Software Defined Application Delivery Networking

In this thesis we present the architecture, design, and prototype implementation details of AppFabric. AppFabric is a next generation application delivery platform for easily creating, managing and controlling massively distributed and very dynamic application deployments that may span multiple datacenters. Over the last few years, the need for more flexibility, finer control, and automatic management of large (and messy) datacenters has stimulated technologies for virtualizing the infrastructure components and placing them under software-based management and control; generically called Software-defined Infrastructure (SDI). However, current applications are not designed to leverage this dynamism and flexibility offered by SDI and they mostly depend on a mix of different techniques including manual configuration, specialized appliances (middleboxes), and (mostly) proprietary middleware solutions together with a team of extremely conscientious and talented system engineers to get their applications deployed and running. AppFabric, 1) automates the whole control and management stack of application deployment and delivery, 2) allows application architects to define logical workflows consisting of application servers, message-level middleboxes, packet-level middleboxes and network services (both, local and wide-area) composed over application-level routing policies, and 3) provides the abstraction of an application cloud that allows the application to dynamically (and automatically) expand and shrink its distributed footprint across multiple geographically distributed datacenters operated by different cloud providers. The architecture consists of a hierarchical control plane system called Lighthouse and a fully distributed data plane design (with no special hardware components such as service orchestrators, load balancers, message brokers, etc.) called OpenADN . The current implementation (under active development) consists of ~10000 lines of python and C code. AppFabric will allow applications to fully leverage the opportunities provided by modern virtualized Software-Defined Infrastructures. It will serve as the platform for deploying massively distributed, and extremely dynamic next generation application use-cases, including: Internet-of-Things/Cyber-Physical Systems: Through support for managing distributed gather-aggregate topologies common to most Internet-of-Things(IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems(CPS) use-cases. By their very nature, IoT and CPS use cases are massively distributed and have different levels of computation and storage requirements at different locations. Also, they have variable latency requirements for their different distributed sites. Some services, such as device controllers, in an Iot/CPS application workflow may need to gather, process and forward data under near-real time constraints and hence need to be as close to the device as possible. Other services may need more computation to process aggregated data to drive long term business intelligence functions. AppFabric has been designed to provide support for such very dynamic, highly diversified and massively distributed application use-cases. Network Function Virtualization: Through support for heterogeneous workflows, application-aware networking, and network-aware application deployments, AppFabric will enable new partnerships between Application Service Providers (ASPs) and Network Service Providers (NSPs). An application workflow in AppFabric may comprise of application services, packet and message-level middleboxes, and network transport services chained together over an application-level routing substrate. The Application-level routing substrate allows policy-based service chaining where the application may specify policies for routing their application traffic over different services based on application-level content or context. Virtual worlds/multiplayer games: Through support for creating, managing and controlling dynamic and distributed application clouds needed by these applications. AppFabric allows the application to easily specify policies to dynamically grow and shrink the application\u27s footprint over different geographical sites, on-demand. Mobile Apps: Through support for extremely diversified and very dynamic application contexts typical of such applications. Also, AppFabric provides support for automatically managing massively distributed service deployment and controlling application traffic based on application-level policies. This allows mobile applications to provide the best Quality-of-Experience to its users without This thesis is the first to handle and provide a complete solution for such a complex and relevant architectural problem that is expected to touch each of our lives by enabling exciting new application use-cases that are not possible today. Also, AppFabric is a non-proprietary platform that is expected to spawn lots of innovations both in the design of the platform itself and the features it provides to applications. AppFabric still needs many iterations, both in terms of design and implementation maturity. This thesis is not the end of journey for AppFabric but rather just the beginning

Architectures for the Future Networks and the Next Generation Internet: A Survey

Networking research funding agencies in the USA, Europe, Japan, and other countries are encouraging research on revolutionary networking architectures that may or may not be bound by the restrictions of the current TCP/IP based Internet. We present a comprehensive survey of such research projects and activities. The topics covered include various testbeds for experimentations for new architectures, new security mechanisms, content delivery mechanisms, management and control frameworks, service architectures, and routing mechanisms. Delay/Disruption tolerant networks, which allow communications even when complete end-to-end path is not available, are also discussed

A Novel Incrementally-Deployable Multi-granularity Multihoming Framework for the Future Internet

Abstract-Multihoming practice in the current Internet is limited to hosts and autonomous systems (ASs). It is "connectivity-oriented" without support for user or data multihoming. However, the swift migration of Internet from "connectivity-oriented" to "content-oriented" pattern urges to incorporate user and data level multihoming support in architecture designs instead of just through ad-hoc patches. In this paper, based on our previous research experience, we expand the multihoming concepts to both user and data levels based on the "multiple points of attachment" in a way similar to host multihoming. We propose a new incrementally-deployable multihoming framework by introducing a "realm" concept. The high-level user and data multihoming support can be built on top of the host and AS level multihoming in an incrementally-deployable and flexibly-assembled manner. Realms form a hierarchy of functionally dependable blocks. We define a new dimension of building block--slice which is an incrementally implementable functional unit for multihoming. Besides the long-term support for user and data multihoming, the first step deployment of the new framework is also able to address the short-term routing scalability challenge by reducing the total inter-domain routing table size gradually

Multi-Tier Diversified Service Architecture for Internet 3.0: The Next Generation Internet

The next generation Internet needs to support multiple diverse application contexts. In this paper, we present Internet 3.0, a diversified, multi-tier architecture for the next generation Internet. Unlike the current Internet, Internet 3.0 defines a new set of primitives that allows diverse applications to compose and optimize their specific contexts over resources belonging to multiple ownerships. The key design philosophy is to enable diversity through explicit representation, negotiation and enforcement of policies at the granularity of network infrastructure, compute resources, data and users. The basis of the Internet 3.0 architecture is a generalized three-tier object model. The bottom tier consists of a high-speed network infrastructure. The second tier consists of compute resources or hosts. The third tier consists of data and users. The “tiered” organization of the entities in the object model depicts the natural dependency relationship between these entities in a communication context. All communication contexts, including the current Internet, may be represented as special cases within this generalized three-tier object model. The key contribution of this paper is a formal architectural representation of the Internet 3.0 architecture over the key primitive of the “Object Abstraction” and a detailed discussion of the various design aspects of the architecture, including the design of the “Context Router-” the key architectural element that powers an evolutionary deployment plan for the clean slate design ideas of Internet 3.0

Observing the Evolution of the Universe

How did the universe evolve? The fine angular scale (l>1000) temperature and polarization anisotropies in the CMB are a Rosetta stone for understanding the evolution of the universe. Through detailed measurements one may address everything from the physics of the birth of the universe to the history of star formation and the process by which galaxies formed. One may in addition track the evolution of the dark energy and discover the net neutrino mass. We are at the dawn of a new era in which hundreds of square degrees of sky can be mapped with arcminute resolution and sensitivities measured in microKelvin. Acquiring these data requires the use of special purpose telescopes such as the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), located in Chile, and the South Pole Telescope (SPT). These new telescopes are outfitted with a new generation of custom mm-wave kilo-pixel arrays. Additional instruments are in the planning stages.Comment: Science White Paper submitted to the US Astro2010 Decadal Survey. Full list of 177 author available at http://cmbpol.uchicago.ed

Database Systems Performance Evaluation Techniques

The last few decades has seen a huge transformation in the way businesses are conducted. There has been a paradigm shift from product portfolio based marketing strategies to customer focused marketing strategies. The growth and diversity of the market has greatly profited consumers through higher availability, better quality and lower prices. The same factors however has made it more difficult for businesses to maintain their competitive edge over one another and hence has forced them to think beyond their product portfolio and look at other means to gain higher visibility and customer satisfaction, maintaining all the while their core advantages on pricing and product through improved and more efficient methods of manufacturing and distribution. The advent and spread of computers and networking has been one of the single largest factors that has spurred and aided this enormous movement. More specifically, database management systems now form the core of almost all enterprise logic and business intelligence solutions. This survey tries to emphasize the importance of database systems in enterprise setups and looks at the methods and metrics that are used t