To pave the way towards disclosing the full potential of 5G networking, emerging Mobile Edge Computing techniques are gaining momentum in both academic and industrial research as a means to enhance infrastructure scalability and reliability by moving control functions close to the edge of the network. After the promising results under achievement within the EU Mobile Cloud Networking project, we claim the suitability of deploying Evolved Packet Core (EPC) support solutions as a Service (EPCaaS) over a uniform edge cloud infrastructure of Edge Nodes, by following the concepts of Network Function Virtualization (NFV). This paper originally focuses on the support needed for efficient elasticity provisioning of EPCaaS stateful components, by proposing novel solutions for effective subscribers' state management in quality-constrained 5G scenarios. In particular, to favor flexibility and high-availability against network function failures, we have developed a state sharing mechanism across different data centers even in presence of firewall/network encapsulation. In addition, our solution can dynamically select which state portions should be shared and to which Edge Nodes. The reported experimental results, measured over the widely recognized Open5GCore testbed, demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the approach, as well as its capability to satisfy "carrier-grade" quality requirements while ensuring good elasticity and scalability.

Efficient Exploitation of Mobile Edge Computing for Virtualized 5G in EPC Architectures

Recently, Content Delivery Networks (CDN) have become more and more popular. The technology itself is ahead of academic research in this area. Several dimensions of the technology have not been adequately investigated by academia. These dimensions include outline management, security, and standardization. Discovering and highlighting aspects of this technology that may have or have not been covered by academic research is the first step toward helping academia bridge the gap with industry or even go one step further to lead industry in the right direction. This suggests a comprehensive survey on research works in this regard. The literature in this area has already come up with some surveys and taxonomies, but some of them are outdated or do not cover every aspect of CDN while others fail to detect existing trends or to develop a holistic roadmap for research on the technology. Furthermore, none of the existing surveys aim at enlightening the dark aspects of the technology that have not been subject to academic research. In this survey, we first extract the lifecycle of a CDN as suggested by the existing research. Then, we investigate previous relevant works on each phase of the lifecycle to clarify where the research is currently located and headed. We show how CDN technology tends to converge with emerging paradigms such as cloud computing, edge computing, and machine learning, which are more mature in terms of academic research. This helps us determine the right direction for further research by revealing the deficiencies in existing works.

Content Delivery Networks: State of the Art, Trends, and Future Roadmap

4G systems have been continuously evolving to cope with the emerging challenges of human-centric and M2M applications. Research has also now started on 5G systems. Scenarios have been proposed and initial requirements derived. 4G and beyond systems are expected to easily deliver a wide range of human-centric and M2M applications and services in a scalable, elastic, and cost-efficient manner. The 3GPP IMS was standardized as the service delivery platform for 3G networks. Unfortunately, it does not meet several requirements for provisioning applications and services in 4G and beyond systems. However, cloudifying it will certainly pave the way for its use as a service delivery platform for 4G and beyond. This article presents a critical overview of the architectures proposed so far for cloudifying the IMS. There are two classes of approaches; the first focuses on the whole IMS system, and the second deals with specific IMS entities. Research directions are also discussed. IMS granularity and a PaaS for the development and management of IMS functional entities are the two key directions we currently foresee.

Cloudifying the 3GPP IP multimedia subsystem for 4G and beyond: A survey

Along with the development of the network, video business has become the mainstream of the network traffic gradually. In order to improve the quality of service, many websites use the Content Delivery Network (CDN) technology to accelerate the video browsing. At the same time, cloud computing is becoming more and more popular because it can process massive data and has high scalability. In recent years, cloud computing has been applied in various fields. Both of the techniques are very promising, but they have their own drawbacks respectively: CDN is faced with lack of the IT infrastructure and insufficient storage space due to the growth of users; cloud computing's resources is highly concentrated in the cloud datacenter, so network congestion at cloud egress and latency to user become a neglected problem. This paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of these two technologies, and then puts forward a scheme combining CDN and cloud computing - CDN cloud. Further problems need to be concerned for CDN cloud are discussed in detail. The new system can be better applied in the video business and other applications which have high traffic. Its high scalability and load balancing mechanism make it more suitable for the development of the network. CDN cloud has a wider application prospect, and this kind of fusion is the necessary direction of future network.

CDN cloud: A novel scheme for combining CDN and cloud computing

The disclosure relates to an orchestrator, for a Virtual Network Platform as a Service (VNPaaS), which orchestrates the management of a Network Service (NS). The orchestrator is operative to select an orchestration zone for each of a plurality of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) in the NS based on selected deployment locations, where each orchestration zone comprises at least one VNF. The orchestrator is operative to associate sub-services to the selected orchestration zones, the sub-services being obtained from a decomposition of the NS into a number of sub-services equal to a number of orchestration zones selected and each sub-service comprising at least one of the plurality of VNFs. The orchestrator is operative to initiate deployment of the sub-services in the selected orchestration zones.

Orchestrator for a virtual network platform as a service (VNPAAS)

Numerous Cloud storage service have recently emerged to provide Internet-enabled content storage and delivery capabilities. The CDN system based on Cloud storage, adopting distributed storage technology and the cache technology, can provide content creators with cheap CDN service and content consumers (mobile WAP users) with less response time and wider bandwidth WAP service. For the mobile WAP service users, the system provided by telecom operators has mirror servers across the country and can automatically determine the most suitable route between the mirror server and the WAP service users. In the paper, the architecture and the performance of the system will be introduced.

The Content Delivery Network System Based on Cloud Storage

Ip Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is the key technology of the next generation network (NGN) and the optimal solution of mobile and fixed network convergence which is approved by the public. Home Subscribe Server (HSS) is not only the data center of the system, but also the key of supporting the user mobility and call controlling. Since the growth of user data, the capacity of HSS storage and computing to the IMS system is very critical. Cloud computing is a successful example for solving the problem that originates from the massive growth of data by using distributed storage and computing in the internet industry. In this paper, a improved HSS architecture based on distributed cloud computing will be designed, thus it will have the better performance on data storage and delivery and the performance of the whole IMS system will be improved.

Tianpu Yang

Papers

The Content Delivery Network System Based on Cloud Storage

A new architecture of HSS based on cloud computing