Antonio Manzalini

Research Directions in Network Service Chaining

Network Service Chaining (NSC) is a service deployment concept that promises increased flexibility and cost efficiency for future carrier networks. NSC has received considerable attention in the standardization and research communities lately. However, NSC is largely undefined in the peer-reviewed literature. In fact, a literature review reveals that the role of NSC enabling technologies is up for discussion, and so are the key research challenges lying ahead. This paper addresses these topics by motivating our research interest towards advanced dynamic NSC and detailing the main aspects to be considered in the context of carrier-grade telecommunication networks. We present design considerations and system requirements alongside use cases that illustrate the advantages of adopting NSC. We detail prominent research challenges during the typical lifecycle of a network service chain in an operational telecommunications network, including service chain description, programming, deployment, and debugging, and summarize our security considerations. We conclude this paper with an outlook on future work in this area.

The dynamic placement of virtual network functions

This paper addresses the problem of managing highly dynamic network and service environments, where virtual nodes and virtual links are created and destroyed depending on traffic volumes, service requests, or high-level goals such as reduction in energy consumption. This problem will be one of the main technical challenges to be faced in the evolution towards Future Networks (FN). Emerging paradigms such as Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NfV) are concrete steps towards infrastructures where network functions and services will be executed as applications in ensembles of virtual machines (VMs) hosted in pervasive standard hardware resources located across a network. The paper argues that in order to manage these virtual infrastructures there is a need to introduce high-level systems orchestration. The paper describes an architecture based on an orchestrater that ensures the automatic placement of the virtual nodes and the allocation of network services on them, supported by a monitoring system that collects and reports on the behaviour of the resources. The orchestrater manages the creation and removal of the virtual nodes, as well as configuring, monitoring, running and stopping software on them. As a proof of these concepts, a distributed orchestrater prototype has been designed, implemented and tested with the results of different placement algorithms presented.

Horizon 2020 and Beyond: On the 5G Operating System for a True Digital Society

The advanced fifth-generation (5G) infrastructure will not only be a sheer evolution of the current network generations but, more significantly, a revolution in the information and communication technology (ICT) field. The 5G technology will efficiently enable new secure, dependable, ultrareliable, and delay-critical services to everyone and everything, such as cognitive objects and cyberphysical systems (CPSs). A fully immersive experience and anything as a service are the primary drivers for a global adoption and market uptake of new technology components, beyond todays client-server model, where the network has been reduced to a mere pipe of bits. The network will become the nervous system of the true digital society and economy. This article gives fundamental insight into how the 5G mobile communications system is being designed to be powerful and, especially, flexible enough, thus meeting the foreseen and unknown traffic scenarios and services requirements. We also present how a massive adoption and exploitation of mobile-edge computing (MEC), software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), and services virtualization will make the 5G operating system (OS) feasible and business viable.

The CASCADAS Framework for Autonomic Communications

An interesting approach to the design and development of the future Internet foresees a networked service eco-system capable of seamlessly offering services for human-to-human, human-to-machine and machine-to-machine interactions. This chapter builds in this direction by describing a distributed component-ware framework for autonomic and situation-aware communication developed within the CASCADAS project. The core of this framework is the Autonomic Communication Element (ACE), an innovative software abstraction capable of providing dynamically adaptable services that can be built, composed, and let evolve according to autonomic principles. Services are capable of adapting their logic to the dynamically changing context they operate in without human intervention. As a result, whenever the need arises, ACEs can be federated autonomously and produce new services on a situation-aware basis. Systems and, in particular, eco-systems can thus be conceived as collections of ACEs. The chapter introduces the concept of ACE and its different facets. It also presents the architecture of a prototype ACE-based platform and exemplifies the different concepts through a future Pervasive Behavioral Advertisement scenario.

Towards Unified Programmability of Cloud and Carrier Infrastructure

The rise of cloud services poses considerable challenges on the control of both cloud and carrier network infrastructures. While traditional telecom network services rely on rather static processes (often involving manual steps), the wide adoption of mobile devices including tablets, smartphones and wearables introduce previously unseen dynamics in the creation, scaling and withdrawal of new services. These phenomena require optimal flexibility in the characterization of services, as well as on the control and orchestration of both carrier and cloud infrastructure. This paper proposes a unified programmability framework addressing: the unification of network and cloud resources, the integrated control and management of cloud and network, the description for programming networked/cloud services, and the provisioning processes of these services. In addition proofs-of-concept are provided based on existing open source control software components.

Self-optimized cognitive network of networks

Future processing, storage and communication services will be highly pervasive: people, smart objects, machines and the surrounding space (all embedding devices such as with sensors, RFID tags, etc.) will define a highly decentralized cyber environment of resources interconnected by dynamic Networks of Networks. As communications will extend to cover any combination of “people, machines and things”, future networks will be increasingly complex and heterogeneous, yet always endorsed with the challenging task of ensuring end-to-end QoS. This paper proposes groundwork for an advanced cognitive networking paradigm exploitable in future wired and wireless infrastructures: a Decentralised Cognitive Plane to allow for cross-layer, cross-node and cross-network domain self-management, self-control and self-optimization, whilst being compatible with legacy management and control.

MyAds: A system for adaptive pervasive advertisements

In this paper we show how pervasive technologies can be employed on a public-display advertisement scenario to enable behavioral self-adaptation of content. We show this through MyAds, a system capable of exploiting pervasive technologies to autonomously adapt the advertisement process to the trends of interests detected among the audience in a venue. After describing the rationale, the architecture and the prototype of MyAds, we describe the advantages brought by the use of such a system, in terms of impact on the audience and economic efficiency. The comparison of MyAds performances with different advertisement selection techniques confirms the validity of our advertisement model, and our prototype in particular, as a means for maximising product awareness in an audience and for enhancing economic efficiency.

Softwarization of Future Networks and Services -Programmable Enabled Networks as Next Generation Software Defined Networks

The Software Defined Networks (SDNs) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFVs), as recent separate research and development trends have the roots in programmable / active network technologies and standards developed a decade ago. In particular, they are associated with the decoupling of forwarding from control and hardware from networking software, using open interfaces to connectivity resources. The next phase of R&D would involve novel integration and use of all connectivity, storage and processing resources under new management interacting with control systems for provisioning of on-demand networking and services with continuous update of features. This brings into focus a relatively new and key topics for the next decade: what and how to create the conditions for effective and continuous updating and changing the networking functions without reinventing each time architectural aspects and related components (e.g. Softwarization of Future Networks and Services or Programmable Enabled Networks). This paper presents motivation, architecture and the key challenges in realising such programmable enabled networks as the next generation Software Defined Networks focusing on its management plane.

The IP/MPLS over ASON/GMPLS test bed of the IST project LION

A test-bed of a multi-vendor IP/MPLS over ASON/GMPLS network has been realized integrating IP Gigabit routers and optical equipment in a managed multi-domain environment to investigate the realization of soft-permanent optical connections and multi-layer resilience strategies

An open framework to enable NetFATE (Network Functions at the edge)

In the last few years, Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) have been introduced in the Internet as a new way to design, deploy and manage networking services. Working together, they are able to consolidate and deliver the networking components using standard IT virtualization technologies not only on high-volume servers, but even in the end user premises. In this context, this paper presents the NetFATE architecture, a platform aimed at putting virtual network functions (VNF) at the edge of the network. This platform is based on free and open source software on Provider Equipment (PE) and Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) nodes, so allowing function deployment simplification and management cost reduction. Finally, the paper proposes a case study, consisting in the implementation of two virtual personal firewalls used by two clients moving between two access points located at the edge of the core network.