Programmability and management of software-defined network infrastructures

In a landscape where software-based solutions are evermore central in the design, development and deployment of innovative solutions for communication networks, new challenges arise, related to how to best exploit the new solutions made available by technological advancements. The objective of this Thesis is to consolidate and improve some recent solutions for programmability, management, monitoring and provisioning in software-based infrastructures, as well as to propose new solutions for service deployment, management and monitoring over softwarized domains, along with working implementations, validating each point with punctual experimental validations and performance evaluations. The treatise starts by introducing the key concepts the research work is based upon, then the main research activities performed during the three years of PhD studies are presented. These include a high-level interface for network programmability over heterogeneous softwarized domains, an implementation of a protocol for service function chaining over non-programmable networks for multi-domain orchestration, a modular system for unified monitoring of softwarized infrastructures, a protocol for the employment of unused channels to augment the capabilities of the softwarized infrastructure, and a XaaS-aware orchestrator designed to operate over Fog computing scenarios

remote laboratory experiments in a virtual immersive learning environment

TheVirtual Immersive Learning(VIL) test bench implements a virtual collaborative immersive environment, capable of integrating natural contexts and typical gestures, which may occur during traditional lectures, enhanced with advanced experimental sessions. The system architecture is described, along with the motivations, and the most significant choices, both hardware and software, adopted for its implementation. The novelty of the approach essentially relies on its capability of embedding functionalities that stem from various research results (mainly carried out within the VICOM national project), and "putting the pieces together" in a well-integrated framework. These features, along with its high portability, good flexibility, and, above all, low cost, make this approach appropriate for educational and training purposes, mainly concerning measurements on telecommunication systems, at universities and research centers, as well as enterprises. Moreover, the methodology can be employed for remote access to and sharing of costly measurement equipment in many different activities. The immersive characteristics of the framework are illustrated, along with performance measurements related to a specific application

Intent-based management and orchestration of heterogeneous openflow/IoT SDN domains

One of the main challenges in delivering end-toend service chains across multiple Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) domains is to achieve unified management and orchestration functions. A very critical aspect is the definition of an open, vendoragnostic, and interoperable northbound interface (NBI) that should be as abstracted as possible from domain-specific data and control plane technologies. In this paper we propose a reference architecture and an intent-based NBI for end-to-end service orchestration across multiple technological domains. In particular, we consider the use case of an Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure deployment and the corresponding cloudbased data collection, processing, and publishing services with quality differentiation.We also report the experimental validation of the proposed architecture over a heterogeneous OpenFlow/IoT SDN test bed

Intent-based approach to virtualized infrastructure management in SDN/NFV deployments

Telecommunication networks are meant to be efficient, transparent, and accessible to the broadest possible set of users. However, they are very complex systems, in which a large number of components cooperates, posing a challenge to the desired efficiency, transparency and ease of access. Emerging technological paradigms such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Cloud Computing open up to a whole new set of possible applications for the infrastructure, or better ways to implement traditional services, but also introduce new environments to be controlled. One of the main challenges in delivering end-to-end service chains across multiple SDN, NFV and Cloud domains is to achieve unified management and orchestration functions. A very critical aspect is the definition of an open, vendor-agnostic, and interoperable northbound interface (NBI) that should be as abstracted as possible from domain-specific data and control plane technologies, making the underlying infrastructure easier to be accessed, while still allowing a fair amount of flexibility and freedom in programmability of the network. In this document we describe a reference architecture and expand an intent-based NBI for end-to-end service orchestration across multiple technological domains. More specifically, we consider the use case of an Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure deployment and the corresponding Cloud-based data collection, processing, and publishing services, differentiating multiple Quality of Service (QoS) classes. Finally we report the experimental validation of the proposed architecture over a heterogeneous, multi-domain SDN test bed

A Network Management Protocol for Sonification of Software-Defined Infrastructures

Network management traffic is usually carried in-band with the data plane traffic on a logically separate plane. For example, separate service queues and/or VLANs may be reserved for reliable and timely delivery of management messages. This approach has roots in history but carries a fundamental problem: fate sharing between the data plane traffic and management traffic. Failure in data plane networks often cuts off management traffic to the exact network regions at fault, making it impossible to achieve important and relevant management tasks, such as diagnostics and recovery. In this paper, we propose a network management protocol that enables programmability of out-of-channel management applications to combat the fate-sharing problem in Software-Defined Infrastructures. To test our approach and our implementation we used acoustics, a fairly unexplored physical layer for the control and management plane. We then use the notion of sonification to implement a few representative applications such as k-superseeder detection and TraceSound, a sonified version of traceroute, for out-of-channel network verification and debugging. While scaling acoustics could be an insurmountable challenge, our tests show how our protocol brings about a sound software-defined approach that can be expanded to other (combinations of) frequencies and even multiple physical channels

Service Function Chaining Leveraging Segment Routing for 5G Network Slicing

In this manuscript we describe an experimental work that integrates the NFV-MANO framework with segment routing to support 5G network slicing. The aim is to implement Service Function Chains spanning several cloud domains and the related interconnection transport network in a coordinated way. The manuscript shows the feasibility and the performance effectiveness of this approach, reporting numerical results from practical experiments

Implementation of service function chaining control plane through OpenFlow

This papers describes a proof-of-concept implementation of the Service Function Chaining Control Plane, exploiting the IETF Network Service Header approach. The proposed implementation combines the OpenFlow protocol to control and configure the network nodes and the NSH method to adapt the service requirements to the transport technology. The manuscript shows that the result of this combination is a very general architecture that may be used to implement any sort of Service Function Chain with great flexibility