Architecture for integrating vertical customer programmability control of network functions and connectivity in a slice-as-a-service schema

Network slicing will permit offering to vertical customers tailored end-to-end logical networks in an on-demand fashion, on top of a common telecom infrastructure, achieving a Slices-as-a-Service (SlaaS) business model. This is possible due to the progressive introduction of network softwarization techniques, such as programmability and virtualization, into existing operational networks, enabling dynamic and flexible provision of slices. Those vertical customers could require the control not only of the network functions composing the end-to-end service, but also of the connectivity among them, e.g., for influencing the paths for steering traffic among function instances. However, this can be problematic since decisions from one vertical customer can collide with decisions from others. One aspect not yet sufficiently investigated is how to permit vertical customers to jointly control the service functions and the underlay connectivity, in such a way that could operate the allocated slice as if it was actually a dedicated network entirely for them. This paper explores some architectural proposition in this respect illustrated with some potential use cases and it provides an example of the provision of SlaaS for a vertical customer.This work has been partly funded by the European Commission through the projects 5G-PPP H2020 5GROWTH (Grant Agreement No 856709), EU-TW 5G-DIVE (Grant Agreement No 859881) and by the Spanish AURORAS (RTI2018-099178-B-I00) project. This information reflects the consortia views, but neither the consortia nor the European Commission are liable for any use that may be done of the information contained therein

Propuesta de marco para acelerar la adopción de SDN en proveedores de servicio

Tesis Doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Departamento de Tecnología Electrónica y de las Comunicaciones. Fecha de Lectura: 28-04-2023This PhD thesis focuses on the investigation, design and evaluation of a reference architecture for the adoption of SDN in service provider networks. For this purpose, a hierarchical orchestrator Software Defined Transport Network Controller (SDTN), responsible for the control and management of the endto- end transport network across multiple domains, has been included. The SDTN will be the single entry point to the network and will interact with the Operational Support and Business Support Systems through standard interfaces to provide the necessary transport network services. This architecture has been tested with various scenarios and typical services to test its usefulness for current and future requirements. This work includes an explanation of the network automation initiatives available in the literature and contains a description of the set of key concepts to properly explain software-defined networking and its direct relationship to network slicing. It also includes definitions of the standard protocols, service models, network models and device models used in this work. It includes a subsection of some relevant carrier tests. Based on the structure of the enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) framework defined by the TMForum, the proposed architecture for implementing and operating the service lifecycle (Service Management and Operation) is presented. The services evaluated were Layer 3 and Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks; in both cases, the implemented YANG models are presented, and the designed provisioning flows was executed and evaluated in concept tests carried out in Telef´onica Colombia and Spain. In an evaluation of future services, an analysis of the proposed architecture is included to allow the “Network Slices” management. To evaluate this, the results of a Network Slicing concept test performed in Telef´onica Spain are presented. The provisioning of each Slice included the announcement of more than 5000 BGP prefixes between network endpoints, service restoration and service deletion. Additionally, it proposes, designs and evaluates the flow for the correct entry of a new device to the operator’s network without human intervention. The Zero touch provision validates the complete installation of a network operating system (NOS) and an updated configuration on a device. The devices used were CASINI white boxes in combination with two well-known protocols such as DHCP and FTP. The main results of this work include the publication of papers in peerreviewed international journals, the presentation of papers at high impact international conferences and work published in standardization bodies such as Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or public technical documents such as the Telecom Infraproject specification

Bioprospectus: Information fusion and search to support bioproduct development

Resumen Proper use and exploitation of biodiversity resources (bioprospecting) depends upon knowledge of different organization levels (molecular, cellular and ecosystem) of biologic and genetic resources. This relies on appropriate systematic capacities to explore different information resources such as scientific literature, compound databases, medical and biological ontologies, among others. This paper presents a prototype computational system (BIOPROSPECTUS) to support bioprospecting natural products from Colombian biodiversity with biological activity. Bioprospectus is a knowledge base information retrieval (IR) system that integrates and analyzes information from multiple sources and domains, provides query suggestions based on an expert curated ontology and offer result exploration capabilities on top of a metasearch engine. The system was developed using information exploration (IE) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques over a set of raw scientific articles, integrating additional information from a collection of external knowledge bases. Users may express their information needs by combining textual and semantic keywords in a query that can be refined through domain specific knowledge structured as an ontology. For the evaluation two quantitative measures were taken and compared to a reference system. Based on the results, the system holds great promise providing a technological foundation to identify new bio-products from the colombian biodiversity targeting sustainable development and added value of our biodiversity.Maestrí

Packet Optical Transport Network Slicing with Hard and Soft Isolation

Network operators have been dealing with the necessity of a dynamic network resources allocation to provide a new generation of customer-tailored applications. In that sense, Telecom providers have to migrate their BSS/OSS systems and network infrastructure to more modern solutions to introduce end-to-end automation and support the new use cases derived from the 5G adoption and transport network slices. In general, there is a joint agreement on making this transition to an architecture defined by programmable interfaces and standard protocols. Hence, this paper uses the iFusion architecture to control and program the network infrastructure. The work presents an experimental validation of the network slicing instantiation in an IP/Optical environment using a set of standard protocols and interfaces. The work provides results of the creation, modification and deletion of the network slices. Furthermore, it demonstrates the usage of standard communication protocols (Netconf and Restconf) in combination with standard YANG data models