Oscar Mauricio Caicedo Rendon

Architectures for Web services access from mobile devices

The success of Web services, an open Internet standards based technology, opens the door to the construction of business applications in the distributed computing world. As Web services are based on open standards, it lets the integration of different kinds of software components, including the wireless and mobile applications. However, the Post PC World, dominated by mobile devices, is not completely ready to Web Service accesss, due to memory and processing constraints. Specific architectures for an easy and clear Web Services integration are required. This article introduces the main aspects related with Web services access from mobile devices. Two proposals are presented for high and low end mobile devices, using Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) Web services API (WSA) and short messaging service (SMS) respectively, which define a specific architecture for each case.

A mashup ecosystem for network management situations

Current network management approaches and their implementations are not intended to address dynamic situations that need rapid delivery of good-enough and comprehensive solutions. In this paper, we introduce a novel mashup ecosystem, called Mashment Ecosystem, that allows Network Administrators to conduct on a Mashment Maker the activities and interactions necessary to provide Mashments. Mashments are mashups aimed to tackle network management situations. We evaluate the Mashment Ecoystem by estimating with the Keystroke-Level Model and measuring in a test scenario the time that Network Administrators take to perform the activities of creating, launching, and publishing Mashments. Similarly, we evaluate the time for retrieving information about a network management situation by using or not Mashments. The evaluation results corroborated that Network Administrators, in our ecosystem, need short-time to deal with network management situations.

Monitoring Virtual Nodes using mashups

Abstract The use of virtualization technologies is one of major trends in computer networks. Up to now, most of monitoring tasks on Virtual Nodes, made up of several system virtualization environments and network virtualization environments, require manual intervention via non-standardized interfaces. Although monitoring based on proprietary command lines and graphical user interfaces may be enough for homogeneous Virtual Nodes, it is certainly not suitable for monitoring, in an integrated way, Virtual Nodes in which, the aforementioned environments use heterogeneous virtualization technologies, both in networks and systems. In this paper, we demonstrate that the mashup technology can be used to carry out the integrated monitoring of heterogeneous Virtual Nodes. In this sense, we present a mashup-based architecture targeted to monitor such type of Virtual Nodes, we introduce a reference implementation of the mashup-based architecture, and we develop on it, three monitoring mashups. The quantitative assessment of these mashups corroborates that they generate low traffic and have short response time. Furthermore, their qualitative assessment reveals that it is feasible to provide flexible and extensible mashups for monitoring Virtual Nodes.

A Mashup-Based Approach for Virtual SDN Management

The Software Defined Networks paradigm aided by the Network Virtualization is a key driver to cope the Internet ossification. There are different proposals to deploy this paradigm, but there is not an integrated or standardized way for the management of networks built with such proposals. In this sense, the network management becomes too complex because multiple solutions must be used by Network Administrators to perform their tasks. In this paper, we introduce a mashup-based approach that allows Network Administrators to customize and combine management solutions, in order to they build composite applications (called SDN Mashups) aiming the integrated management of Virtual Software Defined Networks in heterogeneous environments. We evaluate our approach by building a SDN Mashup for the management of a network slice that uses three distinct Network Operating Systems and by running performance tests, corroborating that the mashup built has small response time.

An Approach to Overcome the Complexity of Network Management Situations by Mashments

The work performed by network administrators to address sudden, dynamic, heterogeneous, and time specific situations that happen in the network management domain is complex. In this paper, we introduce an approach that allows network administrators to overcome the complexity of handling these network management situations (called NMSits). The approach is made up of Mashments that are special mashups used to cope with NMSits, the process to develop and execute Mashments, and the Mashment Maker that supports such model and process. We use IT Service Management metrics to evaluate our approach, measuring the complexity of facing, with and without the Maker, a specific NMS it that occurs in several networks based on the Software Defined Networking paradigm. The evaluation results demonstrate that the complexity decreases when network administrators use our approach to handle NMSits.

A framework for SDN integrated management based on a CIM model and a vertical management plane

The Software-Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm establishes a typical three-plane architecture (i.e., Data, Control, and Application planes) that facilitates the deployment of network functions and simplifies traditional network management tasks. However, SDN lacks an integrated or standardized framework for managing its architecture. Some investigations have addressed such shortage by proposing different solutions that tackle specific management requirements for particular SDN technology instances. This isolated approach forces network administrators to use multiple frameworks to achieve a complete SDN management that is complex and time-consuming in heterogeneous environments. In this paper, we introduce an information model based on the common information model that establishes a technology-agnostic and consistent characterization of the SDN architecture. Such information model represents the core towards building a Management Plane aimed to facilitate the integrated SDN management in heterogeneous environments. To test our information model, we developed a prototype and conducted a performance evaluation in an SDN configuration scenario that deploys different managing technologies. The obtained results provide directions that corroborate the feasibility of our approach (in terms of time-response and network traffic) for configuring heterogeneous SDNs.

Rich dynamic mashments

In network management, significant research efforts have been carried out to automate and facilitate the tasks conducted by network administrators. However, so far, none of these efforts has exploited the opportunities of jointly using the Situation Management discipline and the mashup technology for network management. This paper introduces an approach, called Rich Dynamic Mashments, to facilitate the daily work of network administrators when dealing with unexpected, dynamic, and heterogeneous situations. We have referred to as nmsits to such type of network management situations (e.g., a sudden packet loss in a core router of a network backbone and an unforeseen slowness in data transmission over a link between virtual routers) and mashments to tunable mashups that use Situation Management for conducting network management tasks. The proposed approach is made up by the models of nmsits and mashments, the mechanisms to automatically recognize nmsits and dynamically compose mashments, and the architecture supporting these models and mechanisms. We further implement a prototype of our approach and conduct an extensive analysis on networks based on the Software-Defined Networking paradigm. The analysis results have provided directions and evidence that corroborate the feasibility of using Rich Dynamic Mashments as an effective approach for network management in terms of time-recognition, time-composition, time-consuming, time-response, and network traffic.

App2net: A platform to transfer and configure applications on programmable virtual networks

In programmable virtual networks, simple tasks, like installing software, can be extremely complex. This complexity occurs mainly because the code transfer and initial functional settings in network execution environments are not automated. In addition, the same tasks have different requirements in each service lifecycle stage. In this sense, we propose the App2net platform for enabling the transfer and configuration of network applications in programmable virtual networks that use heterogeneous execution environments. We also propose a taxonomy for grouping code transfer techniques and, based on such techniques, we develop models for code transfer. A prototype has been implemented and tested on realistic network topologies commonly found on the Internet. Results allow us to identify which models improve code transfer consuming fewer resources, regarding service lifecycle stages and network topologies.

Towards automated composition of convergent services: A survey

Abstract A convergent service is defined as a service that exploits the convergence of communication networks and at the same time takes advantage of features of the Web. Nowadays, building up a convergent service is not trivial, because although there are significant approaches that aim to automate the service composition at different levels in the Web and Telecom domains, selecting the most appropriate approach for specific case studies is complex due to the big amount of involved information and the lack of technical considerations. Thus, in this paper, we identify the relevant phases for convergent service composition and explore the existing approaches and their associated technologies for automating each phase. For each technology, the maturity and results are analysed, as well as the elements that must be considered prior to their application in real scenarios. Furthermore, we provide research directions related to the convergent service composition phases.

A Reuse-Based Approach to Promote the Adoption of Visualizations for Network Management Tasks

Information Visualization (InfoVis) is a powerful tool to assist network administrators in daily tasks, and several authors report investigations about visualization techniques for network management. However, we have observed a fundamental issue that has not been addressed yet: how to promote the adoption of visualizations by network administrators, focusing on improving productivity and reducing costs? We claim that, in general, administrators do not have expertise in the InfoVis domain. Thus, the adoption of visualizations tends to be expensive and decrease the productivity of administrators, in special, because they lose focus on their core tasks. To overcome the raised issue, in this paper, we introduce a reuse-based approach (named as VisNSM) that aims to promote and encourage the adoption of visualizations for network management. To analyze and evaluate the feasibility of VisNSM, we have conducted a case study, and the obtained results show that our approach can significantly reduce costs and improve productivity.