The Internet has led to the creation of a digital society, where (almost) everything is connected and is accessible from anywhere. However, despite their widespread adoption, traditional IP networks are complex and very hard to manage. It is both difficult to configure the network according to predefined policies, and to reconfigure it to respond to faults, load, and changes. To make matters even more difficult, current networks are also vertically integrated: the control and data planes are bundled together. Software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging paradigm that promises to change this state of affairs, by breaking vertical integration, separating the network's control logic from the underlying routers and switches, promoting (logical) centralization of network control, and introducing the ability to program the network. The separation of concerns, introduced between the definition of network policies, their implementation in switching hardware, and the forwarding of traffic, is key to the desired flexibility: by breaking the network control problem into tractable pieces, SDN makes it easier to create and introduce new abstractions in networking, simplifying network management and facilitating network evolution. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on SDN. We start by introducing the motivation for SDN, explain its main concepts and how it differs from traditional networking, its roots, and the standardization activities regarding this novel paradigm. Next, we present the key building blocks of an SDN infrastructure using a bottom-up, layered approach. We provide an in-depth analysis of the hardware infrastructure, southbound and northbound application programming interfaces (APIs), network virtualization layers, network operating systems (SDN controllers), network programming languages, and network applications. We also look at cross-layer problems such as debugging and troubleshooting. In an effort to anticipate the future evolution of this new paradigm, we discuss the main ongoing research efforts and challenges of SDN. In particular, we address the design of switches and control platforms—with a focus on aspects such as resiliency, scalability, performance, security, and dependability—as well as new opportunities for carrier transport networks and cloud providers. Last but not least, we analyze the position of SDN as a key enabler of a software-defined environment.

https://publications.uni.lu/bitstream/10993/20596/1/survey_on_SDN.pdf

Software-Defined Networking: A Comprehensive Survey

A fundamental problem that confronts peer-to-peer applications is the efficient location of the node that stores a desired data item. This paper presents Chord, a distributed lookup protocol that addresses this problem. Chord provides support for just one operation: given a key, it maps the key onto a node. Data location can be easily implemented on top of Chord by associating a key with each data item, and storing the key/data pair at the node to which the key maps. Chord adapts efficiently as nodes join and leave the system, and can answer queries even if the system is continuously changing. Results from theoretical analysis and simulations show that Chord is scalable: Communication cost and the state maintained by each node scale logarithmically with the number of Chord nodes.

/pdf/chord-a-scalable-peer-to-peer-lookup-protocol-for-internet-3kpdq1okoa.pdf

Chord: a scalable peer-to-peer lookup protocol for Internet applications

In this paper, we review the background and state-of-the-art of big data. We first introduce the general background of big data and review related technologies, such as could computing, Internet of Things, data centers, and Hadoop. We then focus on the four phases of the value chain of big data, i.e., data generation, data acquisition, data storage, and data analysis. For each phase, we introduce the general background, discuss the technical challenges, and review the latest advances. We finally examine the several representative applications of big data, including enterprise management, Internet of Things, online social networks, medial applications, collective intelligence, and smart grid. These discussions aim to provide a comprehensive overview and big-picture to readers of this exciting area. This survey is concluded with a discussion of open problems and future directions.

Big Data: A Survey

Although there is tremendous interest in designing improved networks for data centers, very little is known about the network-level traffic characteristics of data centers today. In this paper, we conduct an empirical study of the network traffic in 10 data centers belonging to three different categories, including university, enterprise campus, and cloud data centers. Our definition of cloud data centers includes not only data centers employed by large online service providers offering Internet-facing applications but also data centers used to host data-intensive (MapReduce style) applications). We collect and analyze SNMP statistics, topology and packet-level traces. We examine the range of applications deployed in these data centers and their placement, the flow-level and packet-level transmission properties of these applications, and their impact on network and link utilizations, congestion and packet drops. We describe the implications of the observed traffic patterns for data center internal traffic engineering as well as for recently proposed architectures for data center networks.

/pdf/network-traffic-characteristics-of-data-centers-in-the-wild-43qhxtldqh.pdf

Network traffic characteristics of data centers in the wild

The idea of programmable networks has recently re-gained considerable momentum due to the emergence of the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm. SDN, often referred to as a ''radical new idea in networking'', promises to dramatically simplify network management and enable innovation through network programmability. This paper surveys the state-of-the-art in programmable networks with an emphasis on SDN. We provide a historic perspective of programmable networks from early ideas to recent developments. Then we present the SDN architecture and the OpenFlow standard in particular, discuss current alternatives for implementation and testing of SDN-based protocols and services, examine current and future SDN applications, and explore promising research directions based on the SDN paradigm.

/pdf/a-survey-of-software-defined-networking-past-present-and-6tt309ed7r.pdf

A Survey of Software-Defined Networking: Past, Present, and Future of Programmable Networks

Cloud computing services allow users to lease computing resources from large scale data centers operated by service providers. Using cloud services, users can deploy a wide variety of applications dynamically and on-demand. Most cloud service providers use machine virtualization to provide flexible and cost-effective resource sharing. However, few studies have investigated the impact of machine virtualization in the cloud on networking performance. In this paper, we present a measurement study to characterize the impact of virtualization on the networking performance of the Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) data center. We measure the processor sharing, packet delay, TCP/UDP throughput and packet loss among Amazon EC2 virtual machines. Our results show that even though the data center network is lightly utilized, virtualization can still cause significant throughput instability and abnormal delay variations. We discuss the implications of our findings on several classes of applications.

/pdf/the-impact-of-virtualization-on-network-performance-of-5beo4ych4h.pdf

The Impact of Virtualization on Network Performance of Amazon EC2 Data Center

Data-intensive applications that operate on large volumes of data have motivated a fresh look at the design of data center networks. The first wave of proposals focused on designing pure packet-switched networks that provide full bisection bandwidth. However, these proposals significantly increase network complexity in terms of the number of links and switches required and the restricted rules to wire them up. On the other hand, optical circuit switching technology holds a very large bandwidth advantage over packet switching technology. This fact motivates us to explore how optical circuit switching technology could benefit a data center network. In particular, we propose a hybrid packet and circuit switched data center network architecture (or HyPaC for short) which augments the traditional hierarchy of packet switches with a high speed, low complexity, rack-to-rack optical circuit-switched network to supply high bandwidth to applications. We discuss the fundamental requirements of this hybrid architecture and their design options. To demonstrate the potential benefits of the hybrid architecture, we have built a prototype system called c-Through. c-Through represents a design point where the responsibility for traffic demand estimation and traffic demultiplexing resides in end hosts, making it compatible with existing packet switches. Our emulation experiments show that the hybrid architecture can provide large benefits to unmodified popular data center applications at a modest scale. Furthermore, our experimental experience provides useful insights on the applicability of the hybrid architecture across a range of deployment scenarios.

/pdf/c-through-part-time-optics-in-data-centers-3vwdh1and4.pdf

c-Through: part-time optics in data centers

The fundamental feature of an OpenFlow network is that the controller is responsible for the initial establishment of every flow by contacting related switches. Thus the performance of the controller could be a bottleneck. This paper shows how this fundamental problem is addressed by parallelism. The state of the art OpenFlow controller, called NOX, achieves a simple programming model for control function development by having a single-threaded event-loop. Yet NOX has not considered exploiting parallelism. We propose Maestro which keeps the simple programming model for programmers, and exploits parallelism in every corner together with additional throughput optimization techniques. We experimentally show that the throughput of Maestro can achieve near linear scalability on an eight core server machine. Keywords-OpenFlow, network management, multithreading, performance optimization

https://www.cs.rice.edu/~eugeneng/papers/TR10-11.pdf

Maestro: A System for Scalable OpenFlow Control

In this paper, we report on experience in building and deploying an operational Internet broadcast system based on Overlay Multicast. In over a year, the system has been providing a cost-effective alternative for Internet broadcast, used by over 4000 users spread across multiple continents in home, academic and commercial environments. Technical conferences and special interest groups are the early adopters. Our experience confirms that Overlay Multicast can be easily deployed and can provide reasonably good application performance. The experience has led us to identify first-order issues that are guiding our future efforts and are of importance to any Overlay Multicast protocol or system. Our key contributions are (i) enabling a real Overlay Multicast application and strengthening the case for overlays as a viable architecture for enabling group communication applications on the Internet, (ii) the details in engineering and operating a fully functional streaming system, addressing a wide range of real-world issues that are not typically considered in protocol design studies, and (iii) the data, analysis methodology, and experience that we are able to report given our unique standpoint.

/pdf/early-experience-with-an-internet-broadcast-system-based-on-57sd3xt4up.pdf

Early experience with an internet broadcast system based on overlay multicast

In this paper, we study hierarchical resource management models and algorithms that support both link-sharing and guaranteed real-time services with decoupled delay (priority) and bandwidth allocation. We extend the service curve based QoS model, which defines both delay and bandwidth requirements of a class, to include fairness, which is important for the integration of real-time and hierarchical link-sharing services. The resulting Fair Service Curve link-sharing model formalizes the goals of link-sharing and real-time services and exposes the fundamental tradeoffs between these goals. In particular, with decoupled delay and band-width allocation, it is impossible to simultaneously provide guaranteed real-time service and achieve perfect link-sharing. We propose a novel scheduling algorithm called Hierarchical Fair Service Curve (H-FSC) that approximates the model closely and efficiently. The algorithm always guarantees the performance for leaf classes, thus ensures real-time services, while minimizing the discrepancy between the actual services provided to the interior classes and the services defined by the Fair Service Curve link-sharing model. We have implemented the H-FSC scheduler in the NetBSD environment. By performing simulation and measurement experiments, we evaluate the link-sharing and real-time performances of H-FSC, and determine the computation over-head.

/pdf/a-hierarchical-fair-service-curve-algorithm-for-link-sharing-1p4ruct0ix.pdf

T. S. Eugene Ng

Papers

The Impact of Virtualization on Network Performance of Amazon EC2 Data Center

c-Through: part-time optics in data centers

Maestro: A System for Scalable OpenFlow Control

Early experience with an internet broadcast system based on overlay multicast

A hierarchical fair service curve algorithm for link-sharing, real-time and priority services