End-to-End Entanglement Generation Strategies: Capacity Bounds and Impact on Quantum Key Distribution

A first quantum revolution has already brought quantum technologies into our everyday life for decades: in fact, electronics and optics are based on the quantum mechanical principles. Today, a second quantum revolution is underway, leveraging the quantum principles of superposition, entanglement and measurement, which were not fully exploited yet. International innovation activities and standardization bodies have identified four main application areas for quantum technologies and services: quantum secure communications, quantum computing, quantum simulation, and quantum sensing and metrology. This paper focuses on quantum secure communications by addressing the evolution of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) networks (under early exploitation today) towards the Quantum-ready networks and the Quantum Internet based also on entanglement distribution. Assuming that management and control of quantum nodes is a key challenge under definition, today, a main obstacle in exploiting long-range QKD and Quantum-ready networks concerns the inherent losses due to the optical transmission channels. Currently, it is assumed that a most promising way for overcoming this limitation, while avoiding the presence of costly trusted nodes, it is to distribute entangled states by means of Quantum Repeaters. In this respect, the paper provides an overview of current methods and systems for end-to-end entanglement generation, with some simulations and a discussion of capacity upper bounds and their impact of secret key rate in QKD systems

Some Controversial Opinions on Software-Defined Data Plane Services

Several recent proposals, namely Software Defined Networks (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Network Service Chaining (NSC), aim to transform the network into a programmable platform, focusing respectively on the control plane (SDN) and on the data plane (NFV/NSC). This paper sits on the same line of the NFV/NSC proposals but with a more long-term horizon, and it presents its considerations on some controversial aspects that arise when considering the programmability of the data plane. Particularly, this paper discusses the relevance of data plane vs control plane services, the importance of the hardware platform, and the necessity to standardize northbound and southbound interfaces in future software-defined data plane service

Experimental Evaluation of Orchestrating Inter-DC Quality-enabled VNFFG Services in Packet/Flexi-Grid Optical Networks

44th European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2018)An implemented Cloud/Network Orchestrator to dynamically serve VNFFGs in remote DCs through a Multi-Layer Network (packet/flexi-grid optical) is evaluated. Two network information and path computation approaches are adopted by the Orchestrator being experimentally benchmarked with a number of performance metrics.This work is partially funded by the Spanish MINECO DESTELLO project (TEC2015-69256-R) and the EU H2020 5G TRANSFORMER project (761536)

Research Directions in Network Service Chaining

Network Service Chaining (NSC) is a service deployment concept that promises increased flexibility and cost efficiency for future carrier networks. NSC has received considerable attention in the standardization and research communities lately. However, NSC is largely undefined in the peer-reviewed literature. In fact, a literature review reveals that the role of NSC enabling technologies is up for discussion, and so are the key research challenges lying ahead. This paper addresses these topics by motivating our research interest towards advanced dynamic NSC and detailing the main aspects to be considered in the context of carrier-grade telecommunication networks. We present design considerations and system requirements alongside use cases that illustrate the advantages of adopting NSC. We detail prominent research challenges during the typical lifecycle of a network service chain in an operational telecommunications network, including service chain description, programming, deployment, and debugging, and summarize our security considerations. We conclude this paper with an outlook on future work in this are

Towards 5G Software-Defined Ecosystems: Technical Challenges, Business Sustainability and Policy Issues

Techno-economic drivers are creating the conditions for a radical change of paradigm in the design and operation of future telecommunications infrastructures. In fact, SDN, NFV, Cloud and Edge-Fog Computing are converging together into a single systemic transformation termed “Softwarization” that will find concrete exploitations in 5G systems. The IEEE SDN Initiative1 has elaborated a vision, an evolutionary path and some techno-economic scenarios of this transformation: specifically, the major technical challenges, business sustainability and policy issues have been investigated. This white paper presents: 1) an overview on the main techno-economic drivers steering the “Softwarization” of telecommunications; 2) an introduction to the Open Mobile Edge Cloud vision (covered in a companion white paper); 3) the main technical challenges in terms of operations, security and policy; 4) an analysis of the potential role of open source software; 5) some use case proposals for proof-of-concepts; and 6) a short description of the main socio-economic impacts being produced by “Softwarization”. Along these directions, IEEE SDN is also developing of an open catalogue of software platforms, toolkits, and functionalities aiming at a step-by-step development and aggregation of test-beds/field-trials on SDNNFV- 5G

Convergence of IP-based and optical transport networks

Today Network and Service Providers are aware of the increasing data traffic volumes and as such they are strategically moving investigations toward a single integrated voice and data infrastructure. In this context IP is gaining the role of the integration layer for multiple services. Nevetheless incumbent NSPs that build a multi-service IP network are going to need connectivity to its preexisting legacy networks (e.g. ATM. SONET, SDH). This reason motivates the introduction of a client-independent Optical Transport Network (OTN) as a missing link to guarantee a smooth evolution from legacy networks to a data-centric OTN. The scope of this paper is to give some guidelines about the definition of functionality and architectures of a multilayers infrastructure supporting the transport of data and circuit-based services. Particularly, the identification of the different service requirements, as well as the understanding of the allowed degradation, provide a picture of the needed survivability mechanism of IP over OTN scenarios

Software-Defined Networks for Future Networks and Services: Main Technical Challenges and Business Implications

In 2013, the IEEE Future Directions Committee (FDC) formed an SDN work group to explore the amount of interest in forming an IEEE Software-Defined Network (SDN) Community. To this end, a Workshop on "SDN for Future Networks and Services" (SDN4FNS'13) was organized in Trento, Italy (Nov. 11th-13th 2013). Following the results of the workshop, in this paper, we have further analyzed scenarios, prior-art, state of standardization, and further discussed the main technical challenges and socio-economic aspects of SDN and virtualization in future networks and services. A number of research and development directions have been identified in this white paper, along with a comprehensive analysis of the technical feasibility and business availability of those fundamental technologies. A radical industry transition towards the "economy of information through softwarization" is expected in the near future