Web Service orchestrations are compositions of different Web Services to form a new service. The services called during the orchestration guarantee a given performance to the orchestrater, usually in the form of contracts. These contracts can be used by the orchestrater to deduce the contract it can offer to its own clients, by performing contract composition. An implicit assumption in contract based QoS management is: "the better the component services perform, the better the orchestration's performance will be". Thus, contract based QoS management for Web services orchestrations implicitly assumes monotony. In some orchestrations, however, monotony can be violated, i.e., the performance of the orchestration improves when the performance of a component service degrades. This is highly undesirable since it can render the process of contract composition inconsistent. In this paper we define monotony for orchestrations modelled by Colored Occurrence Nets (CO-nets) and we characterize the classes of monotonic orchestrations. We show that few orchestrations are indeed monotonic, mostly since latency can be traded for quality of data. We also propose a sound refinement of monotony, called conditional monotony, which forbids this kind of cheating and show that conditional monotony is widely satisfied by orchestrations. This finding leads to reconsidering the way SLAs should be formulated.
Cross-stakeholder service orchestration is a generalization of 5G network slices which has potential to increase business agility in Beyond 5G (B5G). An architectural framework is proposed which enables domain operators to expose their functionalities towards E2E services as capabilities. Capability orchestration is proposed as a mechanism for exposure. The use of intent-based management for communicating domain owner's business goals to capability orchestration is analyzed. The combination of business goal input and capability orchestration provides a basis for agile monetization of domain re…
Business models of network service providers are undergoing an evolving transformation fueled by vertical customer demands and technological advances such as 5G, Software Defined Networking~(SDN), and Network Function Virtualization~(NFV). Emerging scenarios call for agile network services consuming network, storage, and compute resources across heterogeneous infrastructures and administrative domains. Coordinating resource control and service creation across interconnected domains and diverse technologies becomes a grand challenge. Research and development efforts are being devoted to enablin…
The future 5G transport networks are envisioned to support a variety of vertical services through network slicing and efficient orchestration over multiple administrative domains. In this paper, we propose an orchestrator architecture to support vertical services to meet their diverse resource and service requirements. We then present a system model for resource orchestration of transport networks as well as low-complexity algorithms that aim at minimizing service deployment cost and/or service latency. Importantly, the proposed model can work with any level of abstractions exposed by the unde…
Intent-based networking (IBN) provides a promising approach for managing networks and orchestrating services in beyond 5G (B5G) deployments using modern service-based architectures. Public safety (PS) services form the basis of keeping society functional, owing to the responsiveness and availability throughout the network. The provisioning of these services requires efficient and agile network management techniques with low-overhead and embedded intelligence. IBN incorporates the service subscribers in a model-driven approach to provision different user-centric services. However, it requires d…
The increased use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in numerous domains will result in high traffic densities in the low-altitude airspace. Consequently, UAVs Traffic Management (UTM) systems that allow the integration of UAVs in the low-altitude airspace are gaining a lot of momentum. Furthermore, the 5th generation of mobile networks (5G) will most likely provide the underlying support for UTM systems by providing connectivity to UAVs, enabling the control, tracking and communication with remote applications and services. However, UAVs may need to communicate with services with different co…
Named Data Networking (NDN) offers promising advantages in deploying next-generation service applications over distributed computing networks. We consider the problem of dynamic orchestration over a NDN-based computing network, in which nodes can be equipped with communication, computation, and data producing resources. Given a set of services with function-chaining structures, we address the design of distributed online algorithm that controls each node to make adaptive decisions on flowing service requests, committing function implementations, and/or producing data. We design a Service Disco…
The Network Function Virtualization paradigm is attracting the interest of service providers, that may greatly benefit from its flexibility and scalability properties. However, the diversity of possible orchestrated services, rises the necessity of adopting specific orchestration strategies for each service request that are unknown a priori. This paper presents Senate, a distributed architecture that enables precise orchestration of heterogeneous services over a common edge infrastructure. To assign shared resources to service orchestrators, Senate uses the Distributed Orchestration Resource A…
Next generation wireless communications networks will leverage software-defined radio and networking technologies, combined with cloud and fog computing. A pool of resources can then be dynamically allocated to create personalized network services (NSs). The enabling technologies are abstraction, virtualization and consolidation of resources, automatization of processes, and programmatic provisioning and orchestration. ETSI's network functions virtualization (NFV) management and orchestration (MANO) framework provides the architecture and specifications of the management layers. We introduce O…
5G technology complements the enabling of communication services for different vertical industries such as smart distribution grids. Automation is an integral and necessary part of the power distribution grid operation and management. This paper postulates a framework by which the smart distribution grid can obtain service-oriented communication services using 5G network slicing and intent-based networking (IBN). IBN provides an interface to service users and network stakeholders to cooperate through a high level abstraction model of service provisioning in a network agnostic manner. The autom…
Recent studies show the increasing popularity of distributed cloud applications, which are composed of multiple microservices. Besides their known benefits, microservice architecture also enables to mix and match cloud applications and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) services (service chains), which are composed of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). Provisioning complex services containing VNFs and microservices in a combined NFV/cloud platform can enhance service quality and optimise cost. Such a platform can be based on the multi-cloud concept. However, current multi-cloud solutions do …
Growing traffic demands and increasing security awareness are driving the need for secure services. Current solutions require manual configuration and deployment based on the customer's requirements. In this work, we present an architecture for an automatic intent-based provisioning of a secure service in a multilayer - IP, Ethernet, and optical - network while choosing the appropriate encryption layer using an open-source software-defined networking (SDN) orchestrator. The approach is experimentally evaluated in a testbed with commercial equipment. Results indicate that the processing impact …
5G mobile networks encompass the capabilities of hosting a variety of services such as mobile social networks, multimedia delivery, healthcare, transportation, and public safety. Therefore, the major challenge in designing the 5G networks is how to support different types of users and applications with different quality-of-service requirements under a single physical network infrastructure. Recently, network slicing has been introduced as a promising solution to address this challenge. Network slicing allows programmable network instances which match the service requirements by using network v…
In conventional large-scale networks, creation and management of network services are costly and complex tasks that often consume a lot of resources, including time and manpower. Network softwarization and network function virtualization have been introduced to tackle these problems. They replace the hardware-based network service components and network control mechanisms with software components running on general-purpose hardware, aiming at decreasing costs and complexity of implementing new services, maintaining the implemented services, and managing available resources in service provision…
The current trend in end-user devices' advancements in computing and communication capabilities makes edge computing an attractive solution to pave the way for the coveted ultra-low latency services. The success of the edge computing networking paradigm depends on the proper orchestration of the edge servers. Several Edge applications and services are intolerant to latency, especially in 5G and beyond networks, such as intelligent video surveillance, E-health, Internet of Vehicles, and augmented reality applications. The edge devices underwent rapid growth in both capabilities and size to cope…
Dynamic and flexible optical networking enabled by NFV and SDN are the key technology enablers for supporting the dynamicity and bandwidth requirements of emerging 5G network services. To achieve the objective of 5G, Network Services (NSes) must be often deployed transparently over multiple administrative and technological domains. Such case often presents security risks since a typical NS may comprise a chain of network functions, each executed in different remote locations, and tampering within the network infrastructure may compromise their communication. To avoid such threats, QKD has been…
Autonomous management and orchestration (MANO) of virtualized resources and services, especially in large-scale Network Function Virtualization (NFV) environments, is a big challenge owing to the stringent delay and performance requirements expected of a variety of network services. The Quality-of-Decisions (QoD) of a Management and Orchestration (MANO) system depends on the quality and timeliness of the information received from the underlying monitoring system. The data generated by monitoring systems is a significant contributor to the network and processing load of MANO systems, impacting …
This paper presents the vision of the Control Exchange Point (CXP) architectural model. The model is motivated by the inflexibility and ossification of today's inter-domain routing system, which renders critical QoS-constrained end-to-end (e2e) network services difficult or simply impossible to provide. CXPs operate on slices of ISP networks and are built on basic Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles, such as the clean decoupling of the routing control plane from the data plane and the consequent logical centralization of control. The main goal of the architectural model is to provide …
The envisioned 6G networks are expected to support extremely high data rates, low-latency, and radically new applications empowered by machine learning. The futuristic 6G networks require a novel framework that can be used to operate, manage, and optimize its underlying services such as ultra-reliable and low-latency communication, and Internet of everything. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated significant success in optimizing and designing networks. The AI-enabled traffic orchestration can dynamically organize different network architectures and slices to provide q…
Enterprises want their in-cloud services to leverage the performance and security benefits that middleboxes offer in traditional deployments. Such virtualized deployments create new opportunities (e.g., flexible scaling) as well as new challenges (e.g., dynamics, multiplexing) for middlebox management tasks such as service composition and provisioning. Unfortunately, enterprises lack systematic tools to efficiently compose and provision in-the-cloud middleboxes and thus fall short of achieving the benefits that cloud-based deployments can offer. To this end, we present the design and implement…
In recent years, the fast development of mobile communications and cloud systems has substantially promoted edge computing. By pushing server resources to the edge, mobile service providers can deliver their content and services with enhanced performance, and mobile-network carriers can alleviate congestion in the core networks. Although edge computing has been attracting much interest, most current research is application-specific, and analysis is lacking from a business perspective of edge cloud providers (ECPs) that provide general-purpose edge cloud services to mobile service providers and…
Content Delivery Network (CDN) has been emerged as a compelling technology to provide efficient and scalable web services even under high client request. However, this leads to a dilemma between minimum deployment cost and robust service under heavy loads. To solve this problem, we propose the Workload Automation Engine (WAE) which enables dynamic resource management, automated scaling and rapid service deployment with least cost for CDN providers. Our modular design uses an algorithm to calculate the optimal assignment of virtual CDN functions such as streaming, progressive delivering and loa…
AI-Native Orchestration in the 6G Continuum: Evolving Operator Platforms with Agentic AI
i2CAT Foundation（i2CAT基金会）；Intracom Telecom（Intracom电信）；Industrial Systems Institute (ISI)/Athena Research Center（工业系统研究所（ISI）/雅典研究中心）；University of Patras（帕特雷大学）
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being successfully used to deliver communication services in applications such as extending the coverage of 5G cellular networks in remote areas, emergency situations, and enhancing the service quality in regions of dense user populations. While optimized placement solutions have been proposed in literature for ensuring quality of service (QoS) of users, they may not be ideal in highly mobile, autonomous, and diverse network scenarios. This paper proposes a proactive and resilient framework for distributed and dynamic orchestration of UAV small cells to prov…
With the cellular networks becoming increasingly agile, a major challenge lies in how to support diverse services for mobile users (MUs) over a common physical network infrastructure. Network slicing is a promising solution to tailor the network to match such service requests. This paper considers a system with radio access network (RAN)-only slicing, where the physical infrastructure is split into slices providing computation and communication functionalities. A limited number of channels are auctioned across scheduling slots to MUs of multiple service providers (SPs) (i.e., the tenants). Eac…
Driven by closed-loop automation, the Zero-Touch Network and Services Management (ZSM) framework offers invigorating features for the end-to-end management and orchestration of a sliced network. Although ZSM is considered a promising framework by 3GPP, there is a lack of concrete ZSM-based solutions for the 3GPP Network Slicing management. This article presents an architectural framework of a ZSM-based management system for 3GPP Network Slicing. The proposed framework employs recursive ZSM management domains to meet the specific management requirements of the standard 3GPP Network Slicing fram…
For optimal placement and orchestration of network services, it is crucial that their structure and semantics are specified clearly and comprehensively and are available to an orchestrator. Existing specification approaches are either ambiguous or miss important aspects regarding the behavior of virtual network functions (VNFs) forming a service. We propose to formally and unambiguously specify the behavior of these functions and services using Queuing Petri Nets (QPNs). QPNs are an established method that allows to express queuing, synchronization, stochastically distributed processing delays…
Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Distributed Networking (SDN) technologies play a crucial role in enabling 5G system and beyond. A synergy between these both technologies has been identified for enabling a new concept dubbed service function chains (SFC) that aims to reduce both the capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX). The SFC paradigm considers different constraints and key performance indicators (KPIs), that includes QoS and different resources, for enabling network slice services. However, the large-scale, complexity and security issues brought by th…
Energy-Aware Agentic Orchestration for Multi-Site Service Deployment
Federal University of Viçosa (UFV)（维索萨联邦大学）；Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU)（乌贝兰迪亚联邦大学）；Instituto de Telecomunicações（电信研究所）；Universidade de Aveiro (UA)（阿威罗大学）；University of São Paulo (USP)（圣保罗大学）；Universitat Politecnica de València (UPV)（瓦伦西亚理工大学）；University of Minho (UMinho)（米尼奥大学）
Hybrid Orchestration of Edge AI and Microservices via Graph-based Self-Imitation Learning
School of Computer Science, South-Central Minzu University（中央民族大学南中央学院）；Key Laboratory of Cyber-Physical Fusion Intelligent Computing, State Ethnic Affairs Commission（国家民族事务委员会网络物理融合智能计算重点实验室）；Hubei Key Laboratory of Smart Internet Technology, School of Electronic Information and Communication, Huazhong University of Science and Technology（湖北智能互联网技术重点实验室，华中科技大学电子信息与通信学院）；Centre for Frontier AI Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)（前沿人工智能研究中心，科技研究局（A*STAR））
Along with the potential emergence of quantum computing, safety and security of new and complex communication services such as automated driving need to be redefined in the post-quantum era. To ensure reliable, continuous and secure operation of these scenarios, quantum resistant security algorithms (QRSAs) that enable secure connectivity must be integrated into the network management and orchestration systems of mobile networks. This paper explores a roadmap study of post-quantum era convergence with cellular connectivity using the Service & Computation Orchestrator (SCO) framework for enhanc…
Network slicing (NS) and multi-access edge computing (MEC) are new paradigms which play key roles in 5G and beyond networks. NS allows network operators (NOs) to divide the available network resources into multiple logical NSs for providing dedicated virtual networks tailored to the specific service/business requirements. MEC enables NOs to provide diverse ultra-low latency services for supporting the needs of different industry verticals by moving computing facilities to the network edge. NS can be constructed by instantiating a set of virtual network functions (VNFs) on top of MEC cloud serv…
