This paper presents a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) focused on intent-based service provisioning and closed-loop automation for collaborative robot (cobot) use case. The PoC demonstrates the integration of two key IBN enablers: the Intent-Based Network Intent Management Entity (IBN-IME) and CL Automation and Coordination, both aligned with 3GPP and ETSI Zero-Touch Service and Network Management (ZSM) standards. These enablers support the seamless interpretation of user intents, service deployment, and migration. The testbed, designed to emulate certain functionalities present in a 6G end-to-end system, highlights the potential for automation in future networks. The work addresses the need for an ecosystem that allows for the interaction of multiple stakeholders in a secure platform. The PoC presented can adapt to increasingly complex use cases, laying the groundwork for future improvements and broader deployments.

The entertainment and gaming industries continue to evolve, so they are becoming increasingly reliant on advanced network capabilities to deliver immersive, real-time experiences. In-network computing (INC) is a transformative paradigm in the design of the network architecture in 6G networks. It facilitates the offloading of computational tasks from devices to edge nodes and central servers, enabling faster data processing in network nodes and reducing latency and response times for high-demand applications, enhancing efficiency. This way, it will be possible to provide the final users with advanced applications like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). In this paper we introduce a 6G Network Infrastructure testbed designed for application execution and testing, supporting INC, and we present an Adaptive 360° Video Streaming service using INC facilities. The testbed has been designed to represent a vertical application for SLICES-RI and SUNRISE-6G projects. Some numerical results will assesses the performance of this dynamic video streaming system.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the Control Plane functionalities, strategies, and procedures in the Next Generation Central Offices, which are crucial traffic aggregation points close to the subscribers. The Next Generation Central Offices are becoming integral part of the next generation networks and for this reason the management and control of its internal resources is essential. Initially, the paper explains the Next Generation Central Offices system architecture and its placement within an end-to-end network. Then, it details the use cases and their quantitative analysis, taking into consideration a dense urban area in Paris city, for estimating the downlink and uplink throughput and latency related requirements. Based on these estimations, the paper defines the Next Generation Central Office Control Plane requirements, along with its functional architecture and its internal functional blocks, detailing their specific roles and interactions to meet the bandwidth and latency demands. Finally, the paper describes an early software prototype implementation based on ETSI TeraFlow SDN, highlighting the software extensions implemented for the support of the Next Generation Central Office Control Plane functionalities, strategies, and procedures. The paper concludes with the next steps for the future work, consisting of the integration with an actual Next Generation Central Office and a field trial experiment in an end-to-end network.

This paper presents the design and implementation of an Artificial Intelligence Control Plane (AICP) for deterministic networks, emphasizing the Proof-of-Concept (PoC) demonstration. The AICP framework integrates AI, digital twin technology, and real-time telemetry to manage complex network environments, ensuring reliable and low-latency communication. The PoC showcases the practical viability of the AICP by dynamically adapting to varying network demands and maintaining stringent to the Key Performance Indicator (KPI)s of the service. Extensive testing and real-world simulations highlight the framework's potential to enhance the efficiency and resilience of industrial communication networks.

The PREDICT-6G framework, a novel 6G network architecture aiming to provide reliable, predictable, and time sensitive networking across diverse applications, integrates a multi-technology, multi-domain network infrastructure, creating a homogeneous and deterministic E2E connectivity across wired and wireless elements. This architecture addresses the evolving needs of specialized applications, setting a new standard for future networking technologies. A key component is the AI-driven Multi-stakeholder Inter-domain Control-Plane, which ensures the seamless delivery of time-sensitive services.

Following the Industry 4.0 vision of a full digitization of the industry, time-critical services and applications, allowing network infrastructures to deliver information with determinism and reliability, are becoming more and more relevant for a set of vertical sectors. As a consequence, deterministic network solutions are progressively emerging, albeit they are still bounded to specific technological domains. Even considering the existence of interconnected deterministic networks, the provision of an end-to-end (E2E) deterministic service over them must rely on a specific control plane architecture, capable of seamlessly integrate and control the underlying multi-technology data plane. In this work, we envision such a control plane solution, extending previous works and exploiting several innovations and novel architectural concepts. The proposed control architecture is service-centric, in order to provide the necessary flexibility, scalability, and modularity to deal with a heterogenous data plane. The architecture is hierarchical and encompasses a set of management platforms to interact with specific network technologies overarched by an E2E platform for the management, monitoring, and control of E2E deterministic services. Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Twinning are used to enable network predictability and automation, as well as smart resource allocation, to ensure service reliability in dynamic scenarios where existing services may terminate and new ones may need to be deployed.

Satellite communications (SatCom) have a role of advanced service enablers in the new virtual networks, following 3GPP specifications. Specifically, the satellite peculiar characteristics are of paramount importance to dynamically activate capabilities, such as multicast and broadcast channels, sudden traffic offloading, capacity bonding, and cost-efficient coverage of uncovered areas. A key aspect to achieve a seamless and efficient integration between satellite and terrestrial infrastructures is to make satellite resource management dynamic and with a centralised control of a single orchestrator that has visibility of the end-to-end network. Considering the adoption of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) paradigms and the upcoming 5thgeneration of mobile communications (5G), this paper presents the ongoing work within the European Space Agency (ESA) ANChOR project, whose main output will be a data-driven Network Controller and Orchestrator for SatCom networks. This tool will be based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML)-based techniques to properly allocate resources exploiting some feedback knowledge of the network and it aims to support different services over 5G integrated satellite-terrestrial networks.

Network slicing is an essential 5G innovation whereby the network is partitioned into logical segments, so that Communication Service Providers (CSPs) can offer differentiated services for verticals and use cases. In many 5G use cases, network requirements vary over time and CSPs must dynamically adapt network slices to satisfy the contractual network slice QoS, cooperating and using each others’ resources, e.g. when resources of a single CSP are not sufficient or suitable to maintain all it’s current SLAs. While this need for dynamic cross-CSP cooperation is widely recognized, realization of this need is not yet possible due to gaps both in business processes and in technical capabilities.In this paper, we present a 5GZORRO approach to dynamic cross-CSP slice scaling. Our approach both enables CSPs to collaborate, providing security and trust with smart multi-party contracts, and facilitates thus achieved collaboration to enable resource sharing across multiple administrative domains, either during slice establishment or when already existing slice needs to expand or shrink. Our approach allows automating both business and technical processes involved in dynamic lifecycle management of cross-CSP network slices, following ETSI’s Zero-Touch Network and Service Management (ZSM) closed-loop architecture, and relying on resource-sharing Marketplace, Distributed Ledger (DL), and Operational Data Lake. We show how this approach is realized in truly Cloud Naive way, with Kubernetes as both business and technical cross-domain orchestrator. We then showcase applicability of the proposed solution for dynamic scaling of Content Delivery Network (CDN) service.

Summary Cyber attacks are becoming a very common trend in existing networks, expecting to be even more acute in future 5G networks due to greater number of connected devices, higher mobile data volume, low latency, etc. Security mechanisms to tackle cyber threats should be updated when users, possibly carrying devices with some kind of malware, move in highly dynamic mobile networks in order to continue providing the same detection and mitigation capabilities along user's path. This paper presents BotsOnFIRE, an experiment of the EU H2020 SoftFIRE project for the detection and mitigation of botnets in the SoftFIRE federated testbed for 5G within FIRE+, by combining Software‐Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) technologies. Bots' mobility is considered to trigger reconfiguration of security‐related SDN/NFV applications, when needed, so as to update security capabilities of the SoftFIRE infrastructure. The BotsOnFIRE experiment contributes to the wider 5G objective of more secure and resilient networks and services, where botnets are actually one of the most powerful cyber threats capable of orchestrating the remote execution of cyber‐attacks. Experiments confirm that BotsOnFIRE is feasible to conduct the expected detection and mitigation procedures in the SoftFIRE federated environment, being evaluated through some Key Performance Indicators.

The concept of network slicing in 5G infrastructures allows to deliver multiple virtual services over shared environments and fully customized based on vertical-driven requirements and target performance indicators. A key feature of 5G networks is the capability to dynamically re-optimize the allocation of computing and network resources, from the core up to the edge, to instantiate and manage different types of concurrent services over a shared infrastructure. In this demonstration, we present a network slicing and orchestration solution for vertical services in the media sector, where enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) network slices are instantiated interconnecting physical and virtual functions, provisioned and configured on-demand using the concept of NFV Network Services. The eMBB slices are automatically dimensioned to match the requirements of the virtual Content Delivery Network (vCDN) service, e.g. in terms of number of target users, video quality and geographical coverage area. Arbitration and resource allocation schemas optimize the sharing of mobile communication services and virtual resources among concurrent media service instances, in compliance with the Service Level Agreement between network operators and vertical service providers.

Future networks including the Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond mobile networks shall manage, control and orchestrate the new services for users especially vertical sectors, thereby they shall maximize the potential of 5G infrastructures and their services. Network slicing has emerged as a major new networking paradigm for meeting the diverse requirements of various vertical businesses in virtualized and softwarised 5G networks. SliceNet is a project of the EU 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G PPP) and focuses on network slicing as a cornerstone technology in 5G networks. This article describes how the SliceNet Control Plane shall evolve to meet the end-to-end needs of many different vertical businesses. SliceNet Control Plane shall span across multiple administrative domains, by integrating different technologies in each involved segments (RAN, MEC, CN, inter-connectivity). Moreover, SliceNet Control Plane is able to allow verticals to plug their own control logic on top of provisioned slices and specialize their services characteristics while optimizing the use of shared resources, providing dynamic configuration, dynamic management, resource isolation and scalability.