Emerging packet-optical networks have exposed flexibility and scalability limitations of current network telemetry mechanisms. Recent work in packet networks has explored the possibility of improving network telemetry for devices that have programmable data planes with encouraging results. Extending those mechanisms into optical networks, however, is far from straightforward due to factors such as layering and presence of devices that do not process packets. We introduce a framework that overcomes those challenges for packet-optical networks with constructs to unify telemetry across packet and optical network segments. We demonstrate the utility of the proposed framework with an implementation of use-case examples in packet-optical network telemetry.

Network operators are faced with the challenge of deploying and managing middleboxes (also called inline services) such as firewalls within their broadband access, datacenter or enterprise networks. Due to the lack of available protocols to route traffic through middleboxes, operators still rely on error-prone and complex low-level configurations to coerce traffic through the desired set of middleboxes. Built upon the recent software-defined networking (SDN) architecture and OpenFlow protocol, this paper proposes StEERING, short for SDN inlinE sERvices and forwardlNG. It is a scalable framework for dynamically routing traffic through any sequence of middleboxes. With simple centralized configuration, StEERING can explicitly steer different types of flows through the desired set of middleboxes, scaling at the level of per-subscriber and per-application policies. With its capability to support flexible routing, we further propose an algorithm to select the best locations for placing services, such that the performance is optimized. Overall, StEERING allows network operators to monetize their middlebox deployment in new ways by allowing subscribers flexibly to select available network services.