Séminaire Phare
Exploiting ICN for flexible management in software-defined networks
Tuesday, February 9, 2016Xiaoming Fu (Univ. of Goettingen, Germany)
Abstract: Networks are becoming increasingly complex and service providers incorporate additional functionality in the network to protect, manage and improve service performance. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) seeks to manage the network with the help of a (logically) centralized control plane. We observe that current SDN solutions pre-translate policy (what) into forwarding rules at specific switches (where). We argue that this choice limits the dynamicity, flexibility and reliability that a software-based network could provide. Information Centric Networking (ICN) shifts the focus of networks away from being predominantly location oriented communication environments. We believe ICN can significantly improve the flexibility for network management. In this work, we focus on one of the problems of network management - service chaining - the steering of flows through the different network functions needed, before it is delivered to the destination. We propose Function-Centric Service Chaining (FCSC), a solution that exploits ICN to provide flexibility in managing networks that utilize virtualization to dynamically place functions in the network as required. We use a real-world topology to compare the performance of FCSC and a more "traditional" SDN solution. We show that FCSC reacts to failures with fewer packet drops, adapts to new middleboxes more quickly, and maintains less state in the network.
Biography: Xiaoming Fu is a Full Professor of Computer Science at the Institute of Computer Science, University of Goettingen and leading the Computer Networks (NET) Research Group. He received my bachelor (1994) and master (with distinction, 1997) degrees from Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, and my Ph.D. (2000) degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (supervisor: Professor Yaoxue Zhang). Prior to joining Goettingen, He worked with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Adam Wolisz as a member of scientific staff at the Telecommunications Networks (TKN) group, Technical University Berlin until September 2002. Between 2003 and 2005 I also served in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) as an Expert in Specialist Task Forces in Internet Protocol (Version 6) Testing. He was/is a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge (host: Prof. Jon Crowcroft) in 2005 and 2007, a DAAD visiting professor at Columbia University (host: Prof. Henning Schulzrinne) in 2008 and 2009, a Fulbright Scholar Visiting Professor at UCLA (hosts: Prof. Lixia Zhang and Prof. Mario Gerla) in academic year 2009/2010, and a ChangJiang Scholar Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University during 2010-2013. During 2010-2012 he served as Vice Chair of the Technical Committee on Computer Communications (TCCC), IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc), and during 2011-2013 as Chair of the Internet Technical Committee of the IEEE ComSoc and Internet Society (ISOC). He is an IEEE senior member and an IEEE distinguished lecturer, a member of ACM and a member of GI.
stefano.secci (at) nulllip6.fr