5GEx: realising a Europe-wide multi-domain framework for software-defined infrastructures

Market fragmentation has resulted in a multitude of network and cloud/data center operators, each focused on different countries, regions and technologies. This makes it difficult and costly to create infrastructure services spanning multiple domains, such as virtual connectivity or compute resources. In this article, we discuss the goals and work being done within the 5GEx (5G Exchange) project in realising a Europe-wide multi-domain platform. This platform aims at enabling cross-domain orchestration of services over multiple administrations or over multi-domain single administrations in the context of emerging 5G networking. The 5GEx vision is based on introducing a unification via network function virtualisation/software-defined networking compatible multi-domain orchestration for networks, clouds and services. We describe the motivation and 5GEx vision, the adopted architecture and the next steps in terms of implementation and experimentation.This work is performed in the framework of the H2020-ICT-2014 project 5GEx (Grant Agreement no. 671636), which is partially funded by the European Commission

Analysis of end-to-end multi-domain management and orchestration frameworks for software defined infrastructures: an architectural survey

Over the last couple of years, industry operators' associations issued requirements towards an end-to-end management and orchestration plane for 5G networks. Consequently, standard organisations started their activities in this domain. This article provides an analysis and an architectural survey of these initiatives and of the main requirements, proposes descriptions for the key concepts of domain, resource and service slicing, end-to-end orchestration and a reference architecture for the end-to-end orchestration plane. Then, a set of currently available or under development domain orchestration frameworks are mapped to this reference architecture. These frameworks, meant to provide coordination and automated management of cloud and networking resources, network functions and services, fulfil multi-domain (i.e. multi-technology and multi-operator) orchestration requirements, thus enabling the realisation of an end-to-end orchestration plane. Finally, based on the analysis of existing single-domain and multi-domain orchestration components and requirements, this paper presents a functional architecture for the end-to-end management and orchestration plane, paving the way to its full realisation.This work was partially supported by the ICT14 5GExchange (5GEx) innovation project (grant agreement no.671636) co-funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 EU Framework Programme.Publicad

A Scheduling Algorithm for Time Bounded Delivery of Packets on the Internet

This thesis aims to provide a better scheduling algorithm for Real-Time delivery of packets. A number of emerging applications such as VoIP, Tele-immersive environments, distributed media viewing and distributed gaming require real-time delivery of packets. Currently the scheduling algorithms used to decide the priority ordering over packets only consider the deadline as the parameter. This may not be optimal, since it ignores the network traffic over the routes that these packets may take. The idea of this thesis is to propose a method of calculating a probability measure of each packet meeting it's deadline at every intermediate node. This probability measure is based on the time left for deadline to expire, the number of nodes further in the packets route to reach it's destination and the traffic on this route. The algorithm assumes a certain level on time synchronisation over the network

Media Presentation Synchronisation for Non-monolithic Rendering Architectures

Non-monolithic renderers are physically distributed media playback engines. Non-monolithic renderers may use a number of different underlying network connection types to transmit media items belonging to a presentation. There is therefore a need for a media based and inter-network- type synchronization algorithm. NeighbourCast is an algorithm for synchronising nodes in a wireless ad hoc network. In this paper, we introduce an efficient extension to NeighbourCast, that allows non-monolithic rendering nodes to be synchronised across multiple networks, during a media presentation. Our results show that our algorithm matches the requirements we enlist for non-monolithic renderer synchronisation. Our results meet the requirements imposed by lip synchronization research done earlier

NeighbourCast: A synchronisation algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks

This paper presents a synchronisation algorithm for wire less ad hoc networks called NeighbourCast. The major requirements we impose on the algorithm are a short convergence time, low battery consumption which is achieved by low collision and low channel contention, minimum net work overhead, and a distributed approach. We achieve these by restricting the synchronisation related communication of nodes to only their immediate neighbours. Finally, in order to validate the algorithm a set of simulation results are reported. The results match the maximum clock offset achieved by previous research. We show that this algorithm achieves lower battery consumption by showing that the order of packets sent and received per node is smaller for NeighbourCast than earlier research. We also demonstrate low channel contention and collision probabilities for the proposed algorithm

Are We in Sync? Synchronization Requirements for Watching Online Video Together

Synchronization between locations is an important factor for enabling remote shared experiences. Still, experimental data on what is the acceptable synchronization level is scarce. This paper discusses the synchronization requirements for watching online videos together – a popular set of services that recreate the shared experience of watching TV together by offering tools to communicate while watching. It studies the noticeability and annoyance of synchronization differences of the video being watched, as well as the impact on users’ feelings of togetherness, both for voice chat and text chat. Results of an experiment with 36 participants show that when using voice chat, users notice synchronization differences sooner, are more annoyed and feel more together than when using text chat. However, users with high text chat activity notice synchronization differences similar to participants using voice chat.status: publishe