Recursive InterNetwork Architecture Research Articles

Progressive Adoption of RINA in IoT Networks: Enhancing Scalability and Network Management via SDN Integration

Thousands of devices are connected to the Internet as part of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems. The next generation of IoT networks is expected to support this growing number of Intelligent IoT devices and tactile Internet solutions to provide real-time applications. In view of this, IoT networks require innovative network architectures that offer scalability, security, and adaptability. The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) is a clean slate network architecture that provides a scalable, secure, and flexible framework for interconnecting computers. SDN technology is becoming a de facto solution to overcome network requirements, making RINA adoption difficult. This paper presents an architecture for integrating RINA with SDN technologies to lower the barriers of adopting RINA in IoT environments. The architecture relies on a RINA-based distributed application facility (DAF), a RINA southbound driver (SBI), and the RINA L2VPN. The RINA-based DAF manages RINA nodes along the edge–fog–cloud continuum. The SBI driver SDN enables the hybrid centralized management of SDN switches and RINA nodes. Meanwhile, the RINA L2VPN allows seamless communication between edge nodes and the cloud to facilitate the data exchange between network functions (NFs). Such integration has enabled a progressive deployment of RINA in current IoT networks without affecting their operations and performance.

Results and Achievements of the ALLIANCE Project: New Network Solutions for 5G and Beyond

Leaving the current 4th generation of mobile communications behind, 5G will represent a disruptive paradigm shift integrating 5G Radio Access Networks (RANs), ultra-high-capacity access/metro/core optical networks, and intra-datacentre (DC) network and computational resources into a single converged 5G network infrastructure. The present paper overviews the main achievements obtained in the ALLIANCE project. This project ambitiously aims at architecting a converged 5G-enabled network infrastructure satisfying those needs to effectively realise the envisioned upcoming Digital Society. In particular, we present two networking solutions for 5G and beyond 5G (B5G), such as Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualisation (SDN/NFV) on top of an ultra-high-capacity spatially and spectrally flexible all-optical network infrastructure, and the clean-slate Recursive Inter-Network Architecture (RINA) over packet networks, including access, metro, core and DC segments. The common umbrella of all these solutions is the Knowledge-Defined Networking (KDN)-based orchestration layer which, by implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, enables an optimal end-to-end service provisioning. Finally, the cross-layer manager of the ALLIANCE architecture includes two novel elements, namely the monitoring element providing network and user data in real time to the KDN, and the blockchain-based trust element in charge of exchanging reliable and confident information with external domains.

A P4-Enabled RINA Interior Router for Software-Defined Data Centers

The lack of high-performance RINA (Recursive InterNetwork Architecture) implementations to date makes it hard to experiment with RINA as an underlay networking fabric solution for different types of networks, and to assess RINA’s benefits in practice on scenarios with high traffic loads. High-performance router implementations typically require dedicated hardware support, such as FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) or specialized ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). With the advance of hardware programmability in recent years, new possibilities unfold to prototype novel networking technologies. In particular, the use of the P4 programming language for programmable ASICs holds great promise for developing a RINA router. This paper details the design and part of the implementation of the first P4-based RINA interior router, which reuses the layer management components of the IRATI Linux-based RINA implementation and implements the data-transfer components using a P4 program. We also describe the configuration and testing of our initial deployment scenarios, using ancillary open-source tools such as the P4 reference test software switch (BMv2) or the P4Runtime API.

Addressing Bandwidth-Driven Flow Allocationin RINA

Effective capacity allocation is essential for a network to operate properly, providing predictable quality of service guarantees and avoiding bottlenecks. Achieving capacity allocation fairness is a long-standing problem extensively researched in the frame of transport and network layer protocols such as TCP/IP. The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture offers programmable policies that enable more flexible control on the mechanics of network flow allocation. In this paper, we present our version of one of these policies, which provides flow allocation according to the bandwidth requirements of requesting applications. We implement the bandwidth-aware flow allocation policy by extending rlite, an open source RINA implementation. Our evaluation shows how the policy can prevent links from becoming oversaturated and use alternate paths to achieve high total link data-rate use.

ARCFIRE: Experimentation with the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture

European funded research into the Recursive Inter-Network Architecture (RINA) started with IRATI, which developed an initial prototype implementation for OS/Linux. IRATI was quickly succeeded by the PRISTINE project, which developed different policies, each tailored to specific use cases. Both projects were development-driven, where most experimentation was limited to unit testing and smaller scale integration testing. In order to assess the viability of RINA as an alternative to current network technologies, larger scale experimental deployments are needed. The opportunity arose for a project that shifted focus from development towards experimentation, leveraging Europe’s investment in Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE+) infrastructures. The ARCFIRE project took this next step, developing a user-friendly framework for automating RINA experiments. This paper reports and discusses the implications of the experimental results achieved by the ARCFIRE project, using open source RINA implementations deployed on FIRE+ Testbeds. Experiments analyze the properties of RINA relevant to fast network recovery, network renumbering, Quality of Service, distributed mobility management, and network management. Results highlight RINA properties that can greatly simplify the deployment and management of real-world networks; hence, the next steps should be focused on addressing very specific use cases with complete network RINA-based networking solutions that can be transferred to the market.

Identification of Threats and Security Risk Assessments for Recursive Internet Architecture

There are several types of attacks on communication networks such as disrupting or blocking communication, intercepting, injecting fabricated packets, accessing and modifying the information. Here, for the first time the SecRAM, a recent security risk assessment methodology, is proposed to be systematically applied in a different context, i.e., to the network systems, specifically to an emerging network architecture called recursive internetwork architecture (RINA). The security risk assessment is performed to: identify run-time threats; assess the impact and likelihood of occurrence of attacks relevant to the threats; evaluate the RINA design principles; and validate the built-in security enablers and the mitigation actions that are devised to combat such attacks. Resulting from this assessment, specific measures are proposed to further improve cyber resiliency of the RINA, in securing its layers and components. The enhancement prevails through the utilization of multilayered security controls or the increase in their strength. We show how programmable security controls can assist in tackling network attacks. For proof of concept, we demonstrate formal analysis of some of the security properties of RINA using ProVerif tool and RINA Simulator. We apply the tool to create a formal model of a network and mitigate the selected attacks. The results of this analysis are provided.

End-user traffic policing for QoS assurance in polyservice RINA networks

Looking at the ever-increasing amount of heterogeneous distributed applications supported on current data transport networks, it seems evident that best-effort packet delivery falls short to supply their actual needs. Multiple approaches to Quality of Service (QoS) differentiation have been proposed over the years, but their usage has always been hindered by the rigidness of the TCP/IP-based Internet model, which does not even allow for applications to express their QoS needs to the underlying network. In this context, the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) has appeared as a clean-slate network architecture aiming to replace the current Internet based on TCP/IP. RINA provides a well-defined QoS support across layers, with standard means for layers to inform of the different QoS guarantees that they can support. Besides, applications and other processes can express their flow requirements, including different QoS-related measures, like delay and jitter, drop probability or average traffic usage. Greedy end-users, however, tend to request the highest quality for their flows, forcing providers to apply intelligent data rate limitation procedures at the edge of their networks. In this work, we propose a new rate limiting policy that, instead of enforcing limits on a per QoS class basis, imposes limits on several independent QoS dimensions. This offers a flexible traffic control to RINA network providers, while enabling end-users freely managing their leased resources. The performance of the proposed policy is assessed in an experimental RINA network test-bed and its performance compared against other policies, either RINA-specific or adopted from TCP/IP. Results show that the proposed policy achieves an effective traffic control for high QoS traffic classes, while also letting lower QoS classes to take profit of the capacity initially reserved for the former ones when available.

Scalable topological forwarding and routing policies in RINA‐enabled programmable data centers

AbstractGiven the current expansion of cloud computing, the expected advent of the Internet of Things, and the requirements of future fifth‐generation network infrastructures, significantly larger pools of computational and storage resources will soon be required. This emphasizes the need for more scalable data centers that are capable of providing such an amount of resources in a cost‐effective way. A quick look into today's commercial data centers shows that they tend to rely on variations of well‐defined leaf‐spine/Clos data center network (DCN) topologies, offering low latency, ultrahigh bisectional bandwidth, and enhanced reliability against concurrent failures. However, DCNs are typically restricted by the use of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite, thus suffering limited routing scalability. In this work, we study the benefits that replacing TCP/IP with the recursive internetwork architecture (RINA) can bring into commercial DCNs, focusing on forwarding and routing scalability. We quantitatively evaluate the benefits that RINA solutions can yield against those based on TCP/IP and highlight how, by deploying RINA, topological routing solutions can improve even more the efficiency of the network. To this goal, we propose a rule‐and‐exception forwarding policy tailored to the characteristics of several DCN variants, enabling fast forwarding decisions with merely neighbors' information. Upon failures, few exceptions are necessary, whose computation can also profit from the known topology. Extensive numerical results show that the proposed policy requirements depend mainly on the number of neighbors and concurrent failures in the DCN rather than its size, dramatically reducing the amount of forwarding and routing information stored at DCN nodes.

Scalable and adaptive overlay for efficient forwarding in volunteer clouds

Volunteer cloud is a new concept of cloud computing where volunteers, i.e., user machines are used instead of or in addition to dedicated resources. Although volunteer clouds offer potential benefits in terms of energy and cost saving as well as elasticity, the volatility and the scalability of the volunteer resources are still open challenges that need to be investigated. In this paper, we focus on managing the connectivity in a scalable and dynamic fashion in volunteer clouds. We show that volunteer clouds could be modelled by a hierarchical small-world structure, characterised by short average path lengths among nodes, and strong local clustering, which implies small latency between nodes and therefore robust forwarding. Furthermore, we explore the benefits of the use of the recursive internetwork architecture (RINA) as a networking solution. Finally, simulation results show that our proposal achieves a trade-off between bounding the routing table size and ensuring transmission efficiency.

Scalable and adaptive overlay for efficient forwarding in volunteer clouds

Volunteer cloud is a new concept of cloud computing where volunteers, i.e., user machines are used instead of or in addition to dedicated resources. Although volunteer clouds offer potential benefits in terms of energy and cost saving as well as elasticity, the volatility and the scalability of the volunteer resources are still open challenges that need to be investigated. In this paper, we focus on managing the connectivity in a scalable and dynamic fashion in volunteer clouds. We show that volunteer clouds could be modelled by a hierarchical small-world structure, characterised by short average path lengths among nodes, and strong local clustering, which implies small latency between nodes and therefore robust forwarding. Furthermore, we explore the benefits of the use of the recursive internetwork architecture (RINA) as a networking solution. Finally, simulation results show that our proposal achieves a trade-off between bounding the routing table size and ensuring transmission efficiency.

Introducing ProtoRINA

ProtoRINA is a user-space prototype of the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture. RINA is a new architecture that builds on the fundamental principle that "networking is inter-process communication". As a consequence, RINA overcomes inherent weaknesses of the current Internet, e.g., security, mobility support, and manageability. ProtoRINA serves not only as a prototype that demonstrates the advantages of RINA, but also as a network experimental tool that enables users to program different policies using its built-in mechanisms. In this note, we introduce ProtoRINA as a vehicle for making RINA concepts concrete and for encouraging researchers to use and benefit from the prototype.

On supporting mobility and multihoming in recursive internet architectures

As the Internet has evolved and grown, an increasing number of nodes (hosts or autonomous systems) have become multihomed, i.e., a node is connected to more than one network. Mobility can be viewed as a special case of multihoming—as a node moves, it unsubscribes from one network and subscribes to another, which is akin to one interface becoming inactive and another active. The current Internet architecture has been facing significant challenges in effectively dealing with multihoming (and consequently mobility), which has led to the emergence of several custom point-solutions. The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) was recently proposed as a clean-slate solution to the current problems of the Internet. In this paper, we present a specification of the process of ROuting in Recursive Architectures (RORA). We also perform an average-case cost analysis to compare the multihoming/mobility support of RINA, against that of other approaches such as LISP and Mobile-IP. Extensive experimental results confirm the premise that the RINA architecture and its RORA routing approach are inherently better suited for supporting mobility and multihoming.