Bernd Reuther

Future Internet research and experimentation

The German Lab (G-Lab) project aims to investigate architectural concepts and technologies for a new inter-networking architecture as an integrated approach between theoretic and experimental studies. Thus G-Lab consists of two major fields of activities: research studies of future network components and the design and setup of experimental facilities. Both are controlled by the same community to ensure that the experimental facility meets the demands of the researchers. Researchers gain access to virtualized resources or may gain exclusive access to resources if necessary. We present the current setup of the experimental facility, describing the available hardware, management of the platform, the utilization of the PlanetLab software and the user management. Moreover, a new approach to setup and deploy virtual network topologies will be described.

German-lab experimental facility

The G-Lab project aims to investigate concepts and technologies for future networks in a practical manner. Thus G-Lab consists of two major fields of activities: research studies of future network components and the design and setup of experimental facilities. Both is controlled by the same community to ensure, that the experimental facility fits to the demand of researchers. Researchers gain access to virtualized resources or may gain exclusive access to resource if necessary. We present the current setup of the experimental facility, describing the available hardware, management of the platform, the utilization of the Planet-Lab software and the user management.

A model for service-oriented communication systems

Like most software products, protocols are continuously enhanced and new protocols are developed. But especially new protocols of the transport layer can not be utilized widely easily. Even if the new protocols are made available, it is still necessary to adapt many applications or the protocols are not used by the majority of applications otherwise. The current situation is that only very limited enhancements of protocols are possible without changing applications. The proposed solution is to let applications use communications services only instead of protocols. A model for service-oriented communications systems that follows the concepts of service-oriented architectures is introduced. The model enables choosing and configuring protocols autonomously with regard to environmental and temporal conditions

Future Internet Architecture - A Service Oriented Approach (Future Internet Architecture - Ein serviceorientierter Ansatz).

Abstract The development of the Internet during the last years has shown that it becomes harder to integrate new functionality in order to fulfill the demands of new applications and the capabilities of new transport technologies. Especially the core mechanisms (TCP/IP) are hard to change. Thus the development of a new Internet architecture has been discussed for some time now. In this work we present a service-oriented approach for a new network architecture. At first it is argued which kinds of flexibility should be provided by an architecture. Then it will be shown which common principles of service-orientation support this flexibility. Further we present technical considerations for implementing network functionality by services.

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.

User oriented IP accounting in multi-user systems

The traditional IP accounting method is IP address oriented, that means one IP address corresponds to one user, but it can not meet the finer granularity accounting requirement in multi-user systems, in which many users share one or more IP address at the same time. In the multi-user systems the user oriented IP accounting can distinguish the producers of the IP traffic, which come from the same IP address. Hence it is a more accurate accounting method than traditional IP address oriented accounting method. In this paper, we present the technology of the user oriented IP accounting, and describe the principle of this method, and the realization considerations.

Design and Implementation Issues of Flexible Network Architecture

Present Internet protocol was developed long way back with the intention to provide simple end-to-end network functionalities for network applications of 1980s. Since then many times network and its related applications were reformed over technological advancement. To support new applications more and more protocols were created as patches which resulted in IP bloat. As a result of this Internet community researcher worries about upcoming days of failure of current Internet. This paper emphasis on design and implementation issues of flexible network using with Service Oriented Architecture methodology. And also highlights a framework for Flexible Network Architecture which is one of the way to address current as well as future network application problem.

A building block interaction model for flexible future Internet architectures

Todays Internet has a static architecture that makes introducing new functionality a complex and costly task, so the Internet can not keep pace with rising demands and new network capabilities. Therefore, evolvability and flexibility are the keys to a future Internet architecture. In this paper we propose a building block interaction model that can be used to build highly flexible and evolvable network architectures. The paper also explains how the interaction model can be used as a basis for automatic protocol selection and composition.

DANCE: dynamic application oriented network services

The explicit usage of protocols in applications is common practice, but restricts the provided communication service. The dynamic utilization of more suitable protocols or taking into account specific user requirements is either hard to realize or even impossible. This work introduces a model which provides a service oriented view to a communication sub system. Its goal is to find the most suitable service provider. Therefore, service providers are selected dynamically at run time. This enables to take into account the requirements of both the application and the user as well as information about the current platform and network environment. Thus applications are able to benefit from uncommon protocols wherever such protocols make sense and are available. Otherwise standard protocols would be used.