Services such as content distribution, distributed databases, or inter-data center connectivity place a set of new requirements on the operation of networks. They need on-demand and application-specific reservation of network connectivity, reliability, and resources (such as bandwidth) in a variety of network applications (such as point-topoint connectivity, network virtualization, or mobile back-haul) and in a range of network technologies from packet (IP/MPLS) down to optical. An environment that operates to meet these types of requirements is said to have Application-Based Network Operations (ABNO). ABNO brings together many existing technologies and may be seen as the use of a toolbox of existing components enhanced with a few new elements.This document describes an architecture and framework for ABNO, showing how these components fit together. It provides a cookbook of existing technologies to satisfy the architecture and meet the needs of the applications.
Status of This MemoThis document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7491. Networks today integrate multiple technologies allowing network infrastructure to deliver a variety of services to support the different characteristics and demands of applications. There is an increasing demand to make the network responsive to service requests issued directly from the application layer. This differs from the established model where services in the network are delivered in response to management commands driven by a human user.These application-driven requests and the services they establish place a set of new requirements on the operation of networks. They need on-demand and application-specific reservation of network connectivity, reliability, and resources (such as bandwidth) in a variety of network applications (such as point-to-point connectivity, network virtualization, or mobile back-haul) and in a range of network technologies from packet (IP/MPLS) down to optical. An environment that operates to meet this type of application-aware requirement is said to have Application-Based Network Operations (ABNO).The Path Computation Element (PCE) [RFC4655] was developed to provide path computation services for GMPLS-and MPLS-controlled networks.The applicability of PCEs can be extended to provide path computation and policy enforcement capabilities for ABNO platforms and services.ABNO can provide the following types of service to applications by coordinating the components that operate and manag...
Current transport networks are statically configured and managed, because they experience a rather limited traffic dynamicity. As a result, long planning cycles are used to upgrade the network and prepare it for the next planning period. To guarantee that the network can support the forecast traffic and deal with failure scenarios, spare capacity is usually installed, thus increasing network expenditures. Moreover, results from network capacity planning are manually deployed in the network, which limits network agility. In this article we propose a control and management architecture to allow the network to be dynamically operated. Taking advantage of those dynamicity capabilities, the network can be reconfigured and re-optimised in response to traffic changes in an automatic fashion, so resource over-provisioning can be minimized and network costs reduced.
Network operators recognise that Content Delivery Networks are essential for meeting user Internet application and content demands. The infrastructure must be tightly integrated to provide request routing, content caching, load balancing, scalability and reliability, whilst minimising deployment time and complexity. A major step towards achieving these goals is to embrace recent Software Defined Network and Network Function Virtualisation objectives and design principles. This paper outlines the OpenCache API; an interface used to define the behaviour and operation of an SDN-based content delivery platform in real-time. We demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of such an API by implementing load-balancing and fail-over functionalities as part of an experimental deployment.
The Internet has been gradually evolving since its inception. In this paper, we highlight the crucial factors that have driven this evolution, and describe how the Internet is nevertheless still struggling with several critical issues that need to be solved to meet predicted requirements of future applications. We discuss possible approaches, solutions, and open issues, bearing in mind the considerable inertia of the Internet's key architectural features.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.