Annikki Welin

Content, connectivity, and cloud: ingredients for the network of the future

A new network architecture for the Internet needs ingredients from three approaches: information- centric networking, cloud computing integrated with networking, and open connectivity. Information-centric networking considers pieces of information as first-class entities of a networking architecture, rather than only indirectly identifying and manipulating them via a node hosting that information; this way, information becomes independent from the devices they are stored in, enabling efficient and application- independent information caching in the network. Cloud networking offers a combination and integration of cloud computing and virtual networking. It is a solution that distributes the benefits of cloud computing more deeply into the network, and provides a tighter integration of virtualization features at computing and networking levels. To support these concepts, open connectivity services need to provide advanced transport and networking mechanisms, making use of network and path diversity (even leveraging direct optical paths) and encoding techniques, and dealing with ubiquitous mobility of user, content and information objects in a unified way.

PCE communication protocol for resource advertisement in multi-domain BGP-based networks

PCEP messages are proposed to announce inter-domain resource information typically not advertised by BGP because of scalability reasons. Proposed messages enable effective PCE-based path computations and preserve network stability, scalability, and intea-domain information confidentiality.

Using Virtualization to Provide Interdomain QoS-enabled Routing

Today, the most important aspect related with the Internet architecture is its ossification representing the difficulties to introduce evolutions in the architecture as a way to meet the demands posed by the new requirements as mobility, security, heterogeneity, etc. In this paper we discuss how the network virtualization can be used to support the interdomain QoS-enabled routing. We present the Virtual Topology Service (VTS), a new approach to provide interdomain services taking into account QoS and Traffic Engineering (TE) constraints. We advocate in favor of a service layer that offers new mechanisms for interdomain routing without affecting the underlying Internet infrastructure. The VTS abstracts the physical network details of each Autonomous System (AS) and is totally integrated with BGP. Two models to obtain VTs were defined, the Push Model and the Pull Model. The latter one uses the Internet hierarchy to get more alternative routes towards a destination. We will show how the VTS and other services such as the end-toend negotiation service work together to provide a complete mechanism for provisioning of interdomain QoS- enabled routes in IP networks. Preliminary evaluation results are also presented.

A Service Oriented Architecture-based Approach for Interdomain Optical Network Services

This work presents a service-oriented architecture for interdomain service provisioning in optical networks. The architecture introduces a service layer that concentrates all the interactions among domains necessary for service provisioning. A service layer is an alternative to the GMPLS (Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching) architecture, but without a rigid control plane as found in GMPLS. We start by defining a set of basic services to provide single end-to-end (e2e) interdomain connections. Then, more sophisticated services are created through the composition of these basic services. The interdomain Optical VPN (Virtual Private Network) service is considered in order to illustrate the composition of services. A prototype of the architecture was designed and implemented using Web services as the main technology. The architecture was evaluated in terms of speed, scalability, and bandwidth consumption necessary to establish e2e interdomain connections and Optical VPNs.

The virtual topology service: a mechanism for qos-enabled interdomain routing

In this paper we present the Virtual Topology Service (VTS), a new approach to provide interdomain services taking into account QoS and Traffic Engineering (TE) constraints. It is known that in these days the provisioning of end-to-end interdomain connections does not consider any type of QoS due to limitations of the BGP routing protocol. At the same time, many extensions have been proposed to BGP, however none of them were put into practice. We advocate in favor of a service layer that offers new mechanisms for interdomain routing without affecting the underlying Internet infrastructure. The VTS abstracts the physical network details of each Autonomous System (AS) and is totally integrated with BGP. We use the Internet hierarchy to obtain more alternative routes towards a destination. The architecture was already used to provide interdomain services in optical networks. In this paper we show how the architecture can be used to provide interdomain connections in IP networks. We will show how the VTS and other services such as the end-to-end negotiation service work together to provide a complete mechanism for provisioning of interdomain QoS-enabled routes. Preliminary evaluation results are also presented.

Global load balancing of Zero-bandwidth TE LSPs in MPLS networks

An iterative algorithm is proposed to achieve global load balancing of zero-bandwidth TE LSPs. Results show that the proposed algorithm closely approximates the ideal global load balancing result, without resorting to additional routing protocol extensions.

A Proposal for an XOR-Based Flat Routing Mechanism in Internet-Like Topologies

A frequent subject in forums, academia and industry is the evolution of the Internet in terms of routing. Basically, the scalability in the Default Free Zone related to (1) the growing rate of the routing tables and (2) the convergence of the routing system, are pointed by routing experts as the main concerns of the current mechanism. Several approaches have emerged, but they normally require a mapping system to translate from identifiers to locators (IP). We contribute with this discussion by introducing our XOR-based Flat Routing mechanism for Internet-like topologies. Essentially, the proposed mechanism routes directly on top of flat ASes identifiers, eliminating the need for mapping systems. In this work we propose a mechanism for building the routing tables over the XOR-based scenario in conjunction with a reachability service developed using the concepts of Landmark and Bloom filters. The proposal is evaluated using our developed emulation tool under five different Internet-like topologies ranging from 512 to 8192 nodes.