Sergi Figuerola

Converged Optical Network Infrastructures in Support of Future Internet and Grid Services Using IaaS to Reduce GHG Emissions

With the rapid and growing volume of green house gas (GHG) we may soon cross a tipping point where there may be dramatic climatic catastrophes such that governments will be forced to order the shutdown of coal powered electrical production or mandate carbon neutrality across all sectors of society. On the other hand, in the event of such a development, the future Internet and Grid infrastructure may become absolutely essential for communications and a replacement for travel and for the delivery of critical services such as health, education, research, etc. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) produce 2%-3% of the worlds GHG emissions through the consumption of electricity largely produced by coal plants. This rate of GHG is expected to double in the next few years and is clearly unsustainable. Therefore it is critical that any future Internet and Grid infrastructure be designed not only to survive, but also be sustained, through an age where no additional GHG emissions will be allowed. Converged optical networks, Grid and cloud services hosted at zero carbon renewable energy sites using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) where each network and computer element is represented to a user as a configurable virtual service will allow for the deployment of what are often referred to as ldquofollow the sun or follow the windrdquo optical network and Grid architectures where the network and Grid topology and Grid resources availability and location are constantly changing depending on local availability states of the wind or sun.

With evolution for revolution: managing FEDERICA for future Internet research

Over the last two decades the importance of data networking for human beings and systems has increased beyond any expectation in size, complexity, and impact on society. Today, technology offers the ubiquitous and constant possibility of being connected to the Internet at a wide range of speeds. Traditional management solutions have up to now followed an evolutionary path, although the scale of the Internet and emerging novel architectures such as peer-to-peer, ad hoc networks, as well as virtualization-capable network infrastructures require focused and possibly revolutionary changes in management approaches. This article elaborates on challenges posed by the renaissance of virtualization as experienced in the planning, development, and operation of the FEDERICA infrastructure. The European Community cofunded project FEDERICA, like other worldwide initiatives such as FIND/GENI in the United States, NWGN in Japan, and the FIRE program in Europe, is supporting the development of the future Internet. FEDERICA extends the virtualization capabilities of the current hardware and software to provide a flexible infrastructure to host disruptive testing by networking researchers.

UCLPv2: a network virtualization framework built on web services [web services in telecommunications, part II]

User controlled LightPaths version 2 provides a network virtualization framework upon which communities of users can build their own services or applications without dealing with the complexities of the underlying network technologies and still can maintain the functionality that the network provides. The system has been designed as a service-oriented architecture where Web services and Web services workflows are the basic building blocks. Articulated private networks are presented as the first services built upon the UCLPv2 network virtualization middleware. APNs can be considered as a next generation VPN where a user can create a complex, multi-domain network topology by binding together network resources, computers, time slices, and virtual or real routing and/or switching nodes. A first implementation of the UCLPv2 software was deployed on CAnet 4, Canadas research and education network, and currently, it is being used by Environment Canada, a federal government department, to enable an APN that links its research facilities across the country.

Optimal allocation of virtual optical networks for the future internet

Optical network infrastructures can be partitioned into multiple parallel, dedicated virtual networks for a physical infrastructure sharing purpose. However, different transport technologies may impact in both the amount and the characteristics of the different virtual instances that can be built on top of a single physical infrastructure. To analyse the impact of the transport technology in this regard, we present exact Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulations that address the off-line problem of optimally allocate a set of virtual networks in two kind of substrates: wavelength switching and spectrum switching. Both formulations serve the purpose to provide opaque transport services from the virtual network point of view, where electronic terminations are assumed in the virtual network nodes. We carry out a series of experiments to validate the presented formulations and determine which is the impact of both substrates in the number of virtual networks that can be optimally allocated in the transport network.

Fiber-to-the-Home Technologies

Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Access Techniques. 3. Protocols And Standardisation. 4. Projects & Field Trials. 5. Components. 6. Transmission Impairments And Monitoring. 7. Economic Case Study. References.

Planning of dynamic virtual optical cloud infrastructures: The GEYSERS approach

This article focuses on planning and replanning of virtual infrastructures over optical cloud infrastructures comprising integrated optical network and IT resources. This concept has been developed in the context of the European project GEYSERS. GEYSERS has proposed a novel multi-layer architecture, described in detail, that employs optical networking capable of provisioning optical network and IT resources for end-to-end cloud service delivery. The procedures required to perform virtual infrastructure planning and replanning at the different architecture layers are also detailed. An optimization scheme suitable to dynamically plan and replan virtual infrastructures is presented and compared to conventional approaches, and the benefits of dynamic replanning are discussed and quantified. The final project demonstration, focusing on planning, replanning, and dynamically establishing virtual infrastructures over the physical resources, is presented, while some emulation results are provided to further evaluate the performance of the GEYSERS solution.

Bringing optical networks to the cloud: an architecture for a sustainable future internet

Over the years, the Internet has become a central tool for society. The extent of its growth and usage raises critical issues associated with its design principles that need to be addressed before it reaches its limits. Many emerging applications have increasing requirements in terms of bandwidth, QoS and manageability. Moreover, applications such as Cloud computing and 3D-video streaming require optimization and combined provisioning of different infrastructure resources and services that include both network and IT resources. Demands become more and more sporadic and variable, making dynamic provisioning highly needed. As a huge energy consumer, the Internet also needs to be energyconscious. Applications critical for society and business (e.g., health, finance) or for real-time communication demand a highly reliable, robust and secure Internet. Finally, the future Internet needs to support sustainable business models, in order to drive innovation, competition, and research. Combining optical network technology with Cloud technology is key to addressing the future Internet/Cloud challenges. In this context, we propose an integrated approach: realizing the convergence of the IT- and optical-network-provisioning models will help bring revenues to all the actors involved in the value chain. Premium advanced network and IT managed services integrated with the vanilla Internet will ensure a sustainable future Internet/Cloud enabling demanding and ubiquitous applications to coexist.

Service-Oriented Virtual Private Networks for Grid Applications

Emerging grid applications desire not only high bandwidth but also the ability to control the topology and traffic engineering of the underlying networks, through Web service interfaces. To achieve that goal, we present an advanced user controlled lightpath provisioning (UCLP) system, where network resources and grid resources are both modeled as Web services and are seamlessly integrated into workflows.

Extending the Argia software with a dynamic optical multicast service to support high performance digital media

Date-intensive high performance, high quality digital media traffic cannot be accommodated on traditional layer 3 networks. Alternative technologies to transmit this traffic through the network, such as optical multicast, are being investigated. A prototype of an optical multicast service was showcased during the 7th annual LambdaGrid Workshop celebrated in Prague last September. The prototype used time division multiplexing (TDM) technology as the data plane and user controlled lightpaths (UCLP) as the control/service plane. This paper describes the extensions that were done to the UCLP software to provide the dynamic optical multicast service and shows the results achieved during the Prague demonstration.

Evolution of the user controlled lightpath provisioning system

New network management tools such as user controlled lightpath provisioning, UCLP, have appeared to allow institutions and research centres manage their own dark fiber and wavelength networks. Early versions of UCLP have been released and its functionality has been demonstrated; but two main drawbacks have been identified: only one switch model is supported and there is no topology discovery/routing schema. The work presented in this paper overcomes these limitations.