Optical Network Models and their Application to Software-Defined Network Management

Software-defined networking is finding its way into optical networks. Here, it promises a simplification and unification of network management for optical networks allowing automation of operational tasks despite the highly diverse and vendor-specific commercial systems and the complexity and analog nature of optical transmission. A fundamental component for software-defined optical networking are common abstractions and interfaces. Currently, a number of models for optical networks are available. They all claim to provide open and vendor agnostic management of optical equipment. In this work, we survey and compare the most important models and propose an intent interface for creating virtual topologies that is integrated in the existing model ecosystem.Comment: Parts of the presented work has received funding from the European Commission within the H2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under grant agreeement n.645127, project ACIN

Automatic Intent-Based Secure Service Creation Through a Multilayer SDN Network Orchestration

Growing traffic demands and increasing security awareness are driving the need for secure services. Current solutions require manual configuration and deployment based on the customer's requirements. In this work, we present an architecture for an automatic intent-based provisioning of a secure service in a multilayer - IP, Ethernet, and optical - network while choosing the appropriate encryption layer using an open-source software-defined networking (SDN) orchestrator. The approach is experimentally evaluated in a testbed with commercial equipment. Results indicate that the processing impact of secure channel creation on a controller is negligible. As the time for setting up services over WDM varies between technologies, it needs to be taken into account in the decision-making process.Comment: Parts of the presented work has received funding from the European Commission within the H2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under grant agreeement n.645127, project ACIN

Intent-Based In-flight Service Encryption in Multi-Layer Transport Networks

We demonstrate multi-layer encrypted service provisioning via the ACINO orchestrator. ACINO combines a novel intent interface with an ONOS-based SDN orchestrator to facilitate encrypted services at IP, Ethernet and optical network layers.Comment: Optical Fiber Communication Conferenc

ACINO: Second year report on dissemination and communication activities

This ACINO deliverable presents the communication and dissemination activities performed by the consortium during the first two years of the project. We have communicated using our website, Twitter account and by various communication actions: The website saw over 3000 unique visitors during the first year and over 4000 during the second year; The consortium Twitter account had 49 followers at the end of the first year and 80 at the end of the second year. We posted 50 tweets during the first year and 40 more during the second year; We also held a press release and an interview in a magazine during the first year, and had three more similar communication actions during the second year. The dissemination activities have been composed of participation in public events where the goals and concepts of ACINO were presented via publications, presentation, workshops, courses and demonstrations. Overall, over forty different dissemination activities have been performed: An article has been published in peer-reviewed, open access Journal of Green Engineering; Eighteen articles have been published in conferences: four during the first year and fourteen during the second. One of them was a post-deadline and six were invited papers; We have co-organised three workshops: the Workshop on Network Function Virtualization and Programmable Networks at EUCNC 2015, the first Workshop on Multi-Layer Network Orchestration (NetOrch) at ICTON 2016 and the stand-alone ONOS/CORD workshop; We have held 16 talks, tutorial, courses and demonstrations; Consortium members have won two prizes for work related to ACINO: a team of developers won the 3rd prize of the ONOS Build Hackathon, and Telefónica won the Best SDN-NFV solution award at the LTE and 5G World conference by presenting a solution in which Sedona Systems was involved; We have contributed to six IETF standardisation documents and done some implementation and test of these standards. We have contributed to two open source projects: the NetPhony and ONOS controllers, with the implementation of main features being accepted and merged to the core code of these open source projects. Finally, the project has devised detailed plans for its dissemination activities for the last year of the project. We have: Confirmed plans for the organisation of a workshop, the second edition of the NetOrch workshop, co-located with the ICTON conference; A solid plan for continued dissemination in conferences (already five accepted conference papers, five talk invitations and a list of conferences of interest) and in peer-reviewed journals, with one article accepted for publication in the Journal of Lightwave Technology, two articles under review and plans for four more; Some more planned contribution to open source projects

Integrated SDN/NFV management and orchestration architecture for dynamic deployment of virtual SDN control instances for virtual tenant networks

Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) have emerged as the most promising candidates for improving network function and protocol programmability and dynamic adjustment of network resources. On the one hand, SDN is responsible for providing an abstraction of network resources through well-defined application programming interfaces. This abstraction enables SDN to perform network virtualization, that is, to slice the physical infrastructure and create multiple coexisting application-specific virtual tenant networks (VTNs) with specific quality-of-service and service-level-agreement requirements, independent of the underlying optical transport technology and network protocols. On the other hand, the notion of NFV relates to deploying network functions that are typically deployed in specialized and dedicated hardware, as software instances [called virtual network functions (VNFs)] running on commodity servers (e.g., in data centers) through software virtualization techniques. Despite all the attention that has been given to virtualizing IP functions (e.g., firewall; authentication, authorization, and accounting) or Long-Term Evolution control functions (e.g., mobility management entity, serving gateway, and packet data network gateway), some transport control functions can also be virtualized and moved to the cloud as a VNF. In this work we propose virtualizing the tenant SDN control functions of a VTN and moving them into the cloud. The control of a VTN is a key requirement associated with network virtualization, since it allows the dynamic programming (i.e., direct control and configuration) of the virtual resources allocated to the VTN. We experimentally assess and evaluate the first SDN/NFV orchestration architecture in a multipartner testbed to dynamically deploy independent SDN controller instances for each instantiated VTN and to provide the required connectivity within minutes

Demonstration of an Application-Based Service Lifecycle Orchestration for the Future Internet

Future Internet applications are expected to have stringent constraints and require differentiated treatment over their lifecycle. We demonstrate application-centric provisioning and failure recovery using an SDN orchestrator with an intent-based northbound programming interface and a disaggregated optical network model

Multi-layer resilience schemes and their control plane support

Network operators design and manage IP/MPLS and optical networks on a per-layer basis, to the point that they are run as different business areas within the operator. However, there are clear CAPEX and OPEX savings that network operators can achieve by simplifying the network infrastructure. Moreover, the evolution of optical equipment and the introduction of network programmability are accelerating the adoption of multi-layer schemes in real networks. This paper revisions the planning process considering resilience schemes for IP and optical networks. It also presents an evolutionary view on the control plane and SDN paradigms that enable the support of multi-layer schemes in real networks

ACINO: First year report on dissemination and communication activities

This deliverable presents the communication and dissemination activities performed by the ACINO consortium during the first year of the project. The consortium has developed communication instruments to support such activities for the duration of the project: A graphical profile has been developed for ACINO, as well as document models for reports and presentations; A web site has been set up, describing the project, the challenges we are looking at, and our approach to solve them; A Twitter account has been set up to ensure presence in the social media and to allow a more dynamic communication; A fact sheet and a flyer have been developed. The project has also held two further communication actions: a press release and an interview in a magazine. The dissemination activities have been based on the participation in public events where the goals and concepts of ACINO were presented via publications, presentation, workshops, courses and demonstrations. Overall, fifteen different dissemination activities have been performed: Four articles were published in conferences: at ICTON, ECOC and Photonics in Switching; Four presentations were held at conferences: at EUCNC, the OSA Advanced Photonics Conference, CTTE and OFC; The project participated to the organization of the Workshop on Network Function Virtualization and Programmable Networks at EUCNC; A tutorial entitled “Control Architectures for Multi-layer Networking: Distributed, centralized, or something in between?” was held at OFC; A course entitled “SC411: Multi-layer Interaction in the Age of Agile Optical Networking” was held at OFC; Three booths were held at OFC, ONS and the SDN & OpenFlow World Congress, where demonstrations were run; The project started contributing back to the Open Source Software community maintaining the Netphony controller. Contacts have also been taken with several Open Source Software communities and European projects for future collaboration. Finally, the project has devised detailed plans for its dissemination activities for the coming year

Intent-based in-flight service encryption in multi-layer transport networks

We demonstrate multi-layer encrypted service provisioning via the ACINO orchestrator. ACINO combines a novel intent interface with an ONOS-based SDN orchestrator to facilitate encrypted services at IP, Ethernet and optical network layers