Scenarios for distributed cloud with multiple edge clouds and centralized data centers are being investigated as the computing and networking underpinnings of next-generation network services such as augmented reality, self-driving vehicles, drones, and more. In such distributed environments, service providers will typically face tens, hundreds, or thousands of compute location candidates (edge, regional, and central) where network service components can be placed. To take optimized placement decisions of network services and execute the management workflows, orchestration systems require up-to-date and accurate resource availability representation, in the form of a network inventory that can be immense in distributed cloud scenarios. As a result, the service management and placement problems may become not tractable. In this work, we propose the Abstracted Network Inventory (ANI) component to generate service-optimized network views over the same network inventory. ANI implements a novel abstraction method where network service requirements are used as an input to generate an optimized abstract network inventory representation, called Logical Network Inventory (LNI). We also provide a formal definition of the network model and problem statement along with the development of three algorithms to efficiently build an LNI. Results show the potential benefits of using an LNI to streamline service management and placement: (i) the relationship between compute nodes and links (i.e., density) in an LNI is reduced between 1.8-2.7x compared to a full network inventory topology; and (ii) up to 50% of time can be saved for service placement after abstracting around 20% of the compute nodes.

Orchestration is crucial to address the growing complexity of IT, cloud and telecom services. Orchestrators enable service deployment, but continuous operation is given second-class status. Most orchestrators use static workflows, which may fail, misbehave or be insufficient, leaving services in an undesirable state. We present Reorchestration, a prototype showing orchestration without workflows, combining functional-inspired state management with an infrastructure-as-code approach. The prototype demonstrates the viability of our ideas in some scenarios, and we expect it will contribute to discussions on software architectures for closed-loop automation.

Orchestration is crucial to address the growing complexity of IT, cloud and telecom services. Orchestrators enable service deployment, but continuous operation is given second-class status. Most orchestrators use static workflows, which may fail, misbehave or be insufficient, leaving services in an undesirable state. We propose the Reorchestration architecture for orchestration without workflows, which marries functional-inspired state management with an infrastructure-as-code approach. It enables changes to be applied to existing services, while providing a high-level framework for expressing how these changes should happen. We also share our first prototype, in the hope that it can foster discussions on new software architectures for orchestrators and closed-loop automation.

In this paper, we build upon our prior work on D2-ITS, a flexible and extensible framework to dynamically distribute network control to enable message dissemination in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), and extend it with handover and load balancing capabilities. More specifically, D2-ITS' new handover feature allows a controller to automatically "delegate" control of a vehicle to another controller as the vehicle moves. Control delegation can also be used as a way to balance load among controllers and ensure that required application quality of service is maintained. We showcase D2-ITS' handover and load- balancing features using the Mininet-Wifi network simula- tor/emulator. Our preliminary experiments show D2-ITS' ability to seamlessly handover control of vehicles as they move.

We propose D2-ITS, a flexible and extensible framework to dynamically distribute network control to enable message dissemination in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). By decoupling the control-from the data plane, D2-ITS leverages network programmability to address ITS scalability, delay intolerance and decentralization. It uses a distributed control plane based on a hierarchy of controllers that can dynamically adjust to environment- and network conditions in order to satisfy ITS application requirements. We demonstrate the benefits of D2-ITS through a proof-of-concept prototype using the ns-3 simulation platform. Results indicate lower message delivery latency with minimal additional overhead.

End-to-End programmability across radio, transport and compute resources is a key enabler for the fifth generation of mobile communication networks (5G). In our work we look into how SDN can realize the required cross-domain programmability, as well as slicing of resources towards multiple clients. We present design and implementation of a hierarchical, modular and programmable orchestration architecture across radio access networks and transport networks. We demonstrate how the developed multi-domain orchestration improves the service creation as well as resource utilization across the domains using real-time monitoring.

As the density of wireless networks continues to grow with more clients, more base stations, and more traffic, designing cost-effective wireless solutions with efficient resource usage and ease to manage is an increasing challenging task due to the overall system complexity. A number of vendors offer scalable and high-performance wireless networks but at a high cost and commonly as a single-vendor solution, limiting the ability to innovate after roll-out. Recent Software-Defined Networking (SDN) approaches propose new means for network virtualization and programmability advancing the way networks can be designed and operated, including user-defined features and customized behaviour even at run-time. However, means for rapid prototyping and experimental evaluation of SDN for wireless environments are not yet available. This paper introduces Mininet-WiFi as a tool to emulate wireless OpenFlow/SDN scenarios allowing high-fidelity experiments that replicate real networking environments. Mininet-WiFi augments the well-known Mininet emulator with virtual wireless stations and access points while keeping the original SDN capabilities and the lightweight virtualization software architecture. We elaborate on the potential applications of Mininet-Wifi and discuss the benefits and current limitations. Two use cases based on IEEE 802.11 demonstrate available functionality in our open source developments.

Motivated by the internets of the future, which will likely be considerably larger in size as well as highly heterogeneous and decentralized, we propose Decentralize-SDN, D-SDN, a framework that enables not only physical- but also logical distribution of the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) control plane. D-SDN accomplishes network control distribution by defining a hierarchy of controllers that can “match” an internet's organizational- and administrative structure. By delegating control between main controllers and secondary controllers, D-SDN is able to accommodate administrative decentralization and autonomy.It incorporates security as an integral part of the framework. This paper describes D-SDN and presents two use cases, namely network capacity sharing and public safety network services.

ABSTRACT Online gaming is today a very lucrative market, with millions of users all around the globe. At the same time, the increasing popularity and complexity of such games implies the need of deploying cheating‐detection mechanisms for ensuring the continuous interest of honest users in playing. The development of secure and efficient solutions for online games is, however, a challenging issue. This is especially true in P2P environments, in which the lack of a central trusted entity monitoring the game greatly facilitates the activity of malicious players. Aiming to tackle this issue, this paper presents SecureTCG, a protocol for detecting cheating attempts in P2P multiplayer card games where the players use their own decks to play, such as the so‐called trading card games. In summary, SecureTCG allows the multiple players participating in a trading card game match to detect cheating attempts as soon as they are made and without the intervention of third parties, supports multiple players and different game styles, displays tolerance to players’ dropouts during a match, prevents collusion among any number of players, provides (optional) after‐match auditability mechanisms, and has a reduced computational cost. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper proposes a novel approach to capacity sharing in hybrid networked environments, i.e., environments that consist of infrastructure-based as well as infrastructureless networks. The proposed framework is based on Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and provides flexible, efficient, and secure capacity sharing solutions in a variety of hybrid network scenarios. In this paper, we describe the challenges raised by capacity sharing in hybrid networks, describe our framework in detail and how it addresses these challenges, and discuss implementation issues. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first SDN-based capacity sharing solution that targets hybrid networks and that incorporates security as an integral part of the proposed approach.

In Wireless Sensor Networks, the base station is generally the only unconditionally trusted entity. If it is not connected for a period of time, the network is left unattended and sensor nodes cannot offload data in real time. Thus, until the base station becomes available, adversaries can compromise some sensor nodes and selectively destroy data. In order to prevent such attacks, providing the so-called “data survival”, some strategies can be employed. In this paper, we propose a new strategy based on the concept of secure multi-party protocols. The main advantages of the proposed strategy are not limited to the security, since it (1) preserves privacy, (2) enables the use o data aggregation, (3) enforces a level of trust among nodes, which collaborate to compute functions. Additionally, we implement and evaluate the proposed solution using a real sensor platform. Results show the low cost of the scheme in terms of energy consumption and processing time.

Public Safety Networks (PSNs) enable communication not only to warn the population about an imminent catastrophe, but also to coordinate teams during the crisis phase. As soon as authorities become aware of a crisis, they should organise a response just before the dissemination of warning messages to citizens in the crisis zone. Thus, it is important to prevent the leak of information before the communication to citizens. This paper explores the use of threshold cryptography for sharing valuable information (or secrets) in PSNs. The proposed protocol was designed to offer: (1) interoperability, (2) survivability, (3) security against adversary with specific goals (e.g., destroy the secrets). We implement the protocol in a wireless mesh network in order to demonstrate its efficiency.

Security in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is highly dependent on the behavior of the base station. This happens because, if the network is left unattended, sensor nodes cannot offload data to the (secure) base station in real time and, thus, until the base station becomes available, adversaries can compromise some sensor nodes and selectively destroy data. In order to prevent such attacks, providing the so-called “data survival”, some strategies can be employed. In this paper, we discuss and analyze different data survival strategies using cryptography. To the best of our knowledge, we provide the first implementation of such techniques, using a real sensor platform for their evaluation. As a result, we show that the main costs for the data survival process are not as high as it could be expected, and that strategies based on private keys can be used even if one considers the highly resource constrained nature of sensors.