Maurício F. Magalhães

Virtual routers as a service: the RouteFlow approach leveraging software-defined networks

The networking equipment market is being transformed by the need for greater openness and flexibility, not only for research purposes but also for in-house innovation by the equipment owners. In contrast to networking gear following the model of computer mainframes, where closed software runs on proprietary hardware, the software-defined networking approach effectively decouples the data from the control plane via an open API (i.e., OpenFlow protocol) that allows the (remote) control of packet forwarding engines. Motivated by this scenario, we propose RouteFlow, a commodity routing architecture that combines the line-rate performance of commercial hardware with the flexibility of open-source routing stacks (remotely) running on general purpose computers. The outcome is a novel point in the design space of commodity routing solutions with far-reaching implications towards virtual routers and IP networks as a service. This paper documents the progress achieved in the design and prototype implementation of our work and outlines our research agenda that calls for a community-driven approach.

REAL: a virtual laboratory for mobile robot experiments

This paper presents REAL (Remotely Accessible Laboratory), a virtual laboratory accessible through the Internet. The objective of REAL is to provide remote access to a mobile robots infrastructure. REAL has been implemented as a new generation telecommunication service, not as a commonplace World Wide Web (WWW) application. As such, it employs a sophisticated access framework, a communication infrastructure able to support multimedia flows, and a component-based software construction. The architecture of REAL relies on open standards, such as WWW and its related technologies (HTTP, HTML, XML, Java, etc.) and a common object request broker architecture (CORBA).

Towards a new generation of information-oriented internetworking architectures

In response to the limitations of the Internet architecture when used for applications for which it was not originally designed, a series of clean slate efforts have emerged to shape the so-called future Internet. Recently, visionary voices have advised a shift in the networking problem under research, moving from seamless host-reachability to internetworking of information. We contribute to the healthy debate on future Internet design and discuss ongoing information oriented efforts. Inspired by recent works in Bloom-filterlike data structures, we propose the SPSwitch as a novel switching engine to make wire speed forwarding decisions on flat information labels. We address part of the scalability issues in a data-oriented forwarding layer by trading overdeliveries for state reduction and line speed operations.

Distributed approaches for impairment-aware routing and wavelength assignment algorithms in GMPLS networks

This work proposes two different distributed strategies for provisioning lightpaths in the presence of optical physical-layer impairments in GMPLS networks. The first approach is a more classical one, which introduces new extensions to the OSPF-TE routing protocol. The other approach makes use of an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm to adaptively calculate routes in the network by actively monitoring the aggregate optical power of each link. By using an analytical model to incorporate the constraints of the Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) noise of the optical amplifiers into the routing, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approaches by means of an illustrative numerical example.

REAL-a virtual laboratory built from software components

This paper presents the Remotely Accessible Laboratory (REAL), a virtual laboratory accessible through the Internet. REAL allows a remote user to manipulate a mobile robot in a mode of interaction suitable to his or her level of expertise. A basic mode of interaction, dedicated to users with limited knowledge of robotics, supports interaction via teleoperation. In a more advanced level of interaction, expert users can plan and execute complex robotics experiments that exploit the full capabilities of the robot. In this mode of interaction, experiments in the field of autonomous navigation, environmental mapping, sensor fusion, mission planning, and robot control can be performed. Finally, a third mode of interaction allows a set of trainees to follow the interactions conducted by an instructor. The architecture of REAL departs from the commonplace World Wide Web applications, since it employs a sophisticated software architecture based on software components. This architecture presents a high degree of reusability that future developments in the field of Internet robots and virtual laboratories can take advantage of.

In-packet Bloom filters: Design and networking applications

The Bloom filter (BF) is a well-known randomized data structure that answers set membership queries with some probability of false positives. In an attempt to solve many of the limitations of current network architectures, some recent proposals rely on including small BFs in packet headers for routing, security, accountability or other purposes that move application states into the packets themselves. In this paper, we consider the design of such in-packet Bloom filters (iBF). Our main contributions are exploring the design space and the evaluation of a series of extensions (1) to increase the practicality and performance of iBFs, (2) to enable false-negative-free element deletion, and (3) to provide security enhancements. In addition to the theoretical estimates, extensive simulations of the multiple design parameters and implementation alternatives validate the usefulness of the extensions, providing for enhanced and novel iBF networking applications.

Content Routers: Fetching Data on Network Path

In this paper we present an in-network caching architecture based on content routers to improve the traffic efficiency in the Internet. The main idea is to provide a forwarding fabric where data requests are forwarded towards the closest caches in the network path. Conversely, data chunks from the servers are cached in the content routers along the path, serving further requests. In addition, content routers store a neighborhood mapping of available routers, leveraging resource discovery in the network proximity. Some benefits of the architecture include multi-source content retrieval, better traffic efficiency and gradual deployment. As a proof-of-concept, we implemented a content router prototype and evaluated it in different scenarios comparing the bandwidth, latency and neighborhood search. The experimental results show that the content router can leverage multi-source content retrieval with bandwidth reduction without incurring in increased latency.

Mini-CCNx: fast prototyping for named data networking

Experimental research in Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is crucial to the evaluation of new architectural proposals that bring named pieces of content as the main element of networks. This paper presents a new fast prototyping tool for the NDN (Named Data Networking) model, Mini-CCNx, that aims at filling an existing gap in generally available experimental platforms. Using container-based emulation and resource isolation techniques, Mini-CCNx appears as a flexible, scalable, high-fidelity, and low-cost tool that enables rich experimentation with hundreds of emulated NDN nodes in a commodity laptop.

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.