Virtual datalink emulation and protocol development

Safety and security are two reliability properties of a system. A "Safe" system provides protection against errors of trusted users, while a "Secure" system protects against errors introduced by untrusted users. There is considerable overlap between mechanisms to support each property.

Procedia Computer Science, 2014

Although nodes in a network-virtualization infrastructure, which is called a virtualization node, usually contain a switch or a router with sophisticated and high-performance functions such as Ethernet switching, VLAN, and IP routing, most of such infrastructure functions cannot be reused as program components by slices. Accordingly, a method for providing such functions to slices on a virtualization node (VNode) infrastructure, by applying the previously proposed plug-in architecture, is proposed. This architecture defines two types of plug-ins, i.e., control plug-ins and data plug-ins, and interfaces for them. As for the proposed method, the switch or router in the VNode is regarded as a data plug-in, and a control plug-in that allocates and isolates the switch/router resources was developed. The data plug-in interface was customized to handle a data plug-in, i.e., a layer-3 switch in a VNode, and a control plug-in and the interfaces for providing layer-3/VLAN switch functions to slices were designed, implemented, and evaluated. The evaluation result shows that instead of specifying a routing/switching program or method, specifying only an additional 8 to 25 lines in a slice definition enables slice developers to use routing and switching functions.

2010

Network emulation has gained wide interest in the community of network researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of new protocols and applications in controllable and realistic network scenarios. To ensure scalability, modern emulation systems rely on the use of virtualization techniques to create complex networked systems by means of the computational resources available in a cluster of computers. In the context of network emulation systems, link multiplexing is the problem of emulating multiple point-to-point connections on top of a single Ethernet link. In this paper we present how link multiplexing is implemented in NEP-TUNE, a Xen-based network emulation system developed at University of Napoli Federico II. We compare our technique with those adopted in other network emulation systems. We also present experimental results aimed at investigating the performance limits of our system and at providing researchers with useful insights into the faithfulness of emulated scenarios.

2012

In this research, we have re-designed the network emulator, GINE (Goto’s IP Network Emulator), which is a user space program on Linux. It runs on standard Linux kernel with some options enabled. It is aimed to be used for performance evaluation of network application over wide-area network, development of new network service and education. GINE is based on custom queues which represent telecommunication lines with delay, loss, and bandwidth. The queues are driven by a short periodic timer(up to 20 micro second). Routers and switches are either emulated by the program components, or by virtual network host and kernel bridge. They are connected one another in the program via custom frame queues. Real frames(packets) input from datalink socket or Linux netfilter NFQUEUE socket are forwarded and output to the real network. The new version has become stable. Also it includes graphical user interface, and, therefore, it can be used without programming. The emulator can be used as end-to-e...

2018 International Conference on Smart Communications in Network Technologies (SaCoNeT)

The Transport layer of OSI and TCP/IP models provides all necessary services for end-to-end communication between application processes. There are a huge amount of works and propositions of Transport level protocols and services to satisfy applications requirements. Unfortunately, the vast majority of applications refer only to TCP for reliable and ordered services or to UDP for unreliable and low latency services. This is due to the fact that the deployment of all new Transport protocol proposal is mainly hampered by (1) the poor socket API exposed by the Transport layer to applications, (2) the introduction of middleboxes within the Internet and (3) the tedious work required to modified Operating System kernel. At the same time, the development of network functions virtualization opportunities is growing in the world of carrier networks and more generally. In this paper, after a survey on Transport protocols deployment issues, we present a novel approach to realize the effective deployment of Transport protocols and services by leveraging virtualization principles. At last, we present a new way to efficiently manage Transport functions and to dynamically build Transport services through a graph-based protocol model.

Protocols for High-Speed Networks V, 1997

The Network Interface Framework (NIF) is an object-oriented software architecture for providing networking services in the Choices object-oriented operating system. The NIF supports multiple dient subsystems, provides clients with low-latency noti:fication of received packets, and imposes no particular structure on clients. By contrast, traditional BSD UNIX-style networking does not meet the last tworequirements, since it forces clients to use software interrupts and queueing. BSD UNIX cannot accomodate a process-based protocol subsystem such as the z-Kernel, whereas the NIF can. We have ported the z-Kernel to Choices by embedding it into the NIF. Using the standard z-Kernel protocol stack with NIF yields Ethernet performance comparable to BSD networking. The NIF is also flexible enough to support services that cannot easily be supported by traditional BSD, such as quality-of-service for multimedia. Preliminary performance results for asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks show that the NIF can be used to minimize jitter for continuous media data streams in the presence of non-realtime streams.

Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Programmable routers for extensible services of tomorrow - PRESTO '09, 2009

Communication networks are growing exponentially, and new services and applications are being introduced unceasingly. To meet the demands of these services and applications, current network systems have to be modified, replaced or supplemented. Various technologies, such as reconfigurable devices or active networks, have attempted to address this problem. In this paper, we introduce a programmable, generic forwarding element (GFE), which can be used as a platform for a flexible and reconfigurable network system. This platform and the resulting network system enable on-the-fly definition of adaptive and dynamic network functionalities, so that the demands of new services and applications can be met. Additionally, specific service instances or traffic flows can be handled by this platform on a temporary and locality basis, according to traffic patterns, application demands, and provisioning decisions. The proposed GFE complies with today's standards and can easily be adopted for future standards. A network processor is used to implement this platform, so that frame processing is achieved at wire speed, even though each frame is analyzed and processed by a meta-program. An XML-based definition of the forwarding element is used to describe frame processing, based on the frame contents and ingress port, and on various system and network parameters. 1

Proceedings 20th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium, 2006

Due to the better utilization of computational and communication resources and the improved coordination of application subsystems, designers of large distributed embedded systems (e.g., in the automotive domain) are eager to replace existing federated architectures with integrated ones. This paper focuses on the communication infrastructure of the DECOS integrated system architecture, which realizes for each application subsystem a so-called virtual network as an overlay network on top of a time-triggered communication protocol. Since all virtual networks share a single physical network, virtual networks promise massive cost savings through the reduction of physical networks and reliability improvements with respect to wiring and connectors. Furthermore, virtual networks support application subsystems that range from ultra-dependable control applications (e.g., an X-by-wire system) to non safetycritical applications such as comfort systems. For this reason, two classes (event-triggered and time-triggered) of virtual networks are realized. Encapsulation mechanisms ensure that the temporal properties of each virtual network are known a priori and independent from the communication activities in other virtual networks. In order to ensure that the virtual network abstractions hold also in the case of software faults, each application subsystem possesses a dedicated virtual network with statically assigned resources at the underlying time-triggered communication service.

2008

The virtualization of networks is not a new idea in network research. Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) [2] and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) like IPSec , are widely used to virtualize links. Also Overlays and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks [11] are a widely used approach to get an abstraction of the physical topology of networks. In projects like PlanetLab or GENI [1] end-hosts which are located all over the world are virtualized. The approach of programmable networks [6] tries to achieve network virtualization by deploying programmable network elements into the core network.

Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 2003

The Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA) is an industry standard user-level communication architecture for system area networks. The VIA provides a protected, directly-accessible interface to a network hardware, removing the operating system from the critical communication path. In this paper, we design and implement a user-level Sockets layer over VIA, named SOVIA (Sockets Over VIA). Our objective is to use the SOVIA layer to accelerate the existing Sockets-based applications with a reasonable effort and to provide a portable and high-performance communication library based on VIA to application developers.

Computer, 2000

A communication network consists of several interconnected subsystems, including physical media, communication controllers, computing and switching facilities, software systems, and customer premise equipment. A network is usually described by its topology, the protocol suite that controls network resources, and the applications or communication services it supports. We can study network design and behavior in different ways. An analytical approach requires a precise and simplified mathematical model emphasizing a single behavioral aspect as a function of one subsystem parameter (for example, delay or throughput as a function of channel speed or a parameter in a media access control protocol). But this narrow focus prevents us from examining how the interaction of severai subsystems affects performance. Simulation is more versatile. It permits arbitrary level of detail and complexity in modeling, and we can study the effect of simultaneous variations in several parameters. However, simulation is limited by the speed and memory size of the computing facility. Software complexity imposes another limit: A communication network can be seen as a distributed computing facility, which is difficult to simulate in a general way.

2015

Services such as content distribution, distributed databases, or inter-data center connectivity place a set of new requirements on the operation of networks. They need on-demand and application-specific reservation of network connectivity, reliability, and resources (such as bandwidth) in a variety of network applications (such as point-topoint connectivity, network virtualization, or mobile back-haul) and in a range of network technologies from packet (IP/MPLS) down to optical. An environment that operates to meet these types of requirements is said to have Application-Based Network Operations (ABNO). ABNO brings together many existing technologies and may be seen as the use of a toolbox of existing components enhanced with a few new elements. This document describes an architecture and framework for ABNO, showing how these components fit together. It provides a cookbook of existing technologies to satisfy the architecture and meet the needs of the applications. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7491.

Software - Practice and Experience, 2002

We describe the Component Architecture for Simulating Network Objects (CASiNO) useful for the implementation of communication protocol stacks and network simulators. This framework implements a rich, modular coarse-grained dataflow architecture, with an interface to a reactor kernel that manages the application's handlers for asynchronous I/O, real timers and custom interrupts. These features enable developers to write applications that are driven by both data flow and asynchronous event delivery, while allowing them to keep these two functionalities distinct. We provide an example program and expository comments on the program to illustrate the use of the CASiNO framework. Published in 2002 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The GridNets conference series is an annual international meeting which provides a focused and highly interactive forum where researchers and technologists have the opportunity to present and discuss leading research, developments, and future directions in the grid networking area. The objective of this event is to serve as both the premier conference presenting the best grid networking research and a forum where new concepts can be introduced and explored.

2014

The Internet is predominantly viewed as widely successful for existing users and service providers. But it suffers from ossification in the underlying infrastructure to exploit and scale to network virtualization for content providers and thirdparty hosting of cloud services through overlay networking by creating virtual ecosystems that enable and leverage new business opportunities. This paper proposes a Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) interface, modeled in YANG language, a data modeling language for networks. It provides standardized, simple and easy to use interfaces that facilitate the process of automating the creation of virtual networks using virtual switches, tested with Open vSwitch (OVS). Keywords—NETCONF, YANG, VLAN, distributed system.