networks play a critical role in assuring that services or applications such as tele-work, tele-education, medical care, entertainment, home automation, among others, have the required resources to obtain an optimal performance. Although current residential gateways try to meet the Quality of Service (QoS) demands, the traditional networking paradigm does not have the appropriate mechanisms to address the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of the services running at home. In this context, a feasible solution consists of leveraging the flexibility and adaptability of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) paradigms to provide a differentiated traffic treatment intended to improve the QoS support of residential networks. The proposal takes advantage of the Service Function Chaining (SFC) concept intrinsic to NFV as well as the capacity of an SDN-based residential gateway to differentiate the traffic of a certain application. Thus, an association between an SFC and the differentiated traffic is stablished to apply a specific treatment. Besides, a comprehensive architecture composed of the software defined residential network (SDRN), the software defined access network (SDOAN) and the NFV-compliant ISP's edge cloud infrastructure is envisioned. This architecture would allow dramatically improving the life cycle management of the residential network from a centralized point which follows a user-centric approach.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (grants TEC2015-67834-R, TEC2017-84423-C3-1-P, RED2018-102585-T and 0677_DISRUPTIVE_2_E

IWQoS 2017

Producción CientíficaThe promises of SDN and NFV technologies to boost innovation and to reduce the time-to-market of new services is changing the way in which residential networks will be deployed, managed and maintained in the near future. New user-centric management models for residential networks combining SDN-based residential gateways and cloud technologies have already been proposed, providing flexibility and ease of deployment. Extending the scope of SDN technologies to optical access networks and bringing cloud technologies to the edge of the network enable the creation of advanced residential networks in which complex service function chains can be established to provide traffic differentiation. In this context, this paper defines a novel network management model based on a user-centric approach that allows residential users to define and control access network resources and the dynamic provision of traffic differentiation to fulfill QoS requirements.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (context of GREDOS project TEC2015 -67834- R, TEC2014-53071- C3 -2P and Elastic Networks TEC2015-71932- REDT

Virtual network function development for NG-PON Access Network Architecture

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia de Redes e Serviços TelemáticosThe access to Internet services on a large scale, high throughput and low latency has grown at a very high pace over time, with a growing demand for media content and applications increasingly oriented towards data consumption. This fact about the use of data at the edge of the network requires the Central Offices (CO) of telecommunication providers, to be pre pared to absorb these demands. COs generally offer data from various access methods, such as Passive Optical Network (PON) technologies, mobile networks, copper wired and oth ers. For each of these technologies there may be different manufacturers that support only their respective hardware and software solutions, although they all share different network resources and have management, configuration and monitoring tools (Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, and Security management - FCAPS) similar, but being distinct and isolated from each other, which produces huge investment in Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operational Expenditure (OPEX) and can cause barriers to innovation. Such panora mas forced the development of more flexible, scalable solutions that share platforms and net work architectures that can meet this need and enable the evolution of networks. It is then proposed the architecture of Software-Defined Network (SDN) which has in its proposal to abstract the control plane from the data plane, in addition to the virtualization of several Net work Function Virtualization (NFV). The SDN architecture allows APIs and protocols such as Openflow, NETCONF / YANG, RESTCONF, gRPC and others to be used so that there is communication between the various hardware and software elements that compose the net work and consume network resources, such as services AAA, DHCP, routing, orchestration, management or various applications that may exist in this context. This work then aims at the development of a virtualized network function, namely a VNF in the context of network security to be integrated as a component of an architecture guided by the SDN paradigm applied to broadband networks, and also adherent to the architecture OB-BAA promoted by the Broadband Forum. Such OB-BAA architecture fits into the initia tive to modernize the Information Technology (IT) components of broadband networks, more specifically the Central Offices. With such development, it was intended to explore the con cepts of network security, such as the IEEE 802.1X protocol applied in NG-PON networks for authentication and authorization of new network equipment. To achieve this goal, the development of the applications was based on the Golang language combined with gRPC programmable interfaces for communication between the various elements of the architec ture. Network emulators were initially used, and then the components were ”containerized” and inserted in the Docker and Kubernetes virtualization frameworks. Finally, performance metrics were analyzed in the usage tests, namely computational resource usage metrics (CPU, memory and network I/O), in addition to the execution time of several processes performed by the developed applications.O acesso aos serviços de Internet em larga escala, alto débito e baixa latência têm crescido em um ritmo bastante elevado ao longo dos tempos, com uma demanda crescente por conteúdos de media e aplicações cada vez mais orientadas ao consumo de dados. Tal fato acerca da uti lização de dados na periferia da rede, obriga a que os Central Offices (CO) dos provedores de telecomunicações estejam preparados para absorver estas demandas. Os CO geralmente re cebem dados de diversos métodos de acesso, como tecnologias Passive Optical Network (PON), redes móveis, cabladas em cobre, entre outros. Para cada uma destas tecnologias pode haver diferentes fabricantes que suportam somente suas respetivas soluções de hardware e software, apesar de todas compartilharem diversos recursos de rede e possuírem ferramentas de gestão, configuração e monitoração (Fault-management, Configuration, Accounting, Performance e Segurança - FCAPS) similares, mas serem distintas e isoladas entre si, o que se traduz em um enorme investimento em Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) e Operational Expenditure (OPEX) e pode causar barreiras à inovação. Tais panoramas forçaram o desenvolvimento de soluções mais flexíveis, escaláveis e que compartilhem plataformas e arquiteturas de redes que pos sam suprir tal necessidade e possibilitar a evolução das redes. Propõe-se então a arquitetura de redes definidas por software (Software-Defined Network - SDN) que tem em sua proposta abstrair o plano de controle do plano de dados, além da virtualização de diversas funções de rede (Network Function Virtualization - NFV). A arquitetura SDN possibilita que API’s e pro tocolos como Openflow, NETCONF/YANG, RESTCONF, gRPC e outros, sejam utilizados para que haja comunicação entre os diversos elementos de hardware e software que estejam a compor a rede e a consumir recursos de redes, como serviços de AAA, DHCP, roteamento, orquestração, gestão ou diversas outras aplicações que possam existir neste contexto. Este trabalho visa então o desenvolvimento de uma função de rede virtualizada nomeada mente uma (Virtual Network Function - VNF) no âmbito de segurança de redes a ser integrada como um componente de uma arquitetura orientada pelo paradigma de SDN aplicado a re des de banda larga, e aderente também à arquitetura OB-BAA promovida pelo Broadband Fo rum. Tal arquitetura OB-BAA se enquadra na iniciativa de modernização dos componentes de Tecnologia da Informação (TI) das redes de banda larga, mais especificamente dos Cen tral Offices. Com tal desenvolvimento pretende-se explorar conceitos de segurança de redes, como o protocolo IEEE 802.1X aplicado em redes NG-PON para autenticação e autorização de novos equipamentos de rede. Para atingir tal objetivo, utilizou-se desenvolvimento de aplicações baseadas na linguagem Golang aliado com interfaces programáveis gRPC para comunicação entre os diversos elementos da arquitetura. Para emular tais componentes, utilizou-se inicialmente emuladores de rede, e em um segundo momento os componentes foram ”containerizados” e inseridos nos frameworks de virtualização Docker e Kubernetes.Por fim, foram analisadas métricas de desempenho nos testes executados, nomeadamente métricas de utilização de recursos computacionais (CPU, memória e tráfego de rede), além do tempo de execução de diversos processos desempenhados pelas aplicações desenvolvidas

Mobile network architecture evolution toward 5G

As a chain is as strong as its weakest element, so are the efficiency, flexibility, and robustness of a mobile network, which relies on a range of different functional elements and mechanisms. Indeed, the mobile network architecture needs particular attention when discussing the evolution of 3GPP EPS because it is the architecture that integrates the many different future technologies into one mobile network. This article discusses 3GPP EPS mobile network evolution as a whole, analyzing specific architecture properties that are critical in future 3GPP EPS releases. In particular, this article discusses the evolution toward a "network of functions," network slicing, and software-defined mobile network control, management, and orchestration. Furthermore, the roadmap for the future evolution of 3GPP EPS and its technology components is detailed and relevant standards defining organizations are listed.This work has been performed in the framework of the H2020-ICT-2014-2 project 5G NORMA