Fabio Baroncelli

A novel service oriented framework for automatically switched transport network

In the last few years customers are willing to use broadband connections to support concurrent and heterogeneous services. At the same time telecommunication operators would like to use the same transport infrastructure (possibly with minor changes) to deliver these emerging services in an integrated way. To this purpose, enhancements of the existing ASTN architecture are proposed. Specifically the intelligent network conceptual model is used to introduce an intermediate layer, named service layer, to interface the network customer to a service-independent transport network. The service plane has the task of masking the transport-related implementation details from the abstract request of a service by a customer. In addition, the service layer inherently suggests the separation of the telecommunication operators role in two distinct activities: the network provider and the service provider. The proposed service-oriented architecture is described in terms of functional blocks and interfaces and it consists in an open framework subjects to be implemented using whatever technology, both hardware and software. For a proof of concept, a testbed, named SOON (service oriented optical networks) running the newly developed service-oriented software modules has been implemented as an example of direct interaction between customer and optical network for a dynamic service request. The validation of the architecture is done by demonstrating a working service, namely a virtual private network (VPN) service.

Network virtualization for cloud computing

Cloud computing enables a transparent access to information technology (IT) services such that the users do not need to know the location and characteristics of the relevant resources. While IT resource virtualization and service abstraction have been widely investigated, data transport within the cloud and its efficient control have not received much attention in the technical literature. In fact, connectivity is, itself, a service that contributes to the overall performance of the cloud. This paper introduces a novel classification of the Network as a Service (NaaS) such that it can be orchestrated with other cloud services. Then, it proposes a network virtualization platform (NVP) as the mediation layer able to provide NaaS to cloud computing by exploiting the functionality provided by control plane (CP)-enabled networks. In particular, the proposed NVP maps the end-point addresses and perceived Quality of Service parameters of a NaaS requests in the parameters characterizing the connectivity as viewed by transport networks using the information obtained from the CP at the boundary of the network. The NVP uses these parameters to fulfill connectivity requests to the CP. Finally, this paper presents a complete design from both the software implementation and network signaling perspective of two use cases in which NaaS is involved as stand-alone facility for the connectivity service provisioning or is combined with other cloud services for a storage service provisioning.

Application-Driven Control of Network Resources in Multiservice Optical Networks

Network architectures whose resources are open to control by user applications require the design of a service platform that performs resource virtualization and service abstraction. While a few commercial architectures for packet networks already exist, service platforms for connection-oriented networks (e.g., optical) are currently under investigation. After introducing the service concept in the optical network scenario, the paper proposes and experimentally validates a service platform for application-driven resource management in a GMPLS-controlled optical network. Specifically, upon a service request issued by an application, the proposed service platform performs admission control and enforces proper traffic policies to ensure the quality of service (QoS) required by the application data flow. This enables QoS control on a per-application basis while preserving scalability and timing of application signaling. The experimental results show that service setup is realized in a time of the order of a few seconds. Scalability remarks show that this order of magnitude can also be guaranteed for networks of larger size.

A service oriented network architecture suitable for global grid computing

Grid computing frameworks built on top of the TCP/IP protocol stack are efficient in local area net- works (LANs), where almost dedicated network resources are available. Supporting distributed grid computing applications connected by Wide Area Networks (WANs), i.e. global grid computing, represent a more challenging task that requires the availability of network protocols capable of guaranteeing Quality of Service (QoS). In this paper we propose to utilize a Service Oriented Automatic Switched Transport Network (SO-ASTN) as the transport infrastructure for supporting global grid computing. The SO-ASTN consists of the addition to the plain ASTN of an extra layer, namely the service plane, designed according to the ITU-T Intelligent Network Conceptual Model. The main novelty of the architecture is the network awareness that grid computing applications are provided with. Global grid computing applications can therefore experience LAN QoS level in a Wide Area Network (WAN) scenario. We introduce a testbed, named SOON (Service Oriented Op- tical Network), for the evaluation of the proposed architecture. As network awareness use case we propose an implementation, in SOON, of the virtual topology request by utilizing Extensible Markup Language (XML) as an information exchange format.

Service-Oriented Multigranular Optical Network Architecture for Clouds

This paper presents a novel service-oriented network architecture to bridge the informational gap between user applications and optical networks providing technology-agnostic multigranular optical network services for clouds. A mediation layer (service plane) between user applications and network control is proposed to facilitate a mapping process between user application requests and the network services. At the network level, a multigranular optical network (MGON) is proposed and implemented to support dynamic wavelength and subwavelength granularities with different transport formats [optical burst switched (OBS), optical burst transport (OBT)], reservation protocols (one-way, two-way), and different quality-of-service (QoS) levels per service type. The service-oriented multigranular optical network has been designed, implemented, and demonstrated on an experimental testbed. The testbed consists of service and network resource provisioning, service abstraction, and network resource virtualization. The service-to-network interoperation is provided by means of a gateway that maps service requests to technology-specific parameters and a common signaling channel for both service and network resource provisioning.

A distributed signaling for the provisioning of on-demand VPN services in transport networks

Applications such as grid computing, storage or video-on-demand may need the provisioning by a transport network of ad-hoc secure end-to-end connections with guaranteed bandwidth, latency and resilience. The service plane (SP) is a functional layer, proposed by the authors, that enhances the automatically switched transport network (ASTN) for the provisioning of network services with a level of abstraction suitable for being invoked by applications. This paper details the distributed signaling running in the SP that implements the SP service abstraction and network resources virtualization capabilities. In particular, it focuses on the design of the signaling architecture among the centralized and distributed entities of the SP for the provisioning of on-demand Layer 3 (L3) virtual private network (VPN). A specific SP implementation is also presented and it is demonstrated by a testbed in which a video client application requests an L3 VPN in order to be connected with a video server across an MPLS-based transport network.

Service-oriented multi-granular optical network testbed

This paper presents a service-oriented multi-granular multi-format network demonstrator. Service-oriented wavelength and sub-wavelengthnetwork connection establishment is being demonstrated by utilising SOON-JIT protocols to support VoD HD and Quad-HD multi-media applications.

Supporting control plane-enabled transport networks within ITU-T Next Generation Network (NGN) architecture

Next generation network (NGN) Release 1 is the ITU- T architecture for packet-switched networks that supports the provisioning of broadband and QoS-guaranteed multimedia services, such as Video on Demand and TV streaming, independently of the underlying network transport technologies. Control plane (CP)-enabled transport networks might be a candidate to support NGN services in the Metro/Core segment since are able to setup automatically connections. Typically, these networks are based on automatically switched optical network (ASON) architecture and/or on generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) protocol suite. This work presents a snapshot of the current status of standardization reached by the NGN architecture and proposes an NGN enhancement to include CP-enable transport networks among the NGN supported transport technologies. An NGN prototype implementing the proposed architectural enhancement is also presented as a proof of concept. The prototype highlights how set-up multimedia over IP (MoIP) services using GMPLS-controlled transport objects.

Data-plane architectures for multi-granular OBS network

This paper presents multi-granular OBS node architectures able to manage multiservice traffic according to the required Quality-of-Service (QoS). These nodes exploit fast and slow switching devices to obtain scalable and cost-effective network.

Experimental validation of a service oriented network architecture applied to global grid computing

The object of this paper is the experimental demonstration that the recently proposed the service oriented automatic switched transport network (SO-ASTN) is an enabling technology to support global grid computing. The SO-ASTN can be considered as an improvement of the ASTN architecture by the addition of an extra functional layer, namely service plane, designed according to the ITU-T intelligent network conceptual model. SO-ASTN architecture provides network awareness to global grid computing applications such that the QoS level of a LAN can be translated to a wide area network (WAN) scenario. An implementation of the service plane is presented highlighting the software architecture and the technology details. In particular it is applied to a testbed that implement a virtual topology request from a grid application.