Paul Mueller

A Requirement-Based Socket API for a Transition to Future Internet Architectures

The existing application programming interface (API) between applications and the network architecture is one reason that it is hard to deploy novel protocols into the network architecture. Coupling between applications and underlying protocols makes it almost impossible to change one without changing the other. Coupling can be loosened or resolved by not involving applications in protocols implementation details but, only in functionality necessary to establish a communication. This way underlying network can deploy novel or updated implementations of a functionality without needing to change the applications. Using intermediate abstraction layers is an approach to break the dependency between applications and network protocols. One of the major goals in future internet architectures is to be flexible enough to adapt to applications requirements. In this paper, a requirement-based API is presented as an abstraction layer to make applications independent of network mechanisms, which also helps in the transition to future internet architectures.

GENICloud and transcloud

In this paper, we argue that federation of cloud systems requires a standard API for users to create, manage, and destroy virtual objects, and a standard naming scheme for virtual objects. We introduce an existing API for this purpose, the Slice-Based Federation Architecture, and demonstrate that it can be implemented on a number of existing cloud management systems. We introduce a simple naming scheme for virtual objects, and discuss its implementation.

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.

A description language for communication services of future network architectures

For selecting and composing communication services to create a networking stack in a flexible future network architecture, service descriptions are required. In this paper, we propose a language for describing communication services. The language has been implemented by using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and evaluated by describing a set of dependencies and a complete service. Irrespective of the selection and composition methods at design time, deployment time and runtime, the language can be used any place where a networking service description is required.

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.

Functional Composition and Its Challenges

Functional composition is an approach for a flexible network architecture which enables a customized combination of functionality with respect to application requirements. Functional composition overcomes the inflexibility of the current Internet architecture and facilitates the management of functionality within the network. Several projects have addressed this topic with different aspects, in this paper several main challenges of network functional composition are identified and discussed.

Europe’s Mission in Next-Generation Networking with Special Emphasis on the German-Lab Project

In this contribution we give a rough overview of the European and particularly the German approaches to next generation networking, or more specifically Future-Internet Research and Experimentation. We can identify three different classes of projects in these approaches. The first class is related to basic research that is covered by projects within Objective 1.1 (Future Networks) of Framework Program 7 (FP7) of the European Commission (EC). This can be compared to the Future-Internet Architecture (FIA) projects of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US. The second class of projects is related to experimentation. The FIRE (Future-Internet Research and Experimentation) projects of the EC can be considered in this context, which are more or less comparable to the GENI approach. The third class is more application-driven and covered by the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects of the EC. This class of projects can be compared to the USIgnite program. A slightly different approach was taken by the German-Lab (G-Lab) project where basic research projects and experimentation were smoothly intertwined, and also covered application-oriented aspects like mobility, virtualization or security in its second phase. All these projects from the EU, and the G-Lab approach will be described in more detail throughout this contribution, based on typical examples.

The Topology Management Tool — A demonstration

In the last years a lot of holistic research efforts investigate concepts and technologies for future networks. All of these research projects need ways to evaluate their ideas and results. Experimental facilities aim to provide a realistic environment for experiments using emulation techniques.