NFV and SDN are nowadays seen as a solid opportunity by telecom operators to reduce costs while at the same time providing new and better services. Recently, the Unify project proposed a multi-layered architecture that, leveraging different levels of abstraction, can orchestrate and deploy generic network services on the physical infrastructure of the telecom operator. In this paper, we exploit such an architecture to deliver end-to-end generic services in presence of multiple concurring players (e.g. network operator, end-users), leveraging a new simple data model. Particularly, we propose a description-based approach allowing the deployment agile, implementation-independent and high-level network services over a distributed set of resources. The resulting data model can abstract generic services, including both middlebox-based (e.g., firewalls, NATs, etc.) and traditional LAN-based ones (e.g., a BitTorrent client). Finally, two distinct prototypes, originated by different design principles, are implemented in order to validate our proposal with the aim of demonstrating the adaptability of our approach to different contexts.

Software Defined Networks (SDN) has taken the world by storm. Only a few years old as technology, most of the big players have SDN in their product portfolio or in their strategic roadmap. SDN has changed the way we virtualize the network fabric in data centers, provided new features for cloud computing, and arguably plays a big role in facilitating Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Looking ahead, SDN has the potential to make the network disappear altogether, similar to Mark Weiser’s vision for computing. However, while SDN’s main contribution is a new south-bound interface for TCP/IP flow control, little work has been done on the north-bound interface for the interaction with and the management of an SDN network. Two essential items are still missing. First, SDN does currently not provide means to expose network capabilities to applications (e.g. a QoS cube), thus it fails to bridge the gap between the network and services. Second, SDN does not help to advance network management while introducing many new challenges for it. In this paper, we start discussing the disappearing network and discuss how to address the two missing items in the progress. Our contribution is to examin the Recursive InterNetworking Architecture (RINA) as an evolutionary step for SDN, which we present that in the form of three use cases.

The adoption of a robust and scalable network virtualization framework is a key requirement in order to make the vision of a shareable network infrastructure a reality. To this aim, one of the most suitable approaches is the one which takes advantage of the emerging paradigm of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlow, its de-facto standard. Several virtualization frameworks have been proposed in the last few years, however, they are either based on proxy-based solutions that raises scalability and robustness issues (FlowVisor), or they rely on a simplified view of the data path (generally based on Open vSwitch instances) that have little chances to be adopted in production network settings. This paper presents a novel OpenFlow-based network virtualization mechanism exploiting a recent open-source data path project named extensible Data path Daemon (xDPd), the proposed multi-platform data path is based on a robust distributed virtualization architecture that is able to run on multi-version OpenFlow switch network scenarios, has a minimal overhead from a performance point of view and can be easily ported on several hardware platforms via xDPd libraries.

Distributed cloud systems offer important advantages over centralized ones. Intrinsic resilience to network and electricity cuts, green nature, scalability and a more jurisdictionally secure environment for trading secrets are some of these advantages. However, because of its open and exposed nature, networking in highly available distributed clouds have to address a number of challenges. In this paper, deep analysis of the networking aspects of a real distributed cloud use case is performed, identifying its most important issues and limitations. The core of the paper discusses a detailed case study of the application of the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) as a (virtual) networking solution for the distributed cloud, tailoring routing, resource allocation and security policies to the specific needs of supported cloud service. The paper concludes by highlighting the advantages of the RINA approach over current network virtualization solutions in terms of simplicity, programmability, scalability, manageability and networkapplication integration. Keywords—RINA; distributed cloud; network virtualization; cloud networking; routing and addressing; security; resource allocation; network management

OpenFlow is catalyzing the deployment of software defined networking (SDN) technologies around the globe. In practice, however, compatibility issues hinder the deployment of an OpenFlow control plane on a number of network platforms. The FP7 ALIEN project addresses this problem by introducing a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) which enables OpenFlow capabilities on legacy network elements. This paper presents the implementation of a HAL on programmable network platforms with multi-core CPUs and summarizes the implementation experience gained in the process.