To take into account all the internet future evolutions network management will require many
automatic processes to allocate suitable resources according to user and operator necessities, with fast
response times and with a control managed by a centralized entity. This is the base concept of the Software
Defined Networking (SDN), where the central entity is the Orchestrator [ [1], [2], [3]]. Furthermore, one of
the fundamental task for current and future network implementation and maintenance is the control of
several network parameters, including capacity, performance, but overall user satisfaction, that currently is
meant in terms of Quality of Service (QoS). Recently another important aspect is the power consumption.
Therefore, for a correct network management, it is fundamental to take into account all these aspects. The
QoS control will require actions both in the access and in the core segment [4]. The control of the QoS can
be obtained at different levels as for an example:
a) from the user perception point of view (or Quality of the Experience, QoE) [5];
b) in terms of user bandwidth, and in this case we can distinguish different "bandwidths" according
to the OSI stack [5], in particular we can refer to the line capacity offered by the ISP (Layer 1-2,
L1-2, of the OSI stack), the bandwidth at disposal at TCP level (throughput, L4) and the
bandwidth at disposal at application level (L7);
c) passive monitoring of the traffic in some points of the network [ [6]- [7]];
d) route analysis of the packets.
The correlation among all the measurement methods, [a, b, c, d], allows us to have a good view of
the network performance and in particular to define problems and anomalies that occurs in the network. It
has to be pointed out that this is one of the aims of "quality measurement plane" of the FP7 MPLANE
project. The detection of network problems and anomalies can be a reference plane for automatic actions
in the network in order to improve the performance both for the users and for ISP (for an instance in terms
of Opex), and such a process could be also much important for Over the Top operators (OTT).
Conversely the theme of Energy Saving in telecommunication network has been treated in the
framework of the EU FP7 project TREND, where in particular several investigations were carried out on
power consumption and on the technique and algorithms to save energy, as for an example by switching
off links (physical and logic) in periods of low traffic load.
Therefore one of the most appealing topic for future networks will be the introduction of a QoSPower
management based on SDN approach and this is the subject of my Thesis. In particular for the work
of my PhD thesis I participated into two European Research projects that have allowed me to deeply study
several topics regarding energy saving in FP7 TREND project and QoS in FP7 mPlane project. On both
projects very interesting and innovative researches has been published, on which I have been part of
