Academic literature on the topic 'Network Function Virtualization, user-oriented services, high performance'

The virtualization and automation of network functions will be key features of future high-speed railway networks, which have to provide dependable, safe, and secure services. The virtualization of railway network functions will enable functions such as train control, train integrity protection, shunting control, and trackside monitoring and maintenance to be virtualized and to be run on general-purpose hardware. Network function virtualization combined with edge computing can deliver dynamic, low-latency, and reliable services. The automation of railway operations can be achieved by embedding intelligence into the network to optimize the railway operation performance and to enhance the passenger experience. This paper presents an innovative railway network architecture that features distributed intelligence, function cloudification and virtualization, openness, and programmability. The focus is on time-tolerant and time-sensitive intelligent services designed to follow the principles of service-oriented architecture. The interaction between identified logical identities is illustrated by use cases. The paper provides some details of the design of the interface between distributed intelligent services and presents the results of an emulation of the interface performance.

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) technology brings the unprecedented computing capacity to the edge of mobile network. It provides the cloud and end user swift high-quality services with seamless integration of mobile network and Internet. With powerful capability, virtualized network functions can be allocated to MEC. In this paper, we study QoS guaranteed multicasting routing with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) in MEC. Specifically, data should pass through a service function chain before reaching destinations along a multicast tree with minimal computational cost and meeting QoS requirements. Furthermore, to overcome the problems of traditional IP multicast and software-defined multicasting approaches, we propose an implementable multicast mechanism that delivers data along multicast tree but uses unicast sessions. We finally evaluate the performance of the proposed mechanism based on experimental simulations. The results show that our mechanism outperforms others reported in the literature.

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) will be a technology pillar of forthcoming 5G networks. Nonetheless, there is a great interest in also deploying MEC solutions in current 4G infrastructures. MEC enables data processing in proximity to end users. Thus, latency can be minimized, high data rates locally achieved, and real-time information about radio link status or consumer geographical position exploited to develop high-value services. To consolidate network elements and edge applications on the same virtualization infrastructure, network operators aim to combine MEC with Network Function Virtualization (NFV). However, MEC in NFV integration is not fully established yet: in fact, various architectural issues are currently open, even at standardization level. This paper describes a novel MEC in an NFV system which successfully combines, at management level, MEC functional blocks with an NFV Orchestrator, and can neutrally support any “over the top” Mobile Edge application with minimal integration effort. A specific ME app combined with an end-user app for the provision of immersive video services is presented. To provide low latency, CPU-intensive services to end users, the proposed architecture exploits High-Performance Computing resources embedded in the edge infrastructure. Experimental results showing the effectiveness of the proposed architecture are reported and discussed.

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have largely been used in communication and high-performance computing and given the recent advances in big data and emerging trends in cloud computing (e.g., serverless [18]), FPGAs are increasingly being introduced into these domains (e.g., Microsoft’s datacenters [6] and Amazon Web Services [10]). To address these domains’ processing needs, recent research has focused on using FPGAs to accelerate workloads, ranging from analytics and machine learning to databases and network function virtualization. In this paper, we present an ongoing effort to realize a high-performance FPGA-as-a-microservice (FaaM) architecture for the cloud. We discuss some of the technical challenges and propose several solutions for efficiently integrating FPGAs into virtualized environments. Our case study deploying a multithreaded, multi-user compression as a microservice using the FaaM architecture indicate that microservices-based FPGA acceleration can sustain high-performance compared to straightforward implementation with minimal to no communication overhead despite the hardware abstraction.

Consumer expectations and demands for quality of service (QoS) from network service providers have risen as a result of the proliferation of devices, applications, and services. An exceptional study is being conducted by network design and optimization experts. But despite this, the constantly changing network environment continues to provide new issues that today’s networks must be dealt with effectively. Increased capacity and coverage are achieved by joining existing networks. Mobility management, according to the researchers, is now being investigated in order to make the previous paradigm more flexible, user-centered, and service-centric. Additionally, 5G networks provide higher availability, extremely high capacity, increased stability, and improved connection, in addition to quicker speeds and less latency. In addition to being able to fulfil stringent application requirements, the network infrastructure must be more dynamic and adaptive than ever before. Network slicing may be able to meet the present stringent application requirements for network design, if done correctly. The current study makes use of sophisticated fuzzy logic to create algorithms for mobility and traffic management that are as flexible as possible while yet maintaining high performance. Ultimately, the purpose of this research is to improve the quality of service provided by current mobility management systems while also optimizing the use of available network resources. Building SDN (Software-Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Function Virtualization) technologies is essential. Network slicing is an architectural framework for 5G networks that is intended to accommodate a variety of different networks. In order to fully meet the needs of various use cases on the network, network slicing is becoming more important due to the increasing demand for data rates, bandwidth capacity, and low latency.

With the development of mobile Internet technology and the continuous popularization of the network, various kinds of network software come out constantly and people are becoming more and more dependent on them, while role authority management is of great importance for the security of software, the control of management process, and the usability of users. In terms of system implementation, virtual machine technology is often faced with problems such as high virtualization overhead, poor scalability, and long deployment time in spite of its good isolation effect. Container technology represented by Docker can well solve these problems and make it possible to quickly build, deploy, operate, and maintain as well as expand services. Based on Docker technology, this research compares and chooses from various authority control models and finally decides to take the role authority management model as the infrastructure. It designs the role authority control model based on cloud computing and Docker technology in combination with the Task Controller Function, the Project Controller Function, and the User Controller Function and realizes this model by adopting the MongoDB database combined with HTML/CSS/Javascript syntax and the Boor Strap framework. After the test, it is found that the Docker technology based role authority management system has satisfactory test performance consistent with expected outputs as well as strong robustness, which can meet the requirements of different objects and subjects.

Abstract. This paper summarizes expectations and requirements towards future converged communication systems denoted by 5th Generation (5G). Multiple research and standardization activities globally contribute to the definition and specification of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide business customers and residential users with both, existing and future upcoming services which demand for higher data rates and granted performance figures in terms of QoS parameters, such as low latency and high reliability. Representative use case families are threefold and represented as enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), massive Internet of Things (mIoT), and Critical Communication, i.e. Ultra-Low Latency (ULL)/Ultra-High Reliability (UHR). To deploy and operate a dedicated network for each service or use case separately would raise the expenses and service costs to an unduly high amount. Instead provision of a commonly shared physical infrastructure offering resources for transport, processing, and storage of data to several separated logical networks (slices) individually managed and configured by potentially multiple service providers is the main concept of this new approach. Beside a multitude of other initiatives the EU-funded 5G NORMA project (5G Novel Radio Multiservice adaptive network Architecture) has developed an architecture which enables not only network programmability (configurability in software), but also network slicing and Multi Tenancy (allowing independent 3rd parties to offer an end-to-end service tailored according to their needs) in a mobile network. Major aspects dealt with here are the selectable support of mobility (on-demand) and service-aware QoE/QoS (Quality of Experience/Service) control. Specifically we will report on the outcome of the analysis of design criteria for Mobility Management schemes and the result of an exemplary application of the modular mobility function to scenarios with variable service requirements (e.g. high-terminal speed vs. on-demand mobility or portability of devices). An efficient sharing of scarce frequency resources in new radio systems demands for tight coordination of orchestration and assignment (scheduling) of resources for the different network slices as per capacity and priority (QoS) demand. Dynamicity aspects in changing algorithms and schemes to manage, configure, and optimize the resources at the radio base stations according to slice specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are investigated. It has been shown that architectural issues in terms of hierarchy (centralized vs. distributed) and layering, i.e. separation of control (signaling) and (user) data plane will play an essential role to increase the elasticity of network infrastructures which is in focus of applying SDN (Software Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Function Virtualization) to next generation communication systems. An outlook towards follow-on standardization and open research questions within different SDOs (Standards Defining Organizations) and recently started cooperative projects concludes the contribution.

Satellite–terrestrial integrated networks (STINs) are regarded as a promising solution to meeting the demands of global high-speed seamless network access in the future. Software-defined networking and network function virtualization (SDN/NFV) are two complementary technologies that can be used to ensure that the heterogeneous resources in STINs can be easily managed and deployed. Considering the dual mobility of satellites and ubiquitous users, along with the dynamic requirements of user requests and network resource states, it is challenging to maintain service continuity and high QoE performance in STINs. Thus, we investigate the service migration and reconfiguration scheme, which are of great significance to the guarantee of continuous service provisioning. Specifically, this paper proposes a dynamic service reconfiguration method that can support flexible service configurations on integrated networks, including LEO satellites and ground nodes. We first model the migration cost as an extra delay incurred by service migration and reconfiguration and then formulate the selection processes of the location and migration paths of virtual network functions (VNFs) as an integer linear programming (ILP) optimization problem. Then, we propose a fuzzy logic and quantum genetic algorithm (FQGA) to obtain an approximate optimal solution that can accelerate the solving process efficiently with the benefits of the high-performance computing capacity of QGA. The simulation results validate the effectiveness and improved performance of the scheme proposed in this paper.

In vehicle network under the cloud computing environment model of traffic information service system construction as the goal, the use of cloud computing technology and service oriented software architecture is divided into thought, differentiation and security mechanism from the service account, complete vehicle based on cloud computing network traffic information service system of the letter of the architecture design, function design, software structure design. Based on the geographical space cloud services, cloud services based car networking function, constructing high performance, scalable, supporting differentiated information service system. The research results show that: cloud computing car network traffic information service collaborative system can greatly improve the level of intelligent, personalized information service based on traffic, the user required service supply pertinence increased significantly； system can provide traffic information service more safe and reliable for vehicle network users of the service coordination, which helps to guarantee Intelligent Transportation and efficient operation.

As the single most successful social-networking Website to date, Facebook has caused a shift in both practice and perception of online socialisation, and its relationship to the offline world. While not the first online social networking service, Facebook’s user base dwarfs its nearest competitors. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation boasts more than 750 million users (Facebook). The currently ailing MySpace claimed a ceiling of 100 million users in 2006 (Cashmore). Further, the accuracy of this number has been contested due to a high proportion of fake or inactive accounts. Facebook by contrast, claims 50% of its user base logs in at least once a day (Facebook). The popular and mainstream uptake of Facebook has shifted social use of the Internet from various and fragmented niche groups towards a common hub or portal around which much everyday Internet use is centred. The implications are many, but this paper will focus on the progress what Mimi Marinucci terms the “Facebook effect” (70) and the evolution of lists as a filtering mechanism representing one’s social zones within Facebook. This is in part inspired by the launch of Google’s new social networking service Google+ which includes “circles” as a fundamental design feature for sorting contacts. Circles are an acknowledgement of the shortcomings of a single, unified friends list that defines the Facebook experience. These lists and circles are both manifestations of the same essential concept: our social lives are, in fact, divided into various zones not defined by an online/offline dichotomy, by fantasy role-play, deviant sexual practices, or other marginal or minority interests. What the lists and circles demonstrate is that even very common, mainstream people occupy different roles in everyday life, and that to be effective social tools, social networking sites must grant users control over their various identities and over who knows what about them. Even so, the very nature of computer-based social tools lead to problematic definitions of identities and relationships using discreet terms, in contrast to more fluid, performative constructions of an individual and their relations to others. Building the Monolith In 1995, Sherry Turkle wrote that “the Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life” (180). Turkle describes the various deliberate acts of personnae creation possible online in contrast to earlier constraints placed upon the “cycling through different identities” (179). In the past, Turkle argues, “lifelong involvement with families and communities kept such cycling through under fairly stringent control” (180). In effect, Turkle was documenting the proliferation of identity games early adopters of Internet technologies played through various means. Much of what Turkle focused on were MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MOOs (MUD Object Oriented), explicit play-spaces that encouraged identity-play of various kinds. Her contemporary Howard Rheingold focused on what may be described as the more “true to life” communities of the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) (1–38). In particular, Rheingold explored a community established around the shared experience of parenting, especially of young children. While that community was not explicitly built on the notion of role-play, the parental identity was an important quality of community members. Unlike contemporary social media networks, these early communities were built on discreet platforms. MUDs, MOOs, Bulletin Board Systems, UseNet Groups and other early Internet communication platforms were generally hosted independently of one another, and even had to be dialled into via modem separately in some cases (such as the WELL). The Internet was a truly disparate entity in 1995. The discreetness of each community supported the cordoning off of individual roles or identities between them. Thus, an individual could quite easily be “Pete” a member of the parental WELL group and “Gorak the Destroyer,” a role-player on a fantasy MUD without the two roles ever being associated with each other. As Turkle points out, even within each MUD ample opportunity existed to play multiple characters (183–192). With only a screen name and associated description to identify an individual within the MUD environment, nothing technical existed to connect one player’s multiple identities, even within the same community. As the Internet has matured, however, the tendency has been shifting towards monolithic hubs, a notion of collecting all of “the Internet” together. From a purely technical and operational perspective, this has led to the emergence of the ISP (Internet service provider). Users can make a connection to one point, and then be connected to everything “on the Net” instead of individually dialling into servers and services one at a time as was the case in the early 1980s with companies such as Prodigy, the Source, CompuServe, and America On-Line (AOL). The early information service providers were largely walled gardens. A CompuServe user could only access information on the CompuServe network. Eventually the Internet became the network of choice and services migrated to it. Standards such as HTTP for Web page delivery and SMTP for email became established and dominate the Internet today. Technically, this has made the Internet much easier to use. The services that have developed on this more rationalised and unified platform have also tended toward monolithic, centralised architectures, despite the Internet’s apparent fundamental lack of a hierarchy. As the Internet replaced the closed networks, the wider Web of HTTP pages, forums, mailing lists and other forms of Internet communication and community thrived. Perhaps they required slightly more technological savvy than the carefully designed experience of walled-garden ISPs such as AOL, but these fora and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) rooms still provided the discreet environments within which to role-play. An individual could hold dozens of login names to as many different communities. These various niches could be simply hobby sites and forums where a user would deploy their identity as model train enthusiast, musician, or pet owner. They could also be explicitly about role-play, continuing the tradition of MUDs and MOOs into the new millennium. Pseudo- and polynymity were still very much part of the Internet experience. Even into the early parts of the so-called Web 2.0 explosion of more interactive Websites which allowed for easier dialog between site owner and viewer, a given identity would be very much tied to a single site, blog or even individual comments. There was no “single sign on” to link my thread from a music forum to the comments I made on a videogame blog to my aquarium photos at an image gallery site. Today, Facebook and Google, among others, seek to change all that. The Facebook Effect Working from a psychological background Turkle explored the multiplicity of online identities as a valuable learning, even therapeutic, experience. She assessed the experiences of individuals who were coming to terms with aspects of their own personalities, from simple shyness to exploring their sexuality. In “You Can’t Front on Facebook,” Mimi Marinucci summarizes an analysis of online behaviour by another psychologist, John Suler (67–70). Suler observed an “online disinhibition effect” characterised by users’ tendency to express themselves more openly online than offline (321). Awareness of this effect was drawn (no pun intended) into popular culture by cartoonist Mike Krahulik’s protagonist John Gabriel. Although Krahulik’s summation is straight to the point, Suler offers a more considered explanation. There are six general reasons for the online disinhibition effect: being anonymous, being invisible, the communications being out of sync, the strange sensation that a virtual interlocutor is all in the mind of the user, the general sense that the online world simply is not real and the minimisation of status and authority (321–325). Of the six, the notion of anonymity is most problematic, as briefly explored above in the case of AOL. The role of pseudonymity has been explored in more detail in Ruch, and will be considered with regard to Facebook and Google+ below. The Facebook effect, Marinucci argues, mitigates all six of these issues. Though Marinucci explains the mitigation of each factor individually, her final conclusion is the most compelling reason: “Facebook often facilitates what is best described as an integration of identities, and this integration of identities in turn functions as something of an inhibiting factor” (73). Ruch identifies this phenomenon as the “aggregation of identities” (219). Similarly, Brady Robards observes that “social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook collapse the entire array of social relationships into just one category, that of ‘Friend’” (20). Unlike earlier community sites, Ruch notes “Facebook rejects both the mythical anonymity of the Internet, but also the actual pseudo- or polynonymous potential of the technologies” (219). Essentially, Facebook works to bring the offline social world online, along with all the conventional baggage that accompanies the individual’s real-world social life. Facebook, and now Google+, present a hard, dichotomous approach to online identity: anonymous and authentic. Their socially networked individual is the “real” one, using a person’s given name, and bringing all (or as many as the sites can capture) their contacts from the offline world into the online one, regardless of context. The Facebook experience is one of “friending” everyone one has any social contact with into one homogeneous group. Not only is Facebook avoiding the multiple online identities that interested Turkle, but it is disregarding any multiplicity of identity anywhere, including any online/offline split. David Kirkpatrick reports Mark Zuckerberg’s rejection of this construction of identity is explained by his belief that “You have one identity … having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” (199). Arguably, Zuckerberg’s calls for accountability through identity continue a perennial concern for anonymity online fuelled by “on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog” style moral panics. Over two decades ago Lindsy Van Gelder recounted the now infamous case of “Joan and Alex” (533) and Julian Dibbell recounted “a rape in cyberspace” (11). More recent anxieties concern the hacking escapades of Anonymous and LulzSec. Zuckerberg’s approach has been criticised by Christopher Poole, the founder of 4Chan—a bastion of Internet anonymity. During his keynote presentation at South by SouthWest 2011 Poole argued that Zuckerberg “equates anonymity with a lack of authenticity, almost a cowardice.” Yet in spite of these objections, Facebook has mainstream appeal. From a social constructivist perspective, this approach to identity would be satisfying the (perceived?) need for a mainstream, context-free, general social space online to cater for the hundreds of millions of people who now use the Internet. There is no specific, pre-defined reason to join Facebook in the way there is a particular reason to join a heavy metal music message board. Facebook is catering to the need to bring “real” social life online generally, with “real” in this case meaning “offline and pre-existing.” Very real risks of missing “real life” social events (engagements, new babies, party invitations etc) that were shared primarily via Facebook became salient to large groups of individuals not consciously concerned with some particular facet of identity performance. The commercial imperatives towards monolithic Internet and identity are obvious. Given that both Facebook and Google+ are in the business of facilitating the sale of advertising, their core business value is the demographic information they can sell to various companies for target advertising. Knowing a user’s individual identity and tastes is extremely important to those in the business of selling consumers what they currently want as well as predicting their future desires. The problem with this is the dawning realisation that even for the average person, role-playing is part of everyday life. We simply aren’t the same person in all contexts. None of the roles we play need to be particularly scandalous for this to be true, but we have different comfort zones with people that are fuelled by context. Suler proposes and Marinucci confirms that inhibition may be just as much part of our authentic self as the uninhibited expression experienced in more anonymous circumstances. Further, different contexts will inform what we inhibit and what we express. It is not as though there is a simple binary between two different groups and two different personal characteristics to oscillate between. The inhibited personnae one occupies at one’s grandmother’s home is a different inhibited self one plays at a job interview or in a heated discussion with faculty members at a university. One is politeness, the second professionalism, the third scholarly—yet they all restrain the individual in different ways. The Importance of Control over Circles Google+ is Google’s latest foray into the social networking arena. Its previous ventures Orkut and Google Buzz did not fare well, both were variously marred by legal issues concerning privacy, security, SPAM and hate groups. Buzz in particular fell afoul of associating Google accounts with users” real life identities, and (as noted earlier), all the baggage that comes with it. “One user blogged about how Buzz automatically added her abusive ex-boyfriend as a follower and exposed her communications with a current partner to him. Other bloggers commented that repressive governments in countries such as China or Iran could use Buzz to expose dissidents” (Novak). Google+ takes a different approach to its predecessors and its main rival, Facebook. Facebook allows for the organisation of “friends” into lists. Individuals can span more than one list. This is an exercise analogous to what Erving Goffman refers to as “audience segregation” (139). According to the site’s own statistics the average Facebook user has 130 friends, we anticipate it would be time-consuming to organise one’s friends according to real life social contexts. Yet without such organisation, Facebook overlooks the social structures and concomitant behaviours inherent in everyday life. Even broad groups offer little assistance. For example, an academic’s “Work People” list may include the Head of Department as well as numerous other lecturers with whom a workspace is shared. There are things one might share with immediate colleagues that should not be shared with the Head of Department. As Goffman states, “when audience segregation fails and an outsider happens upon a performance that was not meant for him, difficult problems in impression management arise” (139). By homogenising “friends” and social contexts users are either inhibited or run the risk of some future awkward encounters. Google+ utilises “circles” as its method for organising contacts. The graphical user interface is intuitive, facilitated by an easy drag and drop function. Use of “circles” already exists in the vocabulary used to describe our social structures. “List” by contrast reduces the subject matter to simple data. The utility of Facebook’s friends lists is hindered by usability issues—an unintuitive and convoluted process that was added to Facebook well after its launch, perhaps a reaction to privacy concerns rather than a genuine attempt to emulate social organisation. For a cogent breakdown of these technical and design problems see Augusto Sellhorn. Organising friends into lists is a function offered by Facebook, but Google+ takes a different approach: organising friends in circles is a central feature; the whole experience is centred around attempting to mirror the social relations of real life. Google’s promotional video explains the centrality of emulating “real life relationships” (Google). Effectively, Facebook and Google+ have adopted two different systemic approaches to dealing with the same issue. Facebook places the burden of organising a homogeneous mass of “friends” into lists on the user as an afterthought of connecting with another user. In contrast, Google+ builds organisation into the act of connecting. Whilst Google+’s approach is more intuitive and designed to facilitate social networking that more accurately reflects how real life social relationships are structured, it suffers from forcing direct correlation between an account and the account holder. That is, use of Google+ mandates bringing online the offline. Google+ operates a real names policy and on the weekend of 23 July 2011 suspended a number of accounts for violation of Google’s Community Standards. A suspension notice posted by Violet Blue reads: “After reviewing your profile, we determined the name you provided violates our Community Standards.” Open Source technologist Kirrily Robert polled 119 Google+ users about their experiences with the real names policy. The results posted to her on blog reveal that users desire pseudonymity, many for reasons of privacy and/or safety rather than the lack of integrity thought by Zuckerberg. boyd argues that Google’s real names policy is an abuse of power and poses danger to those users employing “nicks” for reasons including being a government employment or the victim of stalking, rape or domestic abuse. A comprehensive list of those at risk has been posted to the Geek Feminism Wiki (ironically, the Wiki utilises “Connect”, Facebook’s attempt at a single sign on solution for the Web that connects users’ movements with their Facebook profile). Facebook has a culture of real names stemming from its early adopters drawn from trusted communities, and this culture became a norm for that service (boyd). But as boyd also points out, “[r]eal names are by no means universal on Facebook.” Google+ demands real names, a demand justified by rhetoric of designing a social networking system that is more like real life. “Real”, in this case, is represented by one’s given name—irrespective of the authenticity of one’s pseudonym or the complications and dangers of using one’s given name. Conclusion There is a multiplicity of issues concerning social networks and identities, privacy and safety. This paper has outlined the challenges involved in moving real life to the online environment and the contests in trying to designate zones of social context. Where some earlier research into the social Internet has had a positive (even utopian) feel, the contemporary Internet is increasingly influenced by powerful and competing corporations. As a result, the experience of the Internet is not necessarily as flexible as Turkle or Rheingold might have envisioned. Rather than conducting identity experimentation or exercising multiple personnae, we are increasingly obligated to perform identity as it is defined by the monolithic service providers such as Facebook and Google+. This is not purely an indictment of Facebook or Google’s corporate drive, though they are obviously implicated, but has as much to do with the new social practice of “being online.” So, while there are myriad benefits to participating in this new social context, as Poole noted, the “cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself.” Areas for further exploration include the implications of Facebook positioning itself as a general-purpose user authentication tool whereby users can log into a wide array of Websites using their Facebook credentials. If Google were to take a similar action the implications would be even more convoluted, given the range of other services Google offers, from GMail to the Google Checkout payment service. 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