Service-Centric Networking Research Articles

Management and Control of Load Clusters for Ancillary Services Using Internet of Electric Loads Based on Cloud–Edge–End Distributed Computing

The Internet of Things (IoT) connects electric devices to a network in order to realize virtual control. Demand-side loads can provide ancillary services that optimize energy structures and promote supply–demand balance. For load management, this article proposes Internet of Electric Loads (IoEL) as a service-centric network, and the edge subcloud is introduced in the distributed computing system. The intelligent thermostatically controlled loads constitute the physical perceptual layer of the IoEL. Each subcloud controls a type of loads under the same regional distribution grid to form a stable and controllable aggregation system. The subclouds interact with the load cloud to form a platform layer. Through the interaction between the platform and physical perceptual layers, loads are controlled to realize the load transfer and provide ancillary services for the application layer. IoEL utilizes computing resources from different layers to form a distributed computing system made up of cloud, edge, and end devices. The load management is divided into four steps, namely, load aggregation in the edge–end interface, evaluation of load capacity in the edge, task allocation in the cloud–edge interface, and load control in the edge–end interface. The loads upload the physical properties to the subclouds and are then aggregated according to similarities of properties. The subclouds then evaluate schedulable capacity and upload these evaluations to the cloud, which then allocates tasks to each subcloud accordingly. The edge is responsible for receiving tasks from the cloud and controlling loads. The effectiveness of the method was verified by providing clean energy output tracking.

Advancing Software-Defined Service-Centric Networking Toward In-Network Intelligence

Recent advances separately in edge intelligence, service-centric networking, and software-defined networking have profoundly impacted future networks and intelligent applications. Nevertheless, they have not been jointly considered. Jointly considering these three remarkable techniques will open up a nascent research direction. In this article, we propose a software-defined service-centric networking (SDSCN) framework to push the frontier of edge intelligence toward general in-network intelligence. We devise a three-plane architecture, including a data plane, a management plane, and a control plane. Specifically, in-network context-aware computing and caching capabilities are incorporated into the service-centric data plane. Network programmability and global orchestration provide the potential to design plenty of useful network applications to customize network behaviors flexibly. How in-network federated learning works in SDSCN can be observed from case studies and is validated by emulation. More simulation results show the outperformance of SDSCN. Several challenges in developing the proposed framework are presented and discussed.

PECS: Towards personalized edge caching for future service-centric networks

Mobile operators face the challenge of how to best design a service-centric network that can effectively process the rapidly increasing number of bandwidth-intensive user requests while providing a higher quality of experience (QoE). Existing content distribution networks (CDN) and mobile content distribution networks (mCDN) have both latency and throughput limitations due to being multiple network hops away from end-users. Here, we first propose a new Personalized Edge Caching System (PECS) architecture that employs big data analytics and mobile edge caching to provide personalized service access at the edge of the mobile network. Based on the proposed system architecture, the edge caching strategy based on user behavior and trajectory is analyzed. Employing our proposed PECS strategies, we use data mining algorithms to analyze the personalized trajectory and service usage patterns. Our findings provide guidance on how key technologies of PECS can be employed for current and future networks. Finally, we highlight the challenges associated with realizing such a system in 5G and beyond.

SLA-aware optimal resource allocation for service-oriented networks

Abstract The popularity of traditional network services and web content is succeeded by the recent trend in customized services proliferated by the smart devices and gadgets. Fall-risk assessment, augmented reality, ECG (electrocardiography) monitoring, virtual reality-based gaming and similar services are driven through data generated by multi-modal sensors embedded in the end-user equipment. These services may possess varying characteristics and requirements represented with performance metrics and Quality of Service (QoS) parameters. Even though the small form-factor end-user gadgets are getting powerful in terms of resource capacity, they are still incapable of executing complex routines, and thus these tasks should be offloaded to a remote machine. Service-Centric Networks (SCN) focus on delivering customized services to the users in a location-independent fashion. This is in parallel with previous vision put forward by the Information-Centric Networks (ICN) and Content Delivery Networks (CDN), which aim to enhance the end-user experience. The novel set of services for complementing the daily activities of the end-users mostly depicts a latency-intolerant attribute which ultimately calls for a full-fledged resource allocation scheme. Within this context, both computation and networking resources should be allocated optimally, and task assignments should be handled precisely for following the requirements specified by the Service Level Agreements (SLAs). This paper initially presents and discusses problem definitions that should be addressed by the service-centric multi-tier computing architecture that is composed of edge, metro, and cloud servers. In order to achieve this objective, an SLA-aware optimal resource allocation and task assignment model for service-oriented networks is proposed. This optimization model is based on a nonlinear delay formulation for accommodating service-centric network scenarios under various conditions. It is then reshaped as a mixed-integer linear model through piecewise linear approximation. Additionally, a heuristic implementation is presented to address the time and space complexities of the problem for which the aforementioned optimization models remain ineffective. Performance evaluation results show that the proposed solutions are able to find a good allocation of resources while taking the requirements of the services into account.

Fault-Tolerant Session Support for Service-Centric Networking

Service-Centric Networking (SCN) is a Future Internet architecture extending ICN with support for services, in which addressing and routing centers around services. SCN provides session support, however, recovery mechanisms do not exist in SCN session management. Therefore, SCN sessions suffer from link and node failures. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of three link failure recovery techniques for sessions in SCN. The first mechanism is based upon propagating session identifiers within the network using Bloom filters, the second design is based upon the propagation of service provider identifiers, and the third design uses piggybacking for the propagation of service provider identifiers.

Optimized Cell Planning for Network Slicing in Heterogeneous Wireless Communication Networks

We propose a cell planning scheme to maximize the resource efficiency of a wireless communication network while considering quality-of-service requirements imposed by different mobile services. In dense and heterogeneous cellular 5G networks, the available time-frequency resources are orthogonally partitioned among different slices, which are serviced by the cells. The proposed scheme achieves a joint optimization of the resource distribution between network slices, the allocation of cells to operate on different slices, and the allocation of users to cells. Since the original problem formulation is computationally intractable, we propose a convex inner approximation. Simulations show that the proposed approach optimizes the resource efficiency and enables a service-centric network design paradigm.

Service-Centric Networking for Distributed Heterogeneous Clouds

Optimal placement and selection of service instances in a distributed heterogeneous cloud is a complex trade-off between application requirements and resource capabilities that requires detailed information on the service, infrastructure constraints, and the underlying IP network. In this article we first posit that from an analysis of a snapshot of today's centralized and regional data center infrastructure, there is a sufficient number of candidate sites for deploying many services while meeting latency and bandwidth constraints. We then provide quantitative arguments why both network and hardware performance needs to be taken into account when selecting candidate sites to deploy a given service. Finally, we propose a novel architectural solution for service-centric networking. The resulting system exploits the availability of fine-grained execution nodes across the Internet and uses knowledge of available computational and network resources for deploying, replicating and selecting instances to optimize quality of experience for a wide range of services.

A Survey on Future Internet Security Architectures

Current host-centric Internet Protocol (IP) networks are facing unprecedented challenges, such as network attacks and the exhaustion of IP addresses. Motivated by emerging demands for security, mobility, and distributed networking, many research projects have been initiated to design the future Internet from a clean slate. In order to obtain a thorough knowledge of security in future Internet architecture, we review a number of well-known projects, including named data networking, Content Aware Searching Retrieval and sTreaming, MobilityFirst Future Internet Architecture Project (MobilityFirst), eXpressive Internet Architecture, and scalability, control, and isolation on next-generation network. These projects aim to move away from the traditional host-centric networks and replace them with content-centric, mobility-centric, or service-centric networks. However, different principles and designs also raise various issues on network security. For each project, we describe its architecture design and how it deals with security issues. Furthermore, we compare these projects and discuss their pros and cons. Open security issues are pointed out for directing future research.

QuLa: Queue and latency-aware service selection and routing in service-centric networking

Due to an explosive growth in services running in different datacenters, there is need for service selection and routing to deliver user requests to the best service instance. In current solutions, it is generally the client that must first select a datacenter to forward the request to before an internal load-balancer of the selected datacenter can select the optimal instance. An optimal selection requires knowledge of both network and server characteristics, making clients less suitable to make this decision. Information-Centric Networking (ICN) research solved a similar selection problem for static data retrieval by integrating content delivery as a native network feature. We address the selection problem for services by extending the ICN-principles for services. In this paper we present Queue and Latency, a network-driven service selection algorithm which maps user demand to service instances, taking into account both network and server metrics. To reduce the size of service router forwarding tables, we present a statistical method to approximate an optimal load distribution with minimized router state required. Simulation results show that our statistical routing approach approximates the average system response time of source-based routing with minimized state in forwarding tables.

Application delivery in multi-cloud environments using software defined networking

Today, most large Application Service Providers (ASPs) such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and Facebook operate multiple geographically distributed datacenters, serving a global user population that are often mobile. However, the service-centric deployment and delivery semantics of these modern Internet-scale applications do not fit naturally into the Internet’s host-centric design. In this service-centric model, users connect to a service, and not a particular host. A service virtualizes the application endpoint, and could be replicated, partitioned, distributed and composed over many different hosts in many different locations. To address this gap between design and use, ASPs deploy a service-centric network infrastructure within their enterprise datacenter environments while maintaining a (virtual) host-centric service access interface with the rest-of-the-Internet. This is done using data-plane mechanisms including data-plane proxying (virtualizing the service endpoint) and Layer 7 (L7) traffic steering (dynamically mapping service requests to different application servers and orchestrating service composition and chaining). However, deploying and managing a wide-area distributed infrastructure providing these service-centric mechanisms to support multi-data center environments is prohibitively expensive and difficult even for the largest of ASPs. Therefore, although recent advances in cloud computing make distributed computing resources easily available to smaller ASPs on a very flexible and dynamic pay-as-you-go resource-leasing model, it is difficult for these ASPs to leverage the opportunities provided by such multi-cloud environments without general architectural support for a service-centric Internet. In this paper, we present a new service-centric networking architecture for the current Internet called OpenADN. OpenADN will allow ASPs to be able to fully leverage multi-cloud environments for deploying and delivering their applications over a shared, service-centric, wide-area network infrastructure provided by third-party providers including Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). The OpenADN design leverages the recently proposed framework of Software Defined Networking (SDN) to implement and manage the deployment of OpenADN-aware devices. This paper focuses mostly on the data-plane design of OpenADN.

The fluid internet: service-centric management of a virtualized future internet

The Internet was originally designed as a best effort packet forwarding substrate. However, since its inception, its purpose has shifted toward a rich service-centric delivery platform. Its underlying infrastructure as well as the number of connected devices have taken on immense proportions, and sharing of capabilities has come into widespread use. Moreover, the Internet's services are becoming increasingly interactive, context-aware, and content-oriented. This has led to stringent delivery requirements being imposed on the underlying infrastructure. Despite these evolutions, management of the Internet has not evolved significantly. It remains largely static and is unable to provide dynamic end-to-end service delivery guarantees in a costeffective manner. In this article, we propose the Fluid Internet, a novel paradigm aimed at tackling these management challenges. The Fluid Internet seamlessly provisions virtualized infrastructure capabilities, adapting the delivery substrate to the dynamic requirements of services and users, much like a fluid adapting to fit its surroundings. As such, the Fluid Internet gives a service provider the ability to manage its services end to end and elastically. Our vision is achieved through a unification of concepts from network virtualization, cloud computing, and service-centric networking. The relevant stakeholders, as well as their functions and interactions, are described. Additionally, we identify the major technical challenges that remain to be tackled for the Fluid Internet vision to become a reality.

Distributed autonomic management: An approach and experiment towards managing service-centric networks

This paper describes a novel approach for managing service-centric communications networks called distributed autonomic management (DAM). Current approaches to network management employ the client/server model, cooperative stationary agents, and/or non-intelligent mobile agents. The DAM model consists of communities of mobile and stationary intelligent agents in collaboration. We discuss an experiment with DAM and proceed to discuss outstanding research issues. The DAM approach uses the properties and characteristics of autonomic systems in support of managing service-oriented communications networks and protecting e-commerce and business enterprises against cyber terrorism.

Integrating and managing converged multiservice networks

Balancing the conflicting practices of the “one service-one technology” and “one technology for all services” paradigms is a significant challenge. In response to this challenge, the telecommunications industry is shifting to a converged network paradigm based on Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). MPLS can support multiple services over one infrastructure, thereby increasing flexibility and providing economies of scale. This paper examines two generic approaches to building a converged MPLS core. Based on our assessment of the advantages and challenges associated with these two approaches, we propose that carriers implement a distributed architecture to migrate to MPLS and scale existing layer 2 services. This paper discusses the technical merits of this architecture, which include high scalability, investment protection, multivendor interoperability, and rapid service introduction. It also describes how carriers can preserve quality of service (QoS) and service level agreements (SLAs) through the MPLS core. Finally, it describes a service-centric network management model that makes use of existing operation systems.

SCAN: A secure service directory for service-centric wireless sensor networks

Sensors and actuators offer services in service-centric sensor networks, e.g. they provide information about the temperature at a certain location. Those services are building blocks for the overall behaviour of the sensor networks. To offer dynamic composition of services and to make services available for every node in the network, a way to securely store and retrieve information about available services of the network is necessary. The paper presents Secure Content Addressable Network (SCAN) which is a distributed approach to a secure service directory for service-centric sensor networks.

Service-centric networks

At present, competition and the latest network technologies threaten the profit margins of telecommunications providers. New services, however, represent an important prospect for increased revenue. To capitalize on this opportunity, new services must appeal to users and be capable of rapid introduction and scaling to meet demand. Moreover, cost-effective service introduction requires independence from the underlying access technology. This paper discusses today's service delivery methodology and introduces the theme of service-centric networks — the uncoupling of services from access networks. It also delineates an architecture approach for implementing service networks and describes our experiences with the Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture (TINA), which employs this approach.