Abbas Siddiqui

Network functional composition: State of the art

Network Functional Composition is an approach for a flexible Internet architecture which decomposes the layered network stack in functional building blocks which can be loosely coupled. Functional Composition therefore enables a customized composition of functionality at the edges and in the network in respect to application specific requirements. Functional Composition is an architecture for a Future Internet which provides solutions for many of the challenges that have been identified in the Future Internet debate. Several early and current projects have addressed Functional Composition with different aspects, which have been reviewed here as part of a state-of-the-art analysis. This review shall give an overview about the different projects and categorizes the different approaches.

A Requirement-Based Socket API for a Transition to Future Internet Architectures

The existing application programming interface (API) between applications and the network architecture is one reason that it is hard to deploy novel protocols into the network architecture. Coupling between applications and underlying protocols makes it almost impossible to change one without changing the other. Coupling can be loosened or resolved by not involving applications in protocols implementation details but, only in functionality necessary to establish a communication. This way underlying network can deploy novel or updated implementations of a functionality without needing to change the applications. Using intermediate abstraction layers is an approach to break the dependency between applications and network protocols. One of the major goals in future internet architectures is to be flexible enough to adapt to applications requirements. In this paper, a requirement-based API is presented as an abstraction layer to make applications independent of network mechanisms, which also helps in the transition to future internet architectures.

Composition of Self Descriptive Protocols for Future Network Architectures

The network protocols we use today have been introduced decades ago. Since then the whole Internet came to existence and with it a single protocol stack: TCP/IP. What was a good solution back then, is no longer appropriate to fulfill the emerging demands of applications. Newer protocols have been created as solutions for the problems, but replacing TCP/IP requires a complicated deployment and migration phase. The problems with the current Internet architecture and its fixed structure have triggered a discussion on a Future Internet architecture. We propose a way to dynamically select and compose protocols based on principles of service oriented architectures. The goal is a network architecture where new protocols could be easily added and are automatically and transparently used by applications. In this paper we present a way to describe protocols and their effects and dependencies between them. We also present a method to select and compose protocols.

Service Orientation Paradigm in Future Network Architectures

The Internet can not keep up with changing application requirements and new network technologies as its network architecture makes it hard to introduce new functionality because existing functionalities in the Architecture are inherently tightly coupled. This article describes how the principles of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can help to develop more flexible network architecture. We argue that the SOA paradigm can be applied to networks by utilizing the concepts of self-contained building blocks, dynamic protocol graphs and selection and composition methods. In order to make use of flexible networks, applications must be decoupled from the protocols they use. We give a brief overview, of how some of these concepts are already implemented, by presenting few approaches. Finally we describe some challenges of service oriented network architecture.

Evaluating a Future Internet Cross-Layer Composition Prototype

The World-Wide-Web was initially designed to enable Information exchange between research institutes using the Internet Protocol based transport network. Since then, more and more areas of our daily live are reached by the evolving Internet including business critical areas, causes through its big success, fast acceptance and emerged possibilities. However, today’s best-effort Internet still lacks wide-area support for End-to-End Quality-of-Service and security sensitive services. Future Internet (FI) related research targets at a re-designs of the current Internet while addressing today’s requirements. In this paper we present a clean-slate cross-layer FI architecture approach. In order to optimize the underlying network for services we focus on a framework able to provide service required functionalities at the network layer on demand. We validate the presented architecture based on a prototype implementation. An evaluation section discusses measurements done with the prototype and an outlook on our future work concludes the paper.

Functional Composition and Its Challenges

Functional composition is an approach for a flexible network architecture which enables a customized combination of functionality with respect to application requirements. Functional composition overcomes the inflexibility of the current Internet architecture and facilitates the management of functionality within the network. Several projects have addressed this topic with different aspects, in this paper several main challenges of network functional composition are identified and discussed.

Template based composition for requirements based network stacks

The modularizing of the functionalities from a network stack and then to compose a desirable service on demand is relatively new in the network architecture however the modularizing is being practiced in the software engineering since few decades now. The composition of functionalities to achieve a desired result can be performed at various time-phases (e.g. run-time, design-time, deployment-time), but it is not clear which phase is the most suitable one in terms of performance, complexity and flexibility. It is most likely that a single approach will not be appropriate in every circumstance. In this paper, an intermediate approach so called template based composition is proposed to find a compromise between complexity and flexibility.

G-Lab Deep: Cross-Layer Composition and Security for a Flexible Future Internet

The Internet provides a global communication basis for businesses and communities. But in today’s Internet new demands collide with old design principles, resulting in a complex agglomerate of protocols and patches. These makeshift solutions are hard to manage, protect, and extend. The G-Lab DEEP project aims at these challenges with an innovative composition approach with a special emphasis on security. One goal is the dynamic composition of functions from network and service layer based on the requirements of applications. The composition is done by a mediation process that selects suitable function modules and can negotiate whether functions should be positioned on network or service layer. In G-Lab DEEP a prototype for such architecture will be developed.