Controller placement problem (CPP) is a key issue for Software-Defined Networking (SDN) with distributed controller architectures. This problem aims to determine a suitable number of controllers deployed in important locations so as to optimize the overall network performance. In comparison to communication delay, existing literature on the CPP assumes that the influence of controller workload distribution on network performance is negligible. In this paper, we tackle the CPP that simultaneously considers the communication delay, the control plane utilization, and the controller workload distribution. Due to this reason, our CPP is intrinsically different from and clearly more difficult than any previously studied CPPs that are NP-hard. To tackle this challenging issue, we develop a new algorithm that seamlessly integrates the genetic algorithm (GA) and the gradient descent (GD) optimization method. Particularly, GA is used to search for suitable CPP solutions. The quality of each solution is further evaluated through GD. Simulation results on two representative network scenarios (small-scale and large-scale) show that our algorithm can effectively strike the trade-off between the control plane utilization and the network response time.
Software Defined Network (SDN) is an emerging network paradigm which provides a centralized view of the network by decoupling the network control plane from the data plane. This strategy of maintaining a global view of the network optimizes resource management. However, the implementation of SDN using a single physical controller lead to issues of scalability and robustness. A physically distributed but logically centralized SDN controller architecture promises to resolve both these issues. Distributed SDN along with its benefits brings along the problem of the number of controllers required a…
We consider a distributed Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture adopting a cluster of multiple controllers to improve network performance and reliability. Besides the Openflow control traffic exchanged between controllers and switches, we focus on the control traffic exchanged among the controllers in the cluster, needed to run coordination and consensus algorithms to keep the controllers synchronized. We estimate the effect of the inter-controller communications on the reaction time perceived by the switches depending on the data-ownership model adopted in the cluster. The model is a…
SDN-enabled Integrated satellite-terrestrial networks (ISTNs), can provide several advantages including global seamless coverage, high reliability, low latency, etc. and can be a key enabler towards next generation networks. To deal with the complexity of the control and management of the integrated network, leveraging the concept of software-defined networking (SDN) will be helpful. In this regard, the SDN controller placement problem in SDN-enabled ISTNs becomes of paramount importance. In this paper, we formulate an optimization problem for the SDN controller placement with the objective of…
Coordinated Science Laboratory（协同科学实验室）；University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）
In this work we introduce two novel deterministic annealing based clustering algorithms to address the problem of Edge Controller Placement (ECP) in wireless edge networks. These networks lie at the core of the fifth generation (5G) wireless systems and beyond. These algorithms, ECP-LL and ECP-LB, address the dominant leader-less and leader-based controller placement topologies and have linear computational complexity in terms of network size, maximum number of clusters and dimensionality of data. Each algorithm tries to place controllers close to edge node clusters and not far away from other…
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a recent paradigm in telecommunication networks that disentangles data and control planes and brings more flexibility and efficiency to the network as a result. The Controller Placement (CP) problem in SDN, which is typically subject to specific optimality criteria, is one of the primary problems in the design of SDN systems. {\em Dynamic} Controller Placement (DCP) enables a placement solution that is adaptable to inherent variability in network components (traffic, locations, etc.). DCP has gained much attention in recent years, yet despite this, most sol…
Several challenging optimization problems arise while considering the deployment of the space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGINs), among which the optimal satellite gateway deployment problem is of significant importance. Moreover, with the increasing interest in the software-defined integration of 5G networks and satellites, the existence of an effective scheme for optimal placement of SDN controllers is essential. In this paper, we discuss the interrelation between the two problems above and propose suitable methods to solve them under various network design criteria. We first provide a …
Computer networks covered the entire world and a serious and new development has not formed for many years. But companies and consumer organizations complain about the failure to add new features to their networks and according to their need, like much of the works to be done automatically and they also like to develop and expand their networks on the software side so they do not need new expensive hardware for many of the activities and needs of their network. Analysis of the control layers and writing data in Software-Defined Network facilitate network management and accelerate innovation in…
Leveraging recent advances on mobile edge computing (MEC), edge intelligence has emerged as a promising paradigm to support mobile artificial intelligence (AI) applications at the network edge. In this paper, we consider the AI service placement problem in a multi-user MEC system, where the access point (AP) places the most up-to-date AI program at user devices to enable local computing/task execution at the user side. To fully utilize the stringent wireless spectrum and edge computing resources, the AP sends the AI service program to a user only when enabling local computing at the user yield…
Caching is frequently used by Internet Service Providers as a viable technique to reduce the latency perceived by end users, while jointly offloading network traffic. While the cache hit-ratio is generally considered in the literature as the dominant performance metric for such type of systems, in this paper we argue that a critical missing piece has so far been neglected. Adopting a radically different perspective, in this paper we explicitly account for the cost of content retrieval, i.e. the cost associated to the external bandwidth needed by an ISP to retrieve the contents requested by its…
We study the optimal geographic content placement problem for device-to-device (D2D) networks in which the content popularity follows the Zipf law. We consider a D2D caching model where the locations of the D2D users (caches) are modeled by a Poisson point process (PPP) and have limited communication range and finite storage. Unlike most related work which assumes independent placement of content, and does not capture the locations of the users, we model the spatial properties of the network including spatial correlation in terms of the cached content. We propose two novel spatial correlation …
With the rise in data centre virtualization, there are increasing choices as to where to place workloads, be it in web applications, Enterprise IT or in Network Function Virtualisation. Workload placement approaches available today primarily focus on optimising the use of data centre resources. Given the significant forecasts for network traffic growth to/from data centres, effective management of both data centre resources and of the wide area networks resources that provide access to those data centres will become increasingly important. In this paper, we present an architecture for workload…
The Radio Access Network (RAN) is the segment of cellular networks that provides wireless connectivity to end-users. O-RAN Alliance has been transforming the RAN industry by proposing open RAN specifications and the programmable Non-Real-Time and Near-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controllers (Non-RT RIC and Near-RT RIC). Both RICs provide platforms for running applications called rApps and xApps, respectively, to optimize the behavior of the RAN. We investigate a disaggregation strategy of the Near-RT RIC so that its components meet stringent latency requirements while presenting a cost-effective…
Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is enabling the softwarization of traditional network services, commonly deployed in dedicated hardware, into generic hardware in form of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), which can be located flexibly in the network. However, network load balancing can be critical for an ordered sequence of VNFs, also known as Service Function Chains (SFCs), a common cloud and network service approach today. The placement of these chained functions increases the ping-pong traffic between VNFs, directly affecting to the efficiency of bandwidth utilization. The optimization…
In this paper, we study the deployment decisions and location optimization for the remote radio heads (RRHs) in coordinated distributed networks in the presence of a wireless backhaul. We implement a scheme where the RRHs use zero-forcing beamforming (ZF-BF) for the access channel to jointly serve multiple users, while on the backhaul the RRHs are connected to their central units (CUs) through point-to-point wireless links. We investigate the effect of this scheme on the deployment of the RRHs and on the resulting achievable spectral efficiency over the access channel (under a backhaul outage …
As the capacity demand of mobile applications keeps increasing, the backhaul network is becoming a bottleneck to support high quality of experience (QoE) in next-generation wireless networks. Content caching at base stations (BSs) is a promising approach to alleviate the backhaul burden and reduce user-perceived latency. In this paper, we consider a wireless caching network where all the BSs are connected to a central controller via backhaul links. In such a network, users can obtain the required data from candidate BSs if the data are pre-cached. Otherwise, the user data need to be first retr…
To adapt to continuously changing workloads in networks, components of the running network services may need to be replicated (scaling the network service) and allocated to physical resources (placement) dynamically, also necessitating dynamic re-routing of flows between service components. In this paper, we propose JASPER, a fully automated approach to jointly optimizing scaling, placement, and routing for complex network services, consisting of multiple (virtualized) components. JASPER handles multiple network services that share the same substrate network; services can be dynamically added …
Traffic engineering has been used in IP and MPLS networks for a number of years as a tool for making more efficient use of capacity by explicitly routing traffic demands where there is available network capacity that would otherwise be unused. Deployment of traffic engineering imposes an additional layer of complexity to network design and operations, however, which has constrained its adoption for capacity optimisation. The rise of Software Defined Networks has renewed interest in the use of traffic engineering approaches leveraging centralised network controllers for capacity optimisation. W…
The ability to operate anywhere, anytime, as well as their capability to hover and carry cargo on board make Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) suitable platforms to act as Flying Gateways (FGWs) to the Internet. The problem is the optimal placement of the FGWs within the flying network, such that the Quality of Service (QoS) offered is maximized. The literature has been focused on optimizing the placement of the Flying Access Points (FAPs), which establish high-capacity small cells to serve the users on the ground, overlooking the backhaul network design, including the FGW placement. The FGW pla…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as adequate platforms to carry communications nodes, including Wi-Fi Access Points and cellular Base Stations. This has led to the concept of flying networks composed of UAVs as a flexible and agile solution to provide on-demand wireless connectivity anytime, anywhere. However, state of the art works have been focused on optimizing the placement of the access network providing connectivity to ground users, overlooking the backhaul network design. In order to improve the overall Quality of Service (QoS) offered to ground users, the placement of Flyin…
Notwithstanding the significant research effort Network Function Virtualization (NFV) architectures received over the last few years little attention has been placed on optimizing proactive caching when considering it as a service chain. Since caching of popular content is envisioned to be one of the key technologies in emerging 5G networks to increase network efficiency and overall end user perceived quality of service we explicitly consider in this paper the interplay and subsequent optimization of caching based VNF service chains. To this end, we detail a novel mathematical programming fram…
With the wide adoption of large-scale Internet services and big data, the cloud has become the ideal environment to satisfy the ever-growing storage demand, thanks to its seemingly limitless capacity, high availability and faster access time. In this context, data replication has been touted as the ultimate solution to improve data availability and reduce access time. However, replica placement systems usually need to migrate and create a large number of data replicas over time between and within data centers, incurring a large overhead in terms of network load and availability. In this paper,…
Relay nodes-enhanced architectures are deemed a viable solution to enhance coverage and capacity of nowadays cellular networks. Besides a number of desirable features, these architectures reduce the average distance between users and network nodes, thus allowing for battery savings for users transmitting on the uplink. In this paper, we investigate the extent of these savings, by optimizing relay nodes deployment in terms of uplink energy consumption per transmitted bit, while taking into account a minimum uplink average user delay that has to be guaranteed. A novel performance evaluation fram…
Network-wide traffic analytics are often needed for various network monitoring tasks. These measurements are often performed by collecting samples at network switches, which are then sent to the controller for aggregation. However, performing such analytics without ``overcounting'' flows or packets that traverse multiple measurement switches is challenging. Therefore, existing solutions often simplify the problem by making assumptions on the routing or measurement switch placement. We introduce AROMA, a measurement infrastructure that generates a uniform sample of packets and flows regardless …
We study the problem of geometric optimization of medium access control in multi-hop wireless network. We discuss the optimal placements of simultaneous transmitters in the network and our general framework allows us to evaluate the performance gains of highly managed medium access control schemes that would be required to implement these placements. In a wireless network consisting of randomly distributed nodes, our performance metrics are the optimum transmission range that achieves the most optimal tradeoff between the progress of packets in desired directions towards their respective desti…
