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Although there is consensus that Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization overhaul service provisioning and deployment, the community still lacks a definite answer on how carrier-grade operations praxis needs to evolve. This paper presents what lies beyond the first evolutionary steps in network management, identifies the challenges in service verification, observability, and troubleshooting, and explains how to address them using our Service Provider DevOps (SP-DevOps) framework. We compendiously cover the entire process from design goals to tool realization and employ an elastic version of an industry-standard use case to show how on-the-fly verification, software-defined monitoring and automated troubleshooting of services reduces the cost of fault management actions. We assess SP-DevOps with respect to key attributes of software-defined telecommunication infrastructures both qualitatively and quantitatively and demonstrate that SP-DevOps paves the way towards carrier-grade operations and management in the network virtualization era.

Abstract. Current Future Internet (FI) research brings out the trend of designing information-oriented networks, in contrast to the current host-centric Internet. Information-centric Networking (ICN) focuses on finding and transmitting information to end-users, instead of connecting end hosts that exchange data. The key concepts of ICN are expected to have significant impact on the FI, and to create new challenges for all associated stakeholders. In order to investigate the motives as well as the arising conflicts between the stakeholders, we apply a tussle analysis methodology in a content delivery scenario incorporating socioeconomic principles. Our analysis highlights the interests of the various stakeholders and the issues that should be taken into account by designers when deploying new content delivery schemes under the ICN paradigm.

Abstract. Design principles play a central role in the architecture of the Internet as driving most engineering decisions at conception level and operational level. This paper is based on the EC Future Internet Architecture (FIArch) Group results and identifies some of the design principles that we expect to govern the future architecture of the Internet. We believe that it may serve as a starting point and comparison for most research and development projects that target the so-called Future Internet Architecture.

Abstract-Network service providers are facing challenges for deploying new services mainly due to the growing complexity of software architecture and development process. Moreover, the recent architectural innovation of network systems such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software-defined Networking (SDN), and Cloud computing increases the development and operation complexity yet again. One of the emerging solutions to this problem is a novel software development concept, namely DevOps, that is widely employed by major Internet software companies. Although the goals of DevOps in data centers are well-suited for the demands of agile service creation, additional requirements specific to the virtualized and software-defined network environment are important to be addressed from the perspective of modern network carriers.In this paper, we thoroughly debate DevOps requirements for developing a modern service creation platform by taking EU FP7 project UNIFY as a reference architecture and suggest the corresponding extensions of UNIFY interfaces that meet the discovered requirements.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) content distribution systems are a major source of traffic in the Internet, but the application layer protocols they use are mostly unaware of the underlying network in accordance with the layered structure of the Internet's protocol stack. Nevertheless, the need for improved network efficiency and the business interests of Internet service providers (ISPs) are both strong drivers towards a cross-layer approach in peer-to-peer protocol design, calling for P2P systems that would in some way interact with the ISPs. Recent research shows that the interaction, which can rely on information provided by both parties, can be mutually beneficial. In this paper first we give an overview of the kinds of information that could potentially be exchanged between the P2P systems and the ISPs, and discuss their usefulness and the ease of obtaining and exchanging them. We also present a classification of the possible approaches for interaction based on the level of involvement of the ISPs and the P2P systems, and we discuss the potential strengths and the weaknesses of these approaches.

Development of programmable photonic devices for future flexible optical networks is ongoing. To this end, an innovative, multi-format QAM transmitter design is presented. It comprises a segmented-electrode InP IQ-MZM to be fabricated in InP, which can be directly driven by low-power CMOS logic. Arbitrary optical QAM format generation is made possible using only binary electrical signals, without the need for high-performance DACs and high-swing linear drivers. The concept enables a host of Tx-side DSP functionality, including the spectral shaping needed for Nyquist-WDM system concepts. In addition, we report on the development of a optical channel MUX/DEMUX, based on arrays of microresonator filters with reconfigurable bandwidths and center wavelengths. The device is intended for operation with multi-format flexible transceivers, enabling Dense (D)WDM superchannel aggregation and arbitrary spectral slicing in the context of a flexible grid environment. Keywords: coherent optical systems, flexible optical networks, flexible transceiver, MUX/DEMUX INTRODUCTIONThe coherent revolution that has shaped modern telecom networks began roughly 10 years ago, when it became apparent that state-of-the-art CMOS technology could deliver cost-and energy-efficient real-time digital signal processing (DSP) for demodulation and impairment mitigation at the Gbaud-rates required by telecom optical systems. After more than a decade of hibernation, coherent intradyne detection suddenly re-emerged as a prominent topic of research in the field of telecoms, promising a significant boost in both capacity and reach over legacy systems based on simple modulation formats and direct detection. It was only a matter of time before optical transport network (OTN) 100G technology became standardized, with subsequent commercial adoption arriving in 2010. Today's core optical networks are starting to be dominated by 100G optical channels, based on Dual-Polarization (DP) Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) at 28/32 Gbaud, definitively proving the commercial viability of the technology.Scaling next-generation optical networks to higher capacities will necessitate further innovations: The insatiable demand for bandwidth is stretching physical layer capacity and dictating the migration towards flexible optical network architectures. Moreover the changing nature of data traffic, which is becoming more volatile and unpredictable, has prompted system designers to think about introducing flexibility in both modulation format and elasticity in spectrum utilization, by abandoning the fixed grid and allowing dynamic adjustment of throughput and wavelength allocation. The foundations for this fundamental paradigm shift were laid by the ITU-T as early as 2012: Recommendation G.694.1 [1] defines the Flexible Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) grid, designed to accommodate optical lightpaths with mixed-bitrates and modulation formats, in slots that can be adjusted to any spectral width with 12.5 GHz granularity. Several elastic optical networ...