Virtualization and containerization enhance the modularity and scalability of mobile network architectures, facilitating customized user services and improving management and orchestration across the network. In the context of the 5th Generation Mobile Network (5G), these advancements contribute to reduced Operational Expenditures (OPEX) and enable sliced-based networking for novel applications and services. However, as beyond fifth-generation (B5G) networks aim to address the remaining challenges regarding network slice isolation, the shared underlying hardware can lead to data plane contention among slices, resulting in the Noisy Neighbor (NN) effect, which may compromise network slicing and Service-Level Agreements (SLAs). We propose a kernel-level instrumentation of the User Plane Function (UPF) to assess the impact of noisy slices on data plane processing. Our findings reveal that even prioritized slices are susceptible to degradation induced by NN, with observable effects on latency metrics pertinent to user experience.

Designing high-performance and memory-efficient data structures for the Forwarding Information Base (FIB) in Named-Data Networking (NDN) is a challenging task. Since the FIB size is orders of magnitude larger than IP routing tables, scaling it to store millions of prefixes in SRAM/TCAM memory in programmable switches is an open problem. To address this issue, we propose a Compressed FIB data structure called CoFIB, designed to run on edge programmable switches in an SDNbased environment. The CoFIB is a collection of exact-match tables placed in an optimized manner in both ingress and egress pipelines. We propose a LNPM algorithm that carefully recirculates packets in the pipeline. We also introduce the concept of canonical name prefixes to reduce memory footprint and propose an algorithm to extract canonical prefixes from the Routing Information Base (RIB). Experimental results show that CoFIB can compress memory up to 16.58× compared to the state-of-the-art, with no significant impact on throughput compared to hardware-based solutions. Additionally, our proposed table placement optimization for LNPM increases the number of packets processed at a line rate by 23.17% compared to the linear table placement approach using a large NDN name dataset.

Network slicing (NS) is becoming an essential element of service management and orchestration in communication networks, starting from mobile cellular networks and extending to a global initiative. NS can reshape the deployment and operation of traditional services, support the introduction of new ones, vastly advance how resource allocation performs in networks, and notably change the user experience. Most of these promises still need to reach the real world, but they have already demonstrated their capabilities in many experimental infrastructures. However, complexity, scale, and dynamism are pressuring for a Machine Learning (ML)-enabled NS approach in which autonomy and efficiency are critical features. This trend is relatively new but growing fast and attracting much attention. This article surveys Artificial Intelligence-enabled NS and its potential use in current and future infrastructures. We have covered state-of-the-art ML-enabled NS for all network segments and organized the literature according to the phases of the NS life cycle. We also discuss challenges and opportunities in research on this topic.

Cloud Computing has brought a new vision about what applications might expect from underlying networks. Software Defined Networking, in this context, provides techniques to make networks more flexible to application requirements as well as to virtual networks, which help implement the provisioning of physical resources to support tenants. Cloud-hosted applications assume that networks have high throughput, but do not consider competition through the medium, handled by the switches. This paper aims to present the concept of Workspace as a new paradigm to manage the underlying resources in terms of meeting the communication requirements. We introduce a clean-slate approach based on horizontal addressing that has Workspaces as logical links capable of being parameterized at the level of medium access control. In addition, an overview of a new network element designed to allow the parameterization of Workspaces directly on the hardware is given.

Mininet is a great prototyping tool which can automatically set up and configure customized OpenFlow testbeds scaling up to hundreds of nodes. This work presents the mini-nfv framework for NFV Orchestration, a general purpose VNF Manager to deploy and operate virtual Network Functions and Network Services on Mininet using standardized TOSCA NFV templates based on ETSI MANO Architectural Framework. Its goal is to alleviate the developers tedious task of setting up a whole service chaining environment and let them focus on their own work (e.g., developing a particular VNF, prototyping, implementing an orchestration algorithm or a customized traffic steering). By using mini-nfv, and its OASIS TOSCA NVF profile template it is also intended to bring some level of agility, standardization, reproducibility and replicability to the NFV experimentation world, easing the transition from emulated to real world experimentation.

People and organizations around the globe are using multimedia applications to communicate. By evolving their networks, network operators are taking advantage of the convergence of voice and data. QoS metrics are usually based on parameters from the user side or network side. In this context, NFV and SDN can improve the communication experience and offers an abstraction layer to the deployment of flexible multimedia applications provided on the cloud. In this work, we propose an approach to mitigate globally manage network and computing resources for multimedia applications. To this end, we come up with a control plane entity capable of orchestrating compute and network resources for the multimedia application scenario, relying on SIP control messages. Our solution brings QoS enhancement to the user through resiliency, load balancing, packet inspection, scaling on demand and the separation of control and data planes.

Internet of Things (IoT) has increased its presence in many environments. However, this means a greater exposure of sensitive data, rising potential security threats. Thus, security becomes a key requirement for the protection and prevention of cyber attacks to IoT applications and devices. FIWARE Platform, for example, has an architecture of components responsible for interconnecting devices to IoT applications, decreasing complexity and providing a standard set of services to developers. The IDAS 5 version of the platform presents several security gaps, so this work aims to solve some of them by incorporating end-to-end security services using encryption and access control in all NGSI requests (RESTFul API). The main contribution of this paper is the implementation of the DTLS 1.2 protocol in NodeJs to support the LWM2M/CoAP protocol and its addition to the IoT Agent. This paper also allowed the IoT Agent of the FIWARE Platform support TLS communication to the MQTT protocol. Through an experimental evaluation, it was possible to validate the implementation. Our preliminary results show that the encrypted requests had a small increase regarding latency, but this cost is compensated by the increase of security in FIWARE based IoT Applications. The source code of this work is open on the GitHub and it can be used to support security services in other IoT communication protocols.

The future use of smart grid scenarios with massive amounts of data poses stringent requirements to the communication protocols. IEC 61850, the standard regarding communication within power systems, defines the minimum requirements by the technology supporting smart grids. Considering the new scenarios and their requirements, support to multicast communication can fulfill the time constraints. Current networking technologies based on the TCP/IP architecture have limitations to support multicast inside the network. Based on the Entity Title Architecture (ETArch), an SDN based network architecture, capable of satisfying requirements such as multicast, this work proposes ETArch-SG to support future smart grid communication requirements. By using an experimental approach, ETArch-SG was compared to the current TCP/IP architecture. Our results demonstrate that ETArch-SG can configure IED with lower latencies and communicate PMUs with better performance when compared to IP Multicast, reaching the IEC 61850 time constraints.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are catching the attention of telecom operators. Telecom environments establish a set of Carrier Grade requirements such as high availability, high throughput and low latency. To address these challenges SDN deploys logically-centralized controllers, such as ONOS and OpenDayLight. Based on the JAIN SLEE component model, which is a Carrier Grade component already deployed at telecom operators, and the Libfluid OpenFlow driver, this work presents the CREDENCE, a carrier grade SDN controller, which in our evaluation shows that it offers a higher throughput and a lower latency when compared to ONOS, OpenDayLight, Ryu and POX.

In this work, we present NERV, a constraint free network resource manager for virtualized environments capable of supporting multiple network architectures simultaneously. Using a protocol agnostic forwarding element, programmed with the P4 language, and the design principles of MicroServices architectures, we built a framework composed of small applications, each one responsible for manipulating a group of resources of the network, allowing the implementation of different policies to manage systems with different protocol stacks and control strategies. Also, we promote the reuse of these applications creating a Standard API that expose generic functions to manipulate network resources, permitting the combination of low-level applications to compose high-level network manipulation services.

Mobility support is a requirement in next generation networks. The entity Title Architecture (ETArch) is a clean-slate network architecture that uses a naming and addressing scheme based on the Title and has a natural match with Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm. ETArch aims at satisfying applications requirements such as mobility. On a previous work, we demonstrated the use of ETArch in order to keep ongoing sessions during handover with no packet loss. The initial approach however, performed the handover without taking into account QoS guarantees during the selection of new Point of Attachments (PoAs). This work proposes an extension to the legacy ETArch Mobility Manager, called Quality-oriented Mobility Management Approach (QoMMA), to support a quality-oriented handover management. This extension enables a network-initiated mobility control that improves resources allocation and execute a quality-oriented access point selection. The QoMMA also performs a mobility load balancing in order to maximize admissions of mobile sessions in conditions of congestion. The evaluations were carried out on a testbed that considered real events, and provided evidence that the proposal outperforms legacy ETArch mobility control functionalities.

The eHealth technology will change the way the health system is handled, mainly in developing countries, such as Brazil, where there is a huge shortage of healthcare professionals to assist the patients, especially for those living in rural and remote areas. The Context-Aware Mobile Approach (CAMA) seeks to improve the Brazilian primary healthcare system through context-aware eHealth facilities, such as people mobility, expecting to change the way that healthcare services are applied, managed, and maintained to achieve efficiency and safety for both patients and hospital staffs. Since this type of technology will handle vital parameters of people, it is mandatory that the involved network infrastructure can provide dependability and reliability so it can fulfill their role properly. This paper presents a network infrastructure based on the Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm to enable quality-oriented mobility control capabilities in the CAMA approach, to deploy mobility prediction, Point of Attachment (PoA) decision and handover setup meeting both application quality requirements and current wireless quality conditions, then improving the dependability and reliability of the eHealth biofeedback systems.

The emergence of new technologies, in addition with the popularization of mobile devices and wireless communication systems, demands a variety of requirements that current Internet is not able to comply adequately. In this scenario, the innovative information-centric Entity Title Architecture (ETArch), a Future Internet (FI) clean slate approach, was design to efficiently cope with the increasing demand of beyond-IP networking services. Nevertheless, despite all ETArch capabilities, it was not projected with reliable networking functions, which limits its operability in mobile multimedia networking, and will seriously restrict its scope in Future Internet scenarios. Therefore, our work extends ETArch mobility control with advanced quality-oriented mobility functions, to deploy mobility prediction, Point of Attachment (PoA) decision and handover setup meeting both session quality requirements of active session flows and current wireless quality conditions of neighbouring PoA candidates. The effectiveness of the proposed additions were confirmed through a preliminary evaluation carried out by MATLAB, in which we have considered distinct applications scenario, and showed that they were able to outperform the most relevant alternative solutions in terms of performance and quality of service.

The explosion of demanding on-line services, such as video, is increasingly stressing the Internet architecture, requiring new solutions to support future usage scenarios. New Future Internet approaches targeting Information Centric Networking, such as the Entity Title Architecture (ETArch), provide new optimizations for these scenarios, using novel mechanisms such as Software Defined Networking (SDN). However, these are not targeted to address another growing Internet challenge reflecting the increase in multi-technology wireless mobile access. In this work, we empowered ETArch with Media-Independent mechanisms from the IEEE 802.21 standard, optimizing content delivery in wireless mobile scenarios. The resulting framework was implemented in a physical testbed of the OFELIA project, with results showing that the defined mechanisms supported seamless handover avoiding packet loss at a reduced overhead cost, when compared with the base ETArch. Moreover, the media-independent nature of these enhancements allows the framework to be deployed in different access technologies, in a flexible way.

Internet access and service utilization has been exploding in mobile devices, through the leverage of WLAN, 3G and now LTE connections. It is this explosion as well that is stressing the underlying fabric of the Internet, and motivating new solutions, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), to build the controlling support and extension capabilities of the Future Internet. However, SDN has yet to reach the necessary traction to be deployed, and has been more relayed towards experimentation supporting frameworks and away from wireless environments. This paper explores SDN mechanisms and increments them with Media Independent Handover services from the IEEE 802.21 standard, coupling them in a single framework for the dynamic optimized support of OpenFlow path establishment and wireless connectivity establishment. The framework was implemented over open-source software in a physical testbed, with results showing the benefits that this solution brings in terms of performance and signaling overhead, when compared with more basic approaches.

The strong use of distributed applications is due to the fact that Internet and the Web are based on common and widely accepted standards. Web services can be the basis of the next generation of applications. Unfortunately if someone asks for the layers of the Web Services protocol stack, the answer cannot be given right away. Considering that this technology is emerging and its bases are being defined, different companies and working groups propose standards that come and go with the same speed. Another problem is that these groups provide their own vision about the stack and, finally, the widely available standards proposals makes this environment a standard's Babel. In this paper we will run a quest in order to find the Web Services protocol stack, by putting together different standards and visions and finally providing an independent Web Services protocol stack.

Actually Internet applications can provide not only information, but also, another way of getting distributed computing. Cooperative information systems are autonomous and heterogeneous systems, distributed geographically, but interconnected. Web Services provides a set of interoperable standards that can be used to connect distributed applications. On this environment, security is a critical issue, and an attack can expose systems services without authentication. An end-to-end connection, like the ones involved in such systems, usually requires that an authentication can be shared between different information systems. Web Services security model is not yet fully defined and a lot of proposals are emerging, delaying the adoption of this technology in many situations. In this paper we present multiplatform authentication control system based on an extension of SRP protocol, using SAML. Within this solution, authentication control can be leveraged, even with weak passwords and an authentication assertion can be exchanged with different cooperative information systems.