Papers by Marco Di Girolamo
We assume a computing infrastructure that implements a cloudto-edge continuum by federating heter... more We assume a computing infrastructure that implements a cloudto-edge continuum by federating heterogeneous resources. This infrastructure enables next generation (nextgen) QoE-intensive applications, by facilitating one of their critical requirements: latency. As such each node is identified primarily in terms of latency and secondarily in terms of, more traditional, computational capacity and availability characteristics. Since this infrastructure is dependent on the existing, local, and potentially third-party owned resources, we must address the pertinent problem of resource heterogeneity. This paper delineates the technical specifications of the solution that was designed to tackle the problem, creating a software stack that comprises a complete environment for the orchestration of containerized and VM-based workflows. The solution, dubbed "Minicloud", allows the underlying resource to be federated from a higher-level continuum management layer and be used for the deployment of nextgen apps based on latency requirements. Based on lightweight Kubernetes-oriented technologies and tools, it maintains minimum dependencies allowing a wide range of underlying OSs and system architectures to be supported.
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd eBooks, Apr 10, 2018
VNFaaS with End-to-End Full Service Orchestration
2016 Fifth European Workshop on Software-Defined Networks (EWSDN)
The EU funded FP7 project T-NOVA, with the specific goal of accelerating the evolution of NFV, pr... more The EU funded FP7 project T-NOVA, with the specific goal of accelerating the evolution of NFV, proposes an open architecture to provide Virtual Network Functions as a Service (VNFaaS), together with a dynamic, and flexible platform for the management of Network Services (NSs) composed by those Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). This demo illustrates mature work carried out on the orchestration and deployment of NS over Network Function Virtualization Infrastructures (NFVI) using resource aware scheduling methods to ensure optimal use of resources and performance.
ADHOCSYS Deliverable D4 Project No. 026548, ADHOCSYS Deliverable D4
This document lists overall requirements of the ADHOCSYS network. Detailed guidelines are also pr... more This document lists overall requirements of the ADHOCSYS network. Detailed guidelines are also provided for the future research that will be performed in Work Package 2. A separate deliverable, D5, has been prepared to define detailed requirements and research guidelines for what concerns the power supply management aspects of the network. All potential problems are taken into consideration in order to provide a reliable broadband Internet access solution to people who live in rural and mountain regions where DSL is not available, also considering persons living outside towns and villages. Overall design implications have been specifically oriented to the particular mountain and rural outdoor environment. A few different scenarios have been proposed, ranging from the more complex (wide, heterogeneous, Internet connected network) to the simpler stub sensor network. The following requirements are targeted at the major scenario where an ADHOCSYS network is connected to the global Inter...
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2017
5G will revolutionize the way ICT and Telecommunications infrastructures work. Indeed, businesses... more 5G will revolutionize the way ICT and Telecommunications infrastructures work. Indeed, businesses can greatly benefit from innovation introduced by 5G and exploit the new deep integration between ICT and networking capabilities to generate new value-added services. Although a plethora of solutions for virtual resources and infrastructures management and orchestration already exists (e.g., OpenDaylight, ONOS, OpenStack, Apache Mesos, Open Source MANO, Docker Swarm, LXD/LXC, etc.), they are still not properly integrated to match the 5G requirements. In this paper, we present the 5G Operating Platform (5G-OP) which has been conceived to fill in this gap and integrate management, control and orchestration of computing, storage and networking resources down to the end-user devices and terminals (e.g., smart phone, machines, robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, etc). The 5G-OP is an overarching framework capable to provide agnostic interfaces and a universal set of abstractions in order to implement seamless 5G infrastructure control and orchestration. The functional structure of the 5G-OP, including the horizontal and vertical interworking of functions in it, has been designed to allow Network Operators and Service Providers to exploit diverse roles and business strategies. Moreover, the functional decoupling of the 5G-OP from the underneath management, control and orchestration solutions allows pursuing faster innovation cycles, being ready for the emergence of new service models.
Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, 2016
Market fragmentation has resulted in a multitude of network and cloud/data center operators, each... more Market fragmentation has resulted in a multitude of network and cloud/data center operators, each focused on different countries, regions and technologies. This makes it difficult and costly to create infrastructure services spanning multiple domains, such as virtual connectivity or compute resources. In this article we discuss the goals and work being done within the 5GEx project in realizing a Europe-wide multi-domain platform. This platform aims at enabling cross-domain orchestration of services over multiple administrations or over multi-domain single administrations in the context of emerging 5G Networking. The 5GEx vision is based on introducing a unification via NFV/SDN compatible multi-domain orchestration for networks, clouds and services. We describe the motivation and 5GEx vision, the adopted architecture and the next steps in terms of implementation and experimentation.
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge
We assume a computing infrastructure that implements a cloudto-edge continuum by federating heter... more We assume a computing infrastructure that implements a cloudto-edge continuum by federating heterogeneous resources. This infrastructure enables next generation (nextgen) QoE-intensive applications, by facilitating one of their critical requirements: latency. As such each node is identified primarily in terms of latency and secondarily in terms of, more traditional, computational capacity and availability characteristics. Since this infrastructure is dependent on the existing, local, and potentially third-party owned resources, we must address the pertinent problem of resource heterogeneity. This paper delineates the technical specifications of the solution that was designed to tackle the problem, creating a software stack that comprises a complete environment for the orchestration of containerized and VM-based workflows. The solution, dubbed "Minicloud", allows the underlying resource to be federated from a higher-level continuum management layer and be used for the deployment of nextgen apps based on latency requirements. Based on lightweight Kubernetes-oriented technologies and tools, it maintains minimum dependencies allowing a wide range of underlying OSs and system architectures to be supported.
IEEE Access, 2014
This paper focuses on energy efficiency aspects and related benefits of radio-accessnetwork-as-a-... more This paper focuses on energy efficiency aspects and related benefits of radio-accessnetwork-as-a-service (RANaaS) implementation (using commodity hardware) as architectural evolution of LTE-advanced networks toward 5G infrastructure. RANaaS is a novel concept introduced recently, which enables the partial centralization of RAN functionalities depending on the actual needs as well as on network characteristics. In the view of future definition of 5G systems, this cloud-based design is an important solution in terms of efficient usage of network resources. The aim of this paper is to give a vision of the advantages of the RANaaS, to present its benefits in terms of energy efficiency and to propose a consistent system-level power model as a reference for assessing innovative functionalities toward 5G systems. The incremental benefits through the years are also discussed in perspective, by considering technological evolution of IT platforms and the increasing matching between their capabilities and the need for progressive virtualization of RAN functionalities. The description is complemented by an exemplary evaluation in terms of energy efficiency, analyzing the achievable gains associated with the RANaaS paradigm.
Abstract. Energy efficiency is increasingly important for future information and communication te... more Abstract. Energy efficiency is increasingly important for future information and communication technologies (ICT), because the increased usage of ICT, together with increasing energy costs and the need to reduce green house gas emissions call for energy-efficient technologies that decrease the overall energy consumption of computation, storage and communications. Cloud computing has recently received considerable attention, as a promising approach for delivering ICT services by improving the utilization of data-centre resources. In principle, cloud computing can be an inherently energy-efficient technology for ICT provided that its potential for significant energy savings that have so far focused on hardware aspects, can be fully explored with respect to system operation and networking aspects. Thus this paper reviews the usage in the context of Cloud Computing, of methods and technologies currently used for energy-efficient operation of computer hardware and network infrastructure....
In this paper we specify possible alternatives for technical and business coordination of 5G serv... more In this paper we specify possible alternatives for technical and business coordination of 5G services enablers delivered and facilitated by service components from and across multiple providers. We discuss how this is achieved by means of the 5GEx wholesale service exchange and orchestration framework, and show the merits of supporting open standard interfaces, generic yet expressive abstraction models, and business coordination logic. The 5GEx framework enablers are adapting to multiple degrees of stakeholders' trust, degree of collaboration and market maturity. We focus on wholesale service models, challenges and pricing aspects, and present 5GEx deployment variants that are tailored to different degree of 5G stakeholders' collaboration and trust.
Specification of Detailed Requirements for Ad-hoc Network, Final Version
This document lists overall requirements of the ADHOCSYS network. Detailed guidelines are also pr... more This document lists overall requirements of the ADHOCSYS network. Detailed guidelines are also provided for the future research that will be performed in Work Package 2. A separate deliverable, D5, has been prepared to define detailed requirements and research guidelines for what concerns the power supply management aspects of the network. All potential problems are taken into consideration in order to provide a reliable broadband Internet access solution to people who live in rural and mountain regions where DSL is not available, also considering persons living outside towns and villages. Overall design implications have been specifically oriented to the particular mountain and rural outdoor environment. A few different scenarios have been proposed, ranging from the more complex (wide, heterogeneous, Internet connected network) to the simpler stub sensor network. The following requirements are targeted at the major scenario where an ADHOCSYS network is connected to the global Inter...
This deliverable presents the activities under taken and results obtained by Task 4.1 which was f... more This deliverable presents the activities under taken and results obtained by Task 4.1 which was focused on the identification, characterisation and optimisation of the hardware and software components that can be used in the implementation of the T-NOVA Infrastructure Virtualisation and Management (IVM) layer. The task carried out characterisation experiments on the networking technologies options which can be used to improve packet processing performance. Technologies investigated included OVS, OVS-DPDK, SR-IOV and Snabb Switch. It was demonstrated that a combination of SR-IOV and DPDK achieved in excess of 8Gbps network throughput. The performance of a non-virtualised virtual Traffic Classifier network function was compared with Docker container and KVM VM implementations, demonstrating that virtualisation through a hypervisor can affect the performance of non-optimised network workloads up to 21%. A new approach to scale switch performance based on a dual-datapath approach was investigated. This approach exhibited high forwarding performance and port density in the accelerated datapath, while the primary datapath exploited the large amount of cache and main memory available in commodity servers to store all required flow state.
Benefits and Challenges of Cloud Technologies for 5G Architecture
2015 IEEE 81st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), 2015
RAN as a service: Challenges of designing a flexible RAN architecture in a cloud-based heterogeneous mobile network
ABSTRACT Small cell deployment is one of the most promising technology trends to cope with the ri... more ABSTRACT Small cell deployment is one of the most promising technology trends to cope with the rising need for very high data rates foreseen in future mobile networks. Nevertheless, it has the side effect of introducing more complex interference scenarios, needing to be properly managed by means of coordination mechanisms. The recently introduced Cloud-RAN architecture, based on centralized processing, enables the implementation of efficient interference prevention and cancelation algorithms across multiple cells. However, it struggles with the need of high-capacity front-haul links and cost-intensive deployments. This paper introduces the novel concept of RANaaS (Radio Access Network-as-a-Service) as a flexible architecture based on centralized processing, capable of handling the increasing interference in very dense networks, reducing energy consumption, cost-efficiently deploying and managing cellular networks.
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, 2004
The MOBIlearn project, co-funded by the European Commission, the National Science Foundation and ... more The MOBIlearn project, co-funded by the European Commission, the National Science Foundation and AU Department of Education, Science and Training, is strategically positioned to provide relevant research outcomes in the field of innovative use of mobile environments to meet the needs of learners, working by themselves and with others. The objectives are achieved by defining a set of mobile services identified and specified through an open abstract framework. This assures proper interoperability between MOBIlearn services themselves and existing services provided by third parties, such as the Open Knowledge Initiative or the IMS Global Learning Consortium. The paper introduces the MOBIlearn project and its underlying approach describing the Open Mobile Access Abstract Framework (OMAF).
Sustainable Energy Management in Data Centers through Collaboration
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
Sustainable Energy Management in Data Centres through Collaboration
ABSTRACT In the current decade of rapid expansion of ubiquitous data storage and cloud computing ... more ABSTRACT In the current decade of rapid expansion of ubiquitous data storage and cloud computing services, the demand for data centre services has seen an enormous increase which is resulting in a continuously rising pressure on the environment in terms of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The recently started project, All4Green, explores potential ICT solutions for collaboration amongst data centers, energy providers, and end-users in order to enable energy providers to save CO2 emissions at the very source of energy conversion. This paper presents an overview of objectives and concepts of the research, discussing the so-called data centers’ eco-system, the technical approach to collaboration and GreenSLAs as economic incentives.
2013 International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing, 2013
Demand Response is a mechanism used in power grids to manage customers' power consumption during ... more Demand Response is a mechanism used in power grids to manage customers' power consumption during critical situations (e.g. power shortage). Data centres are good candidates to participate in Demand Response programs due to their high energy use. In this paper, we present a generic architecture to enable Demand Response between Energy Provider and Data Centres realised in All4Green. To this end, we show our three-level concept and then illustrate the building blocks of All4Green's architectural design. Furthermore, we introduce the novel aspects of GreenSDA and GreenSLA for Energy Provider-Data centre sub-ecosystem as well as Data centre-IT Client sub-ecosystem respectively. In order to further reduce energy consumption and CO2 emission, the notion of data centre federation is introduced: savings can be expected if data centres start to collaborate by exchanging workload. Also, we specify the technological solutions necessary to implement our proposed architectural approach. Finally, we present preliminary proof-of-concept experiments, conducted both on traditional and cloud computing data centres, which show relatively encouraging results.
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Papers by Marco Di Girolamo