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1. P4NFV: P4 Enabled NFV Systems with SmartNICs

   https://doi.org/10.1109/NFV-SDN47374.2019.9040000  

   Mohammadkhan, Ali; Panda, Sourav; Kulkarni, Sameer G.; Ramakrishnan, K. K.; Bhuyan, Laxmi N. (November 2019, 2019 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN))

   Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are transforming Data Center (DC), Telecom, and enterprise networking. The programmability offered by P4 enables SDN to be more protocol-independent and flexible. Data Centers are increasingly adopting SmartNICs (sNICs) to accelerate packet processing that can be leveraged to support packet processing pipelines and custom Network Functions (NFs). However, there are several challenges in integrating and deploying P4 based SDN control as well as host and sNIC-based programmable NFs. These include configuration and management of the data plane components (Host and sNIC P4 switches) for the SDN control plane and effective utilization of data plane resources. P4NFV addresses these concerns and provides a unified P4 switch abstraction framework to simplify the SDN control plane, reducing management complexities, and leveraging a host-local SDN Agent to improve the overall resource utilization. The SDN agent considers the network-wide, host, and sNIC specific capabilities and constraints. Based on workload and traffic characteristics, P4NFV determines the partitioning of the P4 tables and optimal placement of NFs (P4 actions) to minimize the overall delay and maximize resource utilization. P4NFV uses Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) based optimization formulation and achieves up to 2. 5X increase in system capacity while minimizing the delay experienced by flows. P4NFV considers the number of packet exchanges, flow size, and state dependency to minimize the delay imposed by data transmission over PCI Express interface. 

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2. Super-Cloudlet: Rethinking Edge Computing in the Era of Open Optical Networks

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCCN52240.2021.9522305  

   Mirkhanzadeh, B; Zhang, T; Razo, M; Tacca, M; Fumagalli, A (July 2021, 2021 International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN))

   null (Ed.)

   Edge computing is an attractive architecture to efficiently provide compute resources to many applications that demand specific QoS requirements. The edge compute resources are in close geographical proximity to where the applications’ data originate from and/or are being supplied to, thus avoiding unnecessary back and forth data transmission with a data center far away. This paper describes a federated edge computing system in which compute resources at multiple edge sites are dynamically aggregated together to form distributed super-cloudlets and best respond to varying application-driven loads. In its simplest form a super-cloudlet consists of compute resources available at two edge computing sites or cloudlets that are (temporarily) interconnected by dedicated optical circuits deployed to enable low-latency and high-rate data exchanges. A super-cloudlet architecture is experimentally demonstrated over the largest public OpenROADM optical network testbed up to date consisting of commercial equipment from six suppliers. The software defined networking (SDN) PROnet Orchestrator is upgraded to both concurrently manage the resources offered by the optical network equipment, compute nodes, and associated Ethernet switches and achieve three key functionalities of the proposed super-cloudlet architecture, i.e., service placement, auto-scaling, and offloading. 

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3. Load Balanced Controller Association in Wireless Distributed SDNs

   https://doi.org/10.1109/PerComWorkshops48775.2020.9156178  

   Starke, Allen; McNair, Janise (March 2020, IEEE Pervasive Computing Conference PhD Workshop)

   null (Ed.)

   Wireless infrastructure is steadily evolving into wireless access for all humans and most devices, from 5G to Internet-of-Things. This widespread access creates the expectation of custom and adaptive services from the personal network to the backbone network. In addition, challenges of scale and interoperability exist across networks, applications and services, requiring an effective wireless network management infrastructure. For this reason Software-Defined Networks (SDN) have become an attractive research area for wireless and mobile systems. SDN can respond to sporadic topology issues such as dropped packets, message latency, and/or conflicting resource management, to improved collaboration between mobile access points, reduced interference and increased security options. Until recently, the main focus on wireless SDN has been a more centralized approach, which has issues with scalability, fault tolerance, and security. In this work, we propose a state of the art WAM-SDN system for large-scale network management. We discuss requirements for large scale wireless distributed WAM-SDN and provide preliminary benchmarking and performance analysis based on our hybrid distributed and decentralized architecture. Keywords: software defined networks, controller optimization, resilience. 

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4. Teaching SDN Security Using Hands-on Labs in CloudLab

   Yuan, Xiaohong; Liu, Zhipeng; Park, Younghee; Hu, Hongxin; Li, Hongda (July 2020, Journal of the Colloquium for Information System Security Education)

   null (Ed.)

   Software-Defined Networking (SDN) represents a major transition from traditional hardware-based networks to programmable software-based networks. While SDN brings visibility, elasticity, flexibility, and scalability, it also presents security challenges. This paper describes some of the hands-on labs we developed for teaching SDN security using the CloudLab platform. The hands-on labs have been used in a graduate level course on SDN/NFV related technologies. Our teaching experience of the hands-on labs is discussed. The hands-on labs can be adopted by other instructors to teach SDN security. 

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5. Enhancing Security Education Through Designing SDN Security Labs in CloudLab

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159514  

   Park, Younghee; Hu, Hongxin; Yuan, Xiaohong; Li, Hongda (February 2018, Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE'18))

   Software-Defined Networking (SDN) represents a major shift from ossified hardware-based networks to programmable software-based networks. It introduces significant granularity, visibility, and flexibility into networking, but at the same time brings new security challenges. Although the research community is making progress in addressing both the opportunities in SDN and the accompanying security challenges, very few educational materials have been designed to incorporate the latest research results and engage students in learning about SDN security. In this paper, we presents our newly designed SDN security education materials, which can be used to meet the ever-increasing demand for high quality cybersecurity professionals with expertise in SDN security. The designed security education materials incorporate the latest research results in SDN security and are integrated into CloudLab, an open cloud platform, for effective hands-on learning. Through a user study, we demonstrate that students have a better understanding of SDN security after participating in these well-designed CloudLab-based security labs, and they also acquired strong research interests in SDN security. 

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