Biblio

Deploying a new network architecture in the Internet requires changing some, but not necessarily all elements between communicating applications. One way to achieve gradual deployment is a proxy or gateway which "translates" between the new architecture and TCP/IP. We present such a proxy, called "Performance Enhancing Proxy for Deploying Network Architectures (PEP-DNA)", which allows TCP/IP applications to benefit from advanced features of a new network architecture without having to be redeveloped. Our proxy is a kernel-based Linux implementation which can be installed wherever a translation needs to occur between a new architecture and TCP/IP domains. We discuss the proxy operation in detail and evaluate its efficiency and performance in a local testbed, demonstrating that it achieves high throughput with low additional latency overhead. In our experiments, we use the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) and Information-Centric Networking (ICN) as examples, but our proxy is modular and flexible, and hence enables realistic gradual deployment of any new "clean-slate" approaches.

This paper reports the definition, setup and obtained results of the Fed4FIRE + medium experiment ERASER, aimed to evaluate the actual Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees that the clean-slate Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) can deliver to heterogeneous applications at large-scale. To this goal, a 37-Node 5G metro/regional RINA network scenario, spanning from the end-user to the server where applications run in a datacenter has been configured in the Virtual Wall experimentation facility. This scenario has initially been loaded with synthetic application traffic flows, with diverse QoS requirements, thus reproducing different network load conditions. Next,their experienced QoS metrics end-to-end have been measured with two different QTA-Mux (i.e., the most accepted candidate scheduling policy for providing RINA with its QoS support) deployment scenarios. Moreover, on this RINA network scenario loaded with synthetic application traffic flows, a real HD (1080p) video streaming demonstration has also been conducted, setting up video streaming sessions to end-users at different network locations, illustrating the perceived Quality of Experience (QoE). Obtained results in ERASER disclose that, by appropriately deploying and configuring QTA-Mux, RINA can yield effective QoS support, which has provided perfect QoE in almost all locations in our demo when assigning video traffic flows the highest (i.e., Gold) QoS Cube.

The concept of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) aims to move Network Functions (NFs) out of dedicated hardware devices into software that runs on commodity hardware. A single NF consists of multiple VNF instances, usually running on virtual machines in a cloud infrastructure. The elastic management of an NF refers to load management across the VNF instances and the autonomic scaling of the number of VNF instances as the load on the NF changes. In this paper, we present EL-SEC, an autonomic framework to elastically manage security NFs on a virtualized infrastructure. As a use case, we deploy the Snort Intrusion Detection System as the NF on the GENI testbed. Concepts from control theory are used to create an Elastic Manager, which implements various controllers - in this paper, Proportional Integral (PI) and Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) - to direct traffic across the VNF Snort instances by monitoring the current load. RINA (a clean-slate Recursive InterNetwork Architecture) is used to build a distributed application that monitors load and collects Snort alerts, which are processed by the Elastic Manager and an Attack Analyzer, respectively. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is used to steer traffic through the VNF instances, and to block attack traffic. Our results show that virtualized security NFs can be easily deployed using our EL-SEC framework. With the help of real-time graphs, we show that PI and PID controllers can be used to easily scale the system, which leads to quicker detection of attacks.

In the last years, networking scenarios have been evolving, hand-in-hand with new and varied applications with heterogeneous Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. These requirements must be efficiently and effectively delivered. Given its static layered structure and almost complete lack of built-in QoS support, the current TCP/IP-based Internet hinders such an evolution. In contrast, the clean-slate Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) proposes a new recursive and programmable networking model capable of evolving with the network requirements, solving in this way most, if not all, TCP/IP protocol stack limitations. Network providers can better deliver communication services across their networks by taking advantage of the RINA architecture and its support for QoS. This support allows providing complete information of the QoS needs of the supported traffic flows, and thus, fulfilment of these needs becomes possible. In this work, we focus on the importance of path selection to better ensure QoS guarantees in long-haul RINA networks. We propose and evaluate a programmable strategy for path selection based on flow QoS parameters, such as the maximum allowed latency and packet losses, comparing its performance against simple shortest-path, fastest-path and connection-oriented solutions.