584

The shift towards distributed computing architectures that push data storage and processing to the edge of the network, is resulting into a convergence of cloud-computing services and next generation mobile network technologies. In order to uniformly manage resources and services in the formed cloud/core to edge/devices continuum and to handle the diversity of multi-party underlying infrastructure technologies in a latency-aware, reliable and trustworthy fashion, management automation has become more crucial than ever. In this work, we present the security analytics mechanisms of the π-Edge platform–our edge management platform that embodies zero-touch automation features for interoperability, Quality of Service (QoS) assurance, resilience and trust. To this end, we introduce a declarative NFV MANO Information Model (IM) and methods for automatically enhancing Network Slices at the edge, with security services that i) continuously monitor user-plane traffic on the links between Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), ii) detect possible network vulnerabilities or malicious behaviour and iii) apply relevant actions to effectively observe and mitigate identified threats. The implementation of such mechanisms is evaluated through experimentation on a use case of DDoS attacking scenarios, showcasing the usability and the benefits of our proposed solution.

The evolution of the cloud-computing technology has allowed the instantiation of resources almost anywhere. Handheld devices, edge/fog resources, and core cloud datacenters comprise a resource continuum that can be used for hosting almost any service. The rise of micro-services has allowed any application to be hosted over any type of compute resource, regardless of the underlying hardware architecture. In this work, we focus on the far-edge devices that participate in the resource continuum, located at the network access or the fog, and are usually resource constrained. We evaluate two lightweight frameworks which can be used for orchestrating micro-services on top of them. Our evaluation presents experimental evidence in terms of their capabilities for instantiating/tear-down of network services, and their dynamic adaptation to external workloads by using the respective horizontal scaling solutions, when tested under the same experimental environment.

The adoption of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is considered as one of the enablers for a fully softwarized 5G architecture, that allows significantly higher flexibility for network service providers to instantiate services, conFigure and update them, as well as to truly realize multi-tenancy. The key enablers of the NFV technology lie in the evolution of virtualization technologies, such as the long established Virtual Machines, and the more recent paradigms of containers for micro-services, like docker and LXC. Such technologies allow the virtualization to span even to the wireless RAN, with fully softwarized base station architectures. Nevertheless, with the plethora of different virtualization technologies, several Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIMs) and service orchestrators have emerged, each of them addressing different aspects for the provided services e.g. possible nomadic behaviour of the hosting computers, resource constrained devices hosting the services and services deployed for time critical services to name a few. In this work, we use a reference setup and experiment with some of the most widely adopted infrastructure managers, trying to experimentally derive and validate their differences under varying loads of traffic. Our results reveal the time needed for instantiating the same service function, for dockers, containers and Virtual Machines, for a different number of VNFs.

Network Functions Virtualization Management and Orchestration (NFV-MANO) provides a standardized approach for the management and effortless deployment of (virtual) services. Although NFV-MANO initially focused on the deployment of services over datacenters, the introduction of fully softwarized network architectures even for the wireless network creates fertile ground for the re-conception of the manner through which the underlying hardware is managed. In this article, we consider the case of an open experimentation testbed, with focus on wireless networking, and adopt the Open Source MANO framework for provisioning virtual services on top of the experimentation equipment. We extend the Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIMs) of the NFV-MANO architecture in two well-known frameworks (Openstack and OpenVIM) for the testbed in order to create and handle virtualized wireless network interfaces, hosted on the generic networking nodes of the testbed. Through our contributions, existing VNFs can be deployed over the testbed interconnected over wireless links, specified during the on-boarding phase. The extensions are introduced transparently to the existing operation of the platform, in order to allow the portability of network services and network functions to other instances as well. We focus on providing virtual functions inter-networked over wireless links, which traditionally are not handled by the framework, and allow easier interaction of the end-users with the testbed. We benchmark the framework in terms of performance and analyze the deployment case of a softwarized 5G Radio Access Network in a real testbed deployment.