Phil Yonghui Wang

Active networking on a programmable networking platform

Current active networks research projects are mainly realized in software-based host systems since commercial network devices lack required networking programmability. This paper studies the active networking approach using the Openet programmable networking platform. Openet comprises ORE (Oplet Runtime Environment) and hierarchical services from low-level systems to high-level applications, and provides a neutral service-based programmability to network devices. Moreover, Openet can have customer network services including active networks based services deployed on current commercial network platforms. We demonstrate the active networking with commercial network devices by deploying the active network service ANTS onto the Accelar routing switches. The performance of active network communication is examined by the experiment in an Accelar-routed active net and compared with regular non-active network communication. The experimental result reveals that Java network I/O is a bottleneck of enhancing capsule processing capability and ends up a look at what active network services are applicable to current commercial network platforms. Finally we present observations and future works about active networking through the Openet platform.

Enabling active flow manipulation in silicon-based network forwarding engines

A significant challenge in todays Internet is the ability to efficiently incorporate customizable network intelligence in commercial high performance network devices. This paper tackles the challenge by introducing the Active Flow Manipulation (AFM) mechanism, a key enabling technology of the programmable networking platform Openet. AFM enhances the control intelligence of network devices through programmability. With AFM, customer network services can exercise active network control by identifying specific flows and applying particular actions thereby altering network behavior in real-time. These services are offered through Openet dynamically deployed in the CPU-based control plane of the network node and are closely coupled with the silicon-based forwarding plane, without negatively impacting forwarding performance. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated by four experimental applications on commercial network nodes.

Intelligent network services through active flow manipulation

A significant challenge in todays Internet is the ability to efficiently introduce intelligent network services into commercial high-performance network devices. This paper tackles the challenge by introducing the active flow manipulation (AFM) mechanism, a key enabling technology of the programmable networking platform Openet. AFM enhances the control functionality of network devices through programmability. With AFM, customer network services can exercise intelligent network control by identifying specific flows and applying particular actions thereby altering their behavior in real time. These services are dynamically deployed in the CPU-based control plane and are closely coupled with the silicon-based forwarding plane of the network node, without negatively impacting forwarding performance. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated by several experimental applications on a commercial network node.

Enabling Active Networks Services on A Gigabit Routing Switch

Current Active Networks (AN) research projects are mainly realized in software based network systems since available hardware lacks networking programmability. This paper studies the deployment of AN services on the Accelar Gigabit Routing Switch. The Accelar is one of the Nortel Networks programmable networking products, and uses the ASIC technology to reach the high-speed forwarding capability. The Oplet Running Environment (ORE) and the Java Forwarding (JFWD) API provide the programmable interface to the Accelar. The ORE is a pure Java environment that enables the Accelar to download and initiate network services dynamically. Using the oplet encapsulation, AN execution environments (EEs) can be deployed on the Accelar as ORE services. The JFWD API provides access to underlying hardware resources to perform network operations such as diverting packets and altering packet processing.

An extensible, programmable, commercial-grade platform for internet service architecture

With their increasingly sophisticated applications, users promote the notion that there is more to a network (be it an intranet, or the Internet) than mere L1-3 connectivity. In what shapes a next generation service contract between users and the network, users want the network to offer services that are as ubiquitous and dependable as dial tones. Typical services include application-aware firewalls, directories, nomadic support, virtualization, load balancing, alternate site failover, etc. To fulfill this vision, a service architecture is needed. That is, an architecture wherein end-to-end services compose, on-demand, across network domains, technologies, and administration boundaries. Such an architecture requires programmable mechanisms and programmable network devices for service enabling, service negotiation, and service management. The bedrock foundation of the architecture, and also the key focus of the paper, is an open-source programmable service platform that is explicitly designed to best exploit commercial-grade network devices. The platform predicates a full separation of concerns, in that control-intensive operations are executed in software, whereas, data-intensive operations are delegated to hardware. This way, the platform is capable of performing wire-speed content filtering, and activating network services according to the state of data and control flows. The paper describes the platform and some distinguishing services realized on the platform.

Edge device multi-unicasting for video streaming

After a decade of research and development, IP multicast has still not been deployed widely in the global Internet due to many open technical issues: lack of admission control, poorly scaled with large number of groups, and requiring substantial infrastructure modifications. To provide the benefits of IP multicast without requiring direct router support of the presence of a physical broadcast medium, various application level multicast (ALM) models have been attempted. However, there are still several problems with ALM: unnecessary coupling between an application and its multicasting supports, bottleneck problem at network access links and considerable processing power required at the end nodes to support ALM mechanisms. This paper proposes an architecture to address these problems by delegating application-multicasting support mechanisms to smart edge devices associated with the application end nodes. The architecture gives rise to an interesting edge device any-casting technology that lies between the IP-multicasting and the application layer multicasting and enjoys the benefits of both. Furthermore, the architecture may provide sufficient cost-benefit for adoption by service providers. The paper presents initial results obtained from the implementation of a video streaming application over the testbed that implements the proposed architecture.

QoSME: toward QoS management and guarantees

QoS (quality of service) is an emergent necessitate of the next-generation Internet, and has been widely investigated by the computer and communication community. QoSME (Quality of Service Management Environment) is presented as a general solution of end application QoS management guarantees. Some related research works demonstrate that delivering QoS to end applications easily is in high demand. The QoSME architecture employs the current prevailing network protocols and technologies (e.g., IP and ATM), and incurs a QoS environment that interfaces end applications with underlying QoS provisioning services and manages application QoS through monitoring real-time network performances. The QoSME system model is deployed with its system components including QoSockets (the socket-like runtime environment), QoS MIB (management information bases), SNMP (simple network management protocol) agents and API (application programming interfaces). Two typical QoS-demanding multimedia applications built using QoSME are introduced. Finally, some conclusions and future works are presented.