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SAIL Project Newsletter, issue #6 – April 2012

This year, spring and blooming nature in countries of the northern hemisphere is synchronised with spring and blooming of results in the SAIL project. With less than the time it takes to make a baby left to the project, we are entering an intense phase of project result dissemination where everything that has been cooking inside the project is about to be brought into the light. NetInf (WP-B) are now proud parents of a the new born nilib, a package consisting of different implementations of namecontent binding validation algorithms for the NI URI format that SAIL members published earlier. nilib also contains additional protocol and NetInf router/client implementations and can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/netinf.

As in families, the birth of a child is though just the beginning of a life-time adventure. It is the responsibility of the parents to cater for that the coming generation get a good start in life and are fostered to continue developing what their ancestors invented. In SAIL, we take that responsibility seriously and as a sign of that our Summer School for students, post-docs and researchers will be the place for us to explain, in depth, our view of their Future Internet. Take the chance to read more about the Summer School in this newsletter, and why not book the week of 25th June for attending in person in beautiful Santander, Spain?

An aspect of growing older is that with age comes wisdom, at least if you manage to keep your senses open and receptive to what is happening around you. If you do not do that, your wisdom would likely be perceived as stubbornness. For our project, we intend to interact with other close relatives at similar stage of life through a series of workshops. At FuNeMS, in Berlin in July, for instance, there will be a Cloud Networking workshop co-organised by SAIL and three other FP7 projects. About a month later in Helsinki, there will be a second ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Information-Centric Networking, co-organised by us and renowned expert from the international network research community.

As you can see, even if that getting out of the winter, SAIL has not hibernate. All of this you can read more about further down…

Thomas Edwall (Project Manager)
Benoit Tremblay (Technical Manager)

2. Under the Spotlight:
Focus on SAIL Summer School

SAIL Summer School Future Internet explained – today!
The SAIL project has been already running for more than one year and a half. During this time, we have been able to acquire a wide knowledge on the Future Internet and some of its most important barebones. Although a large number of dissemination activities have been carried out, most of them consisting on the presentation of project results in different conferences, journals, etc., the SAIL Summer School now gives the opportunity to students and researchers to get a unique insight about the latest research aspects and trends of this fascinating subject.

Between June 25th and 28th, some of the people working in the SAIL project will offer in Santander (Spain) a complete view of some of the key concepts of the Future Internet. In particular, they will cover topics such as Cloud Networking, Network Virtualisation, Network of Information and Open Connectivity Services. The detailed programme is shown in the table below. All the lectures will be carried out by top researchers in these areas.

The venue of the Summer School, Santander, is a northern Spanish city which, besides providing an outstanding backdrop for the event, is becoming one of the most advanced and broad Internet of the Things (IoT) living laboratory. In this sense, the already interesting program will be complemented by two keynotes, which are somehow related to the Smart City paradigm that Santander is fostering. Mikael Eriksson (Ericsson Consumer Lab, Sweden) will talk about the upcoming Networked Society challenges and possibilities, while Prof. Luis Muñoz (Technical Manager of SmartSantander – VII Framework flagship project on experimental IoT platforms) will close the Summer School, by giving a talk on the role that smart cities and IoT may have on the Future Internet.

In addition to all the lectures, including a hands-on session, with exercises and challenges to be handled by the attendees, the Summer School will also incorporate within its program a Work-in-Progress session, in which Ph.D. students will have the opportunity to discuss with colleagues, on an open and flexible environment, their research on any topic related to the Future Internet. An award will be given to the best contribution, considering both its technical merit and the presentation.

From here, we encourage everybody to take the opportunity to get the latest insights about the Future Internet, while enjoying an appealing social program within a fantastic landscape. We are looking forward to seeing you all in Santander. The registration is open until May 31st, 2012.

For all the detailed information about the SAIL Summer School, visit www.sailproject.eu/summerschool.

3. Inside SAIL:
News from WPs and Themes

WP-A Impact and Collaboration Enabling (ICE)

The work is proceeding around socio-economics, as well as standardisation and migration, aspects. These are crucial in order to create and anchor the impact of SAIL results in a wider scope. Together, these areas will support the efforts to get SAIL solutions implemented across the “live” Internet.

We also decided extend the SAIL presence to Facebook, in addition to our presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Slideshare and Google+. Why? Well, Facebook is after all a social network used by many people across the world, and you might not be an exception. By liking SAIL on Facebook you will get updates from us right into your Facebook feed, so you don’t need to look for it elsewhere.

WP-B Network of Information (NetInf)

WP-B is developing the Network of Information, an Information-Centric Networking (ICN) architecture with a focus on support for heterogeneous technological and administrative domains. SAIL partners and collaborators have recently updated the specification of the NI scheme for “Naming Things with Hashes” in two Internet Drafts: draft-farrell-decade-ni and drafthallambaker-decade-ni-params. The specifications have been extended to include support for different representation formats of NI names, including a binary format (intended for
constrained environments and packet-level communications) and a human-readable format.

SAIL has recently released parts of the NetInf ICN software as open source. The package consists of different implementations of namecontent binding validation algorithms for the NI format and additional protocol and NetInf router/client implementations. The software, available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/netinf, is licensed under Apache-2.0. It includes implementations from multiple SAIL partners in the C, Ruby, Python, Java, PHP, and Clojure programming languages.

These software components are being used for experiments and prototyping activities within SAIL. For example, SAIL is currently developing a testbed for NetInf experiments in a so-called “Event with Large Crowd” scenario - a challenging ICN scenario with a high demand for content in a geographical scope, involving node mobility, intermittent connectivity and caching/rendezvous services provided by network infrastructure. The prototype components include mobile terminals, in-network caching, name resolution services and NetInf routers.

ICN as a networking research topic is gaining traction fast. There was an ICN side meeting at IETF-83 with many interesting presentations and discussions. There was an Emerging Design Choices in Name-Oriented Networking Workshop at Infocom-2012, and there will be a SIGCOMM-2012 workshop on Information-Centric Networking. Moreover, there is currently an open call for papers for a Elsevier Computer Communications Journal special issue on ICN – we are looking forward to your submission.

WP-C Open Connectivity Service (OConS)

OConS mechanisms range from the access to the core networks, from the physical to network and transport layers; thus, the OConS mechanisms introduced in Deliverable D.C.1 “Architectural concepts of connectivity services” (available at http://www.sail-project.eu/deliverables) have to be orchestrated in the most appropriate manner for any given use-case.

Within the overall SAIL flash crowd scenario, and to support the NetInf and the CloNe approaches, OConS is focussing on a couple of use-cases related with these novel networking paradigms. Accordingly, we take as input the requirements from NetInf or, respectively, CloNe, and based on a specific communication context we configure, instantiate, and use (i.e., orchestrate) the appropriate combination of OConS mechanisms to offer the requested connectivity services. Thus, we are currently dedicating our efforts to the design of OConS Orchestration functionalities and procedures, to the specification of the Data Model with its necessary abstractions, and to the definition of the Interfaces and their messages.

Concerning prototyping activities, capitalising on the successful demonstration of several OConS mechanisms during the SAIL meeting last January, we are now going a step further and prepare the prototype integration plan. This document aims at investigating and describing the way several prototyped mechanisms are supposed to work together, showing the benefit of the orchestration of OConS mechanisms, and fostering the cross-WP cooperation around two use-cases, NetInf and CloNe.

WP-D Cloud Networking (CloNe)

WP-D is developing an architecture for Cloud Networking utilising the flash network slices concept. This includes appropriate interfaces, and a reference model that spans multiple heterogeneous providers, including multi network operator for providing on-demand computing, storage and networking via a unified interface. A public demonstration of prototyping activities is being prepared for FuNeMs 2012.

This demonstration includes multiple aspects, like definition and description of virtual infrastructure and FNS via a graphical user interface for end users, which then proceeds to decomposition of this virtual infrastructure into individual domain specific resources that are then connected together via a distributed control plane/protocol. Functional aspects in the actual system include configuration negotiation, configuration and connection of different networks, resource management and application deployment. This happens over a test bed spanning Europe with individual sites spread over Stockholm, Sweden (EAB), Aveiro, Portugal (PTIN), Paris, France (IT), Bristol, UK (HP) and Lyon, France (Lyatiss).

The demonstration involves the deployment of an actual distributed service, in this case an ecommerce application. An e-commerce web server and application is implemented, simulating a real life scenario when the business owner has a web server in Sweden and decides to extend its business to France, Portugal or UK. It demands infrastructure and FNS specifying the location and other necessary properties. After deploying the infrastructure and FNS, the client ecommerce front end is deployed in newly created VM in the remote site and it can be accessed by any client via a public IP address. The architecture work brings all these elements as well as the gained expertise from prototyping to refine the initial architecture and document it in the next public deliverable.

The CloNe architecture will be detailed at a conceptual level. Technologies for implementing components and functions of a CloNe system will be presented to demonstrate implementation of the architecture.

Prototyping and Experimentation Theme

After the successful internal demonstration and prototyping workshop in Lisbon, Jan. 2012, the Prototyping Theme entered the next phase in preparing the framework for the project-wide demonstration activities and the public demonstration and show-case events. The description of the planned demonstration scenarios, and the cross-WP cooperation is currently under discussion, will be published shortly in Deliverable DA.9 “Description of overall prototyping use cases, scenarios and integration points”. In the meantime, NetInf and OConS, as
well as CloNe and OConS, have discussed the opportunities for common use cases on a bilateral basis, and have intensified their cooperation on the integration points.

Security Theme

VXDL is a high-level language for describing dynamic virtual infrastructures supported by the VXDLForum (http://vxdlforum.org). It aims at providing a simple but efficient way for virtual infrastructures’ users and providers to describe the object of their interactions.

The extensions of VXDL carried out in the security theme of SAIL are focused on security aspects, enforcing two main points: the definition of which management operations are permitted to whom on the resources the infrastructure is comprised of, and the ability to define hierarchical security zones and permitted network connections between them.

Network Management Theme

The Network Management Theme has been investigating several specific items pertaining to management between WPs. One key item is the qualitative analysis of different architectural design options to be used for implementing resource management for both OConS and CloNe. Fig. 2 illustrates three out of many viable options, each of which is modelling differently which entity is the authority in managing available network, computing, and storage resources.

Fig. 2. Architectural Options for Resource Management for OConS and CloNe.

In a), OConS controls the complete resource pool and all resource management (RM) occurs via OConS’s RM API. CloNe may optionally support its own API to customise the OConS RM API for CloNe purposes. The case where CloNe takes the place of OConS and vice versa is also a plausible option.

In b), a SAIL central authority is in control of the complete resource pool and any RM occurs via a general SAIL RM API. Both OConS and CloNe may optionally support their own APIs to customise the SAIL RM API for OConS and CloNe purposes.

In c), a SAIL central authority enables resource partitioning, and allows both OConS and CloNe to control their assigned resource pool using their specific RM APIs. Access to the SAIL RM API may be provided through the OConS or CloNe RM APIs(Fig. 2), or via direct access to the SAIL RM API (not shown in Fig. 2) by OConS and CloNe.

The above cases provide different solutions to managing the overall available resource pool consistently and ensure that resource conflicts are visible by a single authority. This solution space is currently being analysed and may be influenced by prototyping activities and security and domain constraints as dictated by the other themes in SAIL.

4. Looking Outside:
Views on SAIL

SAIL has organised two ICN panels at NOMS 2012

SAIL representatives Marcus Brunner (NEC) and Prosper Chemouil (Orange Labs) were invited to organise Panel Sessions on ICN at IFIP/IEEE NOMS 2012 (16-20 Apr. 2012, Maui, HI, USA).

Panel 1 – Software-defined Networking (Chair: Marcus Brunner): the objective was to discuss Software-Defined Networking and the impact it has on network control and management.

Panel 2 – Information-Centric Network: which Impact on Network Design & Operations? (Chair: Prosper Chemouil): it intended to address issues in the scope of Network Operations and Management in an ICN context.

More detailed information can be found at the webpage of the panel sessions.

The following papers/demos have been accepted or published/presented:

• Anders Lindgren and Mahesh Bogadi Shankar Prasad, “DTVideo: Information-Centric DTN Video Distribution”, The 13th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (HotMobile), San Diego, California, USA, 28-29 Feb. 2012.
• Azimeh Sifidcon, Paul Murray, Bob Melander and Hareesh Puthalath, “Cloud meets WAN: In-Network Support for Distributed Services”, Cloud Computing in the Telecom Environment workshop at the World Telecommunications Congress, Miyazaki, Japan, 5-6 Mar. 2012.
• Jari Arkko, Ari Keränen, Stephen Farrell, Kerry Hartnett, Elwyn Davies, “Snowcat5: Networking in Snow”, ExtremeCom, Zurich, Switzerland, 10-14 Mar. 2012.
• Ayush Sharma, Volker Fusenig, Ingmar Schoen and Anand Kannan, “Bridging the security drawbacks of virtualized network resource provisioning model”, accepted to 1st European Workshop on Dependable Cloud Computing (EWDCC), Sibiu, Romania, 8 May 2012.
• Benoit Tremblay and Thomas Edwall, “Cloud Networking: Network aspects of the cloud”, accepted to Future Internet Assembly (FIA), Aalborg, Denmark, 10-11 May 2012.
• Johan Myrberger and Thomas Edwall, Workshop on “IG and regulation, when new technologies emerges”, accepted to European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG), Stockholm,  Sweden, 14-15 June 2012.
• Paul Murray, Azimeh Sefidcon, Rebecca Steinert, Volker Fusenig and Jorge Carapinha, “Cloud Networking: An Infrastructure Service Architecture for the Wide Area”, accepted to Future Network and Mobile Summit (FuNeMS), Berlin, Germany, 4-6 July 2012.
• Fariborz Derakhshan, Heidrun Grob-Lipski, Horst Rößler, Peter Schefczik and Michael Soellner, “On Converged Multidomain Management of Connectivity in Heterogeneous Networks”, accepted to Future Network and Mobile Summit (FuNeMS), Berlin, Germany, 4-6 July 2012.

5. What’s Next:
Coming Events

SAIL will be participating in incoming conferences and workshops:

• 1st European Workshop on Dependable Cloud Computing (EWDCC 2012), Sibiu, Romania, 8 May 2012.
• Future Internet Assembly (FIA), Aalborg, Denmark, 10-11 May 2012.
• European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG), Stockholm, Sweden, 14-15 June 2012.
• SAIL Summer School, Santander, Spain, 25-28 June 2012. Read more in the section ‘Under the spotlight’ in this Newsletter.
• Future Network and Mobile Summit (FuNeMS), Berlin, Germany, 4-6 July 2012.
• ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Information- Centric Networking (ICN), Helsinki, Finland, 13-17 Aug. 2012.

SAIL presence at FuNeMS 2012

SAIL, together with three other projects (GEYSERS, SESERV and Euro-NF) co-organised the Workshop Cloud Networking – Technical and Business Challenges at FuNeMS.

In addition to this, two SAIL related papers were accepted: “On Converged Multidomain Management of Connectivity in Heterogeneous Networks” (Michael Soellner, Alcatel-Lucent, Germany) and “Cloud Networking: An Infrastructure Service Architecture for the Wide Area” (Paul Murray, HP, United Kingdom).

SAIL – Cloud networking also qualified as exhibitor at the FuNeMS 2012 Exhibition. In our booth, SAIL research will be showcased via posters and a number of technology demos from OConS and CloNe.

2nd ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Information- Centric Networking

SAIL, together with renowned experts from the international network research community, is coorganising the second ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Information-Centric Networking (ICN-2012) that will take place in Helsinki in August 2012. The Call for Papers is available at http://www.neclab.eu/icn-2012/cfp.html.

Last year’s workshop was very successful for building a community for ICN and exchanging research results from different projects. This year’s workshop is particularly focusing on ICN architecture topics, specific algorithms and protocols as well as on results from implementations and experimentation.

To Probe Further

For more information, go to the project website (http://www.sail-project.eu), or contact via email: info (at) sail-project (dot) eu.

Visit also the project blog, http://sail-project.eu/sailorsinn

You can subscribe to the quarterly newsletters from SAIL by entering your email address in the form below.

1. Editorial

Advancing into 2012, it is time to summarise the latest leg of the SAIL voyage.  The SAIL schooner is out on open waters again after some well-deserved rest at the dock after a successful 2011, ready to set loose again for the final phases of our project.  That all crew members have made an excellent job in 2011 is evident when looking at all the produced deliverables, submitted publications and gained publicity from SAIL – you deserve a big and honest Thank You!

In a large collaboration project like SAIL, the journey cannot always be smooth.  From time to time, you will be forced to adjust the course and take corrective actions, in order not to end up on shore.  But isn’t that usually the case if you want to challenge and make a difference?  It is part of the adventure, and in order to stay in the lead, you will have to – at all times – be receptive to input from your surrounding and re-assess your mission based on what the situation looks like for the moment.  Yet stay calm enough to not loose sight of the horizon and the overall goals voyage.

In projects, as well as in sailing, you sometimes have to adjust your ambition level to the externalities.  On a boat you do it by taking in on the sails, limiting the area of sailcloth facing the wind.  In a project, you do it by adjusting your ambition level so that you keep a manageable scope, avoiding drowning under the work burden.

We have shown that we have what is required to balance on the crest between our partners’ interest and the best for SAIL.  I feel confident that we together will succeed, and that we will come out of the current troubled waters stronger than ever!

Having in mind the recent 4th General Meeting at IST, in Lisbon, Portugal, on Jan. 23rd/27th, and looking into the immediate future, the project is now in the phase of detailing the architecture in the respective Work Packages (WPs).  A lot of focus during the meeting was spent on harmonising the view of how Cloud Networking (CloNe) and Network of Information (NetInf) will utilise selected mechanisms from the Open Connectivity Service suite (OConS) for providing their services.  Main highlights though were the first internal demo event, where the concrete prototyping work being done within SAIL was shown-off to all project members.  In this issue of our newsletter, you will get a glimpse of it as well.  Curious about more?  Remember to always check out the Sailors’s Inn blog for latest updates from the project!

Enjoy the reading.

Thomas Edwall (Project Manager)

Benoit Tremblay (Technical Manager)

2. Under the Spotlight:
Focus on the Prototyping Theme

One of the highlights of the meeting week in Lisbon was the internal demo event and workshop.  The time had come when prototypes that are being worked on across the project were showcased to everyone within the project.  No less than 12 demo stations, 4 from each technical WP, were set up around the topics of NetInf, OConS, and CloNe.  It was great to see many of the concepts, which previously have been explained in presentations and deliverables, in real life.  Thus, it made it easier to grasp technical aspects and details, and to understand the concepts turned into code.  An inspiring start of the project’s last year.

Tuesday was the main demo day, with a plenary session where all demo teams gave a quick overview of what they were about to demonstrate.  The session was introduced by Michael Soellner, Theme Leader for prototyping.  Next it was time for the demos.  Everyone within the project walked around and explored all the demo stations.  As expected, all demos worked, but as we all know – anything can happen during a demo.  The opportunity to discuss details and ways to further evolve the concepts and to cooperate was well used until Wednesday noon.

Furthermore, we took the opportunity to capture all demos on video.  We will now take some time and edit the raw material into separate movies.  Keep your eyes on the Sailor’s Inn blog and on the main SAIL web site, where the video clips will be presented.

During the meeting, the Prototyping Theme started to discuss first conclusions from the internal workshop, and the next steps in preparing the future public demonstration events.  The description of the planned demonstration scenarios and the cooperation will be published in a deliverable in Apr. 2012.

3. Inside SAIL:
News from WPs and Themes

WP-A: Impact and Collaboration Enabling (ICE)

In June, starting on the 25th, SAIL will arrange a Summer School, in Santander, Spain, where students from across Europe are invited.  More information will follow, so stay tuned.

In the socio-economics area, the work continues to identify and understand the new and existing business models, and how they may affect SAIL technologies.  As part of this work, the WP has compiled a document with business requirements, including business, social and regulatory aspects.  This document will, as a next step, be reviewed by all technical WPs.

Google launched its social network Google+ a few months ago, and SAIL was fast to establish a presence there.  If you are using Google+, take the opportunity to add SAIL to your circles.

WP-B: Network of Information (NetInf)

WP-B is developing an Information-Centric Networking (ICN) architecture, with a focus on support for heterogeneous technological and administrative domains.  This work is now concentrating on prototyping – we are developing different components for NetInf networks and starting to put them together in application scenarios.  For that, we are producing specifications for different components of the system, which we are continuously sharing with the community.  For example, we have designed the NetInf name format in a way that it can be useful for different applications and systems that have to provide name-content integrity.  We have submitted the corresponding specifications to the IETF to ensure broader review and to offer them as enablers for in-network storage applications in P2P and CDN deployments.  The specifications are available as draft-farrell-decade-ni and draft-hallambaker-decade-ni-params.  We are also applying this process to other components, such as the NetInf protocol and its specific mappings to underlying networks.

The prototyping work is progressing fast: there are several different NetInf implementations under development, such as the OpenNetInf Open Source implementation from Paderborn University, a NetInf implementation for next-generation routers from NEC, a NetInf-based localised CDN system from NSN, and a NetInf implementation for challenged networks based on the Delay-Tolerant Networking architecture from Trinity College Dublin.  Some of these implementations have been show-cased at the SAIL internal demo event.

WP-C: Open Connectivity Service (OConS)

WP-C goal is to provide Open Connectivity Services using novel and enhanced networking mechanisms that are beneficial to end-users and their applications (e.g., higher QoS/QoE and with the most adapted connectivity), as well as to network operators (e.g., more efficient usage of the network resources).

The Future Internet will come with many challenges to cope with, and the deficiencies to overcome are countless; thus, appropriate Connectivity Services need to be deployed and instantiated using an overall framework, flexible and open enough to accommodate existing and upcoming mechanisms and networking technologies.  Accordingly, we have further advanced with the specification of the OConS architectural framework, where our effort was put on the design of the orchestration functionalities; in fact, to serve a given application request, this orchestration is needed in order to dynamically configure and instantiate a set of OConS mechanisms, functional entities and their associated protocols.

In parallel, prototyping activities were carried on to show OConS benefits and to demonstrate enhanced connectivity services, such as OConS multi-path support for NetInf, OConS multi-p* access with dynamic distributed mobility management, and OConS for autonomous Data-Centre interconnection.

WP-D: Cloud Networking (CloNe)

As per WP-D objectives, we are well on track to build an architecture for Cloud Networking that includes management and security aspects.  Normally, cloud computing infrastructure-as-a-service offerings are implemented in large data centres that are made accessible via Internet.  We envisage a move to compute and storage resources, as well as virtual network and connectivity services, distributed throughout operator networks and managed using infrastructure-as-a-service principles, allowing services to scale out of the data centres, on-demand, for distribution, for proximity to users, and for seamless connectivity across sites.

Architecture of cloud networking allows scalable and on-demand provisioning of compute, storage and networking resources in the same time frame and via the same interface.  In the CloNe architecture, data centres and network operators communicate through the Open Cloud Networking Interface (OCNI), an extension of OCCI that incorporates our networking concepts.  Goal translation, fault management, and resource management are integral parts of our solution.

Having created the first draft of the CloNe architecture, we have focused on prototyping different elements of this architecture and prepared for the demonstration of “creation of a Flash Network Slice (FNS)”.

This is to evaluate the new concepts over a test bed that includes multiple operator networks and data centres, all managed by different providers.  On-demand creation of FNS is being prototyped over a WAN using current network technologies, MPLS-based VPNs, as well as emerging technologies, like Openflow.  These FNS interconnect tenant cloud slices in OpenStack – and OpenNebula – based cloud data centres, utilising new network virtualisation techniques, modified with extensions for interconnecting over WAN.  We will continue working toward refining the CloNe architecture based on new findings through prototyping.

Prototyping and Experimentation Theme

Under the spotlight in this issue.

Security Theme

During the first year of the project, the Security Theme has been supported by all WPs according to these objectives and shared view of the security and privacy considerations with all WPs.  In this period security objectives and privacy concerns were gathered that are inherent to the WP research topics.

The WPs are now turning to the more practical issues, i.e., preparing implementations and developing solutions that shall satisfy the security requirements, which were identified on the architectural level.  An example in the context of CloNe is a policy enforcement for network resource usage, such that customers of data centres are enabled to manage networking aspects of cloud computing.  The main security implementation example on NetInf is the name data integrity section for Named Information (ni) URI Scheme proposed in a recent IETF ID.

On the basis of such implementations, in the future the Security Theme will be able to assess security objectives and privacy concerns.

Network Management Theme

Since the publication of its first deliverable, the Network Management theme has been refining the proposed draft of its management architecture.  To this end, the theme has communicated its management guidelines and use cases to the WPs for their consideration and analysis.  This is the first of a number of iterations to achieve convergence towards an overall management framework.

Complementary, interactions with other themes were launched according to the figure, to address broader management questions related to interdomain and security management.  The NWM theme has also initiated feedback with the prototyping theme in order to harmonise management concepts and their implementation.

Interprovider Theme

The first year of SAIL was a challenge for the Inter-Provider Theme.  Most of the WPs had little or no awareness about domains and what their impact might be on their design, and a flat network design was envisaged.

This has changed completely by the end of the first year of the project.  All WPs analysed what flavours of domains they need to explore in order to provide a sound conceptual model and practical implementations, so several WPs are exploring technology domains within their implementations. Administrative domains have also been identified as an important topic to explore further.

Cross-theme work has also been started.  The Security Theme is contributing to the domain discussion and is providing significant contributions when identifying the borders of administrative domains.

4. Looking Outside:
Views on SAIL

ICN WS at SIGCOMM 2011

WP-B co-organised the well-received ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Information-Centric Networking in Toronto, Canada, Aug. 19th.  WP-B Leader, Dirk Kutscher, was TPC chair and WP-B members presented their work at the workshop.

Regulatory Workshop

Ericsson and SICS organised on Sep. 2nd a Regulatory Workshop on Information-Centric Networking (ICN) in Stockholm, Sweden.  The first one of its kind in Sweden, similar workshops have been held also in Finland by other SAIL partners, and follow-up workshops on European level are being planned.  The goal was to give an overview of the characteristics of ICN technology compared with today’s Internet one, provide an overview of the current legal and regulatory landscape and trends and “hot” issues, identify potential conflicts between ICN technology and the current legal and regulatory framework, and to start an open discussion on how regulations and technology can be made to evolve in a symbiotic way instead of an antagonistic one.  Presentations are available on SAIL SlideShare.

Cloud Interoperability Workshop

On Oct. 6th, at the Future Internet Cluster of the 8th FP7 Concertation meeting in Brussels, Belgium, SAIL organised a workshop on cloud interoperability.  Four panellists from different research areas accepted to participate.  SAIL Technical Manager Benoit Tremblay was the moderator, the four participants presenting their perspectives on what are the challenges related to cloud interoperability and how they address them in their research projects.  This was followed by a short debate on de facto standard vs. standards pushed by regulators and standard bodies.  There were also some discussions on the business aspects.  Read more in the blog post about the Cloud Interoperability Workshop.

International Workshop on Mobility Management for Flat Networks

WP-C members organised and attended the International Workshop on Mobility Management for Flat Networks (MMFN 2011) in conjunction with the 14th International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communication, held in Brest, France, on Oct. 3rd/6th. The topics of this workshop were closely related to the work on mobility management from OConS.

Capacity Sharing Workshop 

The Capacity Sharing Workshop on regulatory issues was held in Stuttgart, Germany, on Oct. 13th.  This workshop was co-organised by NEC and University of Stuttgart.  You can find more info at http://www.sail-project.eu/capacity-sharing-workshop-stuttgart-nec.

Capacity sharing is currently a hot topic for network operators, in both wireless and wireline networks, and is sometimes also referred to as “congestion management”.  Topics covered in the workshop were such as cost models, operator requirements, specific approaches to congestion management, and application/user adaptivity.  Particular emphasis was put on mobile networks, which is where congestion, overload, etc., is currently perceived as an urgent problem.

This workshop was the first one on this particular topic, attended by about 50 representatives from operators (such as DOCOMO, Orange, Telecom Italia, BT), vendors (such as Alcatel Lucent, Huawei, NEC), telecom consultants, and standards organisations.  All presentations are available online.

Other conferences

SAIL’s members continue to further disseminate the work in various conferences and workshops.  The full list is available at http://www.sail-project.eu/publications.

5. What’s Next:
Coming Events

SAIL will be participating in upcoming conferences and workshops:

•13th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (HotMobile 2012), San Diego, CA; USA, Feb. 28th/29th.

•Cloud Computing in the Telecom Environment Workshop, at the World Telecommunications Congress 2012 (WTC 2012), Miyazaki, Japan, Mar. 5th/6th.

You may subscribe to the quarterly newsletters from SAIL by entering your email address in the form below.

1. Editorial

For most people, summer means vacation, but this summer in SAIL, we did more than enjoying the sun and the beach. Five important documents have been delivered to the EU commission, and it is now your turn to enjoy the harvest as we made those documents available on our web site.

During the project’s first phase, we put a large effort on defining the architecture to support the concepts that we introduced in the use cases and scenario Deliverable (D.A.1) earlier this year.

The “Draft Architecture Guidelines and Principles” (D.A.2) Deliverable presents, as its name says it, principles and guidelines applicable to the architecture work being done in SAIL.  This includes contributions from the Themes defining objectives, frameworks, and early results.  The document also includes a simplified view of SAIL’s overall architecture, identifying the main interfaces between WPs.

The architecture for the Information Centric Networking (ICN) approach has been described in “The Network of Information: Architecture and Applications” (D.B.1).  The document presents different design options for the core building blocks of an ICN: naming, name resolution, forwarding and routing, and mobility and security.  The document studies how the architecture applies to the selected applications and use cases, and also describes recent work in NetInf migration and standardisation.

In “Architectural Concepts of Connectivity Services” (D.C.1), OConS proposes a new set of networking architecture principles.  It describes the functional entities and interfaces of the architectural framework that suits these new requirements.  It then describes the proposed connectivity services and their management mechanisms. Finally, these elements are mapped to the connectivity use cases and scenarios.

CloNe integrates networks and data centres, considers the networking resources into the existing data centre infrastructure, and allows the application to use computing and storage resource distributed in the network for a better end-user experience, and all this in multi-administrative domain scenarios. “Cloud Network Architecture Description” (D.D.1) describes the architecture to support these features from intra- and inter-domain perspectives.

When introducing new technologies as we do in SAIL, it is not enough to identify the technical issues, but we also need to evaluate the impacts on the business and the society.  ”New Business Models and Business Dynamics of the Future Networks” (D.A.7) studies the intangible, business and regulatory aspects of selected use cases.

As the project now will shift focus towards prototyping of the concepts outlined in these documents, we conclude our in-depth tutorials of our WPs by putting extra spotlight focus on the Open Connectivity Services work!

Enjoy the reading.

Thomas Edwall (Project Manager)
Benoit Tremblay (Technical Manager)

2. Under the Spotlight:
Focus on WP-C – Open Connectivity Services

During the last months, the focus in OConS was put on our first deliverable, “Architectural Concepts of Connectivity Services“.  We have started thus with a comprehensive analysis, which discusses and challenges the current networking guidelines and principles, and, whenever necessary, we have proposed changes and adaptations.  Knowing that current networking abstractions are not appropriate to deal with the increasingly complex landscape, we have clearly identified and proposed the following abstractions and functional entities common to all mechanisms: IE – Information management (e.g., networking context/view), DE – Decision (e.g., path computation), EE – Execution (e.g. forwarding), Orchestration (i.e., toolbox and blueprint to deal with a given service request), and Path/Connection-emulation (e.g., similar to bearers in 3GPP, VLAN/tags in PBB-TE, or paths/labels in MPLS/LDP/RSVP-TE).

We reckon that our approach enables a smooth possible grouping (i.e., layering) of these abstractions/entities into major communication functions, and, moreover, we facilitate the support of several instantiation models (e.g., centralised path computation, several degree of hierarchysation for resource management, fully decentralised forwarding and mobility execution).  Likewise, we will define, and intend to standardise, open/extensible interfaces to operate on these abstractions/entities, e.g., on DE-EE we can use an OpenFlow-like enriched with OConS services and policies, on IE-DE we can use appropriate triggers depending on a given connectivity service sought, on DE-DE we need inter-domain exchanges, and through the external API we manipulate the connectivity path through the Orchestration toolbox.

In D.C.1, we have also detailed several advanced connectivity services, such as: Multi-Path mechanisms that allow the same flow to use multiple simultaneous paths in a fair and efficient way, mechanisms to support Multi-homed nodes for effective handover and for delivering a given flow to multiple points, Multi-Protocol mechanisms for dynamically selecting different transport protocols and configuring the parameters for a given flow, mechanisms that assist ICN to benefit from the established multiple paths at the transport and network layers, integration of network-coding and cross-layer techniques to improve the performance of Multi-P* mechanisms, and end-to-end network control for supporting the WAN interconnectivity.  Likewise, D.C.1 specifies a set of mechanisms to manage and control these connectivity services in an efficient and scalable way, thus, it specifically tackles: dynamic and distributed mobility management, security aspects in relation with mobility, and resource management mechanisms (e.g., cognitive radio through spectrum sensing, radio resource allocation, wireless mesh and DTN management, policy routing, and overlaying for data-centre interconnection).

By providing a set of abstractions and interfaces that can be grouped into networking functions and services in a flexible and adaptable way, we can definitely say that the OConS framework decreases the networking landscape complexity, allowing for easier evolutions; accordingly, the functions can be reused at several layers, instantiated on various models, being orchestrated on-demand through open APIs.  Finally, we aim at a recursive/reflexive use of a given OConS mechanism (where it can call itself with the same or with a different input/policy), so instead of throwing-in more protocols and mechanisms, we can reuse and instantiate the existing ones within appropriate “networking-processing” nodes or slices (in CloNe vocabulary).

Figure 1: OConS scenario

3. Inside SAIL:
News from WPs and Themes

WP-A
Impact and Collaboration Enabling (ICE)

Since the last newsletter, Deliverable D.A.7 “New Business Models and Business Dynamics of the Future Networks” has been finalised and made public.  The document explores the business and socio-economics aspects that influence the SAIL architecture.  In order for the results and output from SAIL to be relevant in the existing and future business environment, it is important to actively research these aspects, and to incorporate the findings in the technical work.  All the technical WPs have been involved in the work, to provide input and insight and also to ensure a direct incorporation during the way forward.  The deliverable is also relevant outside the scope of SAIL, and should be an interesting reading for you all.

Regulatory and legal aspects of the SAIL concept are another critical success factor for SAIL.  In the last few months, SAIL has hosted workshops in Finland and Sweden around these questions.  The workshops had participants from a variety of relevant stakeholders, ranging from content providers and operators, to regulatory authorities and others.  Also, the participants were a mix of both technical as well as legal experts.

WP-B
Network of Information (NetInf)

WP-B is developing an ICN architecture with a focus on support for heterogeneous technological and administrative domains, which is described in more detail in D.B.1 “The Network of Information: Architecture and applications” (http://www.sail-project.eu/deliverables).

This document presents the NetInf design that is centred around a well-defined set of architecture invariants (such as unique naming, location-independence and a strict information-centric service model), putting a particular emphasis on supporting multi-technology/multi-domain interoperability.  These invariants provide the necessary orientation for the more detailed architecture elements, such as naming, transport, caching, etc.  Based on these invariants, an overview of a complete NetInf system that illustrates the relation of the architecture elements in a big picture is presented.  The presented architecture building blocks can be used to construct full or parts of the NetInf architecture, such as name resolution, forwarding and routing, mobility and security for different use cases, and migration paths.

Different prototypes are built based on this set of architecture elements, and SAIL has recently released a new version of the OpenNetInf software distribution (http://www.netinf.org).

We continue working together with the general ICN research community, and SAIL members have been co-organising the highly successful ICN workshop at this year’s ACM SIGCOMM (http://www.neclab.eu/icn-2011).  The workshop received 41 submissions from Asia, Europe, and North America (China, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, South-Korea, Switzerland, UK, USA), out of which 12 papers have been accepted for the final program — the acceptance rate was 29%.

WP-C
Open Connectivity Service (OConS)

Under the spotlight in this issue.

WP-D
Cloud Networking (CloNe)

The objective of WP-D is to create an architecture for cloud networking and flash network slice over multiple, typically heterogeneous, multi-administrative domains.  To explore this architecture in more details, control functions and protocols, management and security aspects are addressed.  To evaluate all solution in a large scale prototype, a testbed hosted by three different partners is set up.  This prototype will proof feasibility of the solutions and a migration approach.

The architectural solution, including security and management framework, was documented and delivered.  Some of the contributions in this architecture are the concept of Flash Network Slices (FNS) as a space of interconnected end-points with specific QoS guarantees and dynamic reconfiguration properties.  The FNS is mapped to three different platforms namely, flow based networks (e.g., OpenFlow), fully virtualised networks (e.g., 4WARD VNet) and virtual private networks (VPNs).

The interfaces between the different parts of the cloud networking eco-system have been identified and their nature specified.  Two different control protocols have been defined, enabling the CloNe vision.  The first one is a RESTful Infrastructure Service Interface, based on an extension of the existing OCCI standard, thus, being migration friendly.  In the second one, the distributed control plane will be used to enable cross domain interaction and signalling.

Prototyping and Experimentation Theme

As a contribution to D.A.2, the theme provided principles for a prototyping, experimentation and demonstration framework architecture, giving some guidelines how to design, manage and conduct experiments for test and validation.

Moreover, in the context of prototyping, the contribution also discusses the risks from using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and gives principles and guidelines how to deal with this issue in the project.  The use and/or distribution of FOSS has numerous advantages to the project partners, however, there are also disadvantages, including the complexity of FOSS licensing (e.g., when a FOSS distribution has multiple “dependencies”, each subject to different license terms, and potential issues associated with ownership of intellectual property originating from unknown and questionable sources, etc.).  The purpose of the FOSS guidelines given in D.A.2 is to maximise the benefits of FOSS to the SAIL project while mitigating the associated risks.

The face-to-face Theme Prototyping meeting during the 3rd SAIL Plenary Meeting in Paderborn showed a broad interest in this theme activity, as it is now approaching one of the highlights of the project: the first project-internal prototyping, demonstration and experimentation workshop to show, discuss and align the practical project achievements across the SAIL work packages.  This workshop is scheduled to be held in Jan. 2012 in conjunction with the 4th general project meeting hosted by IST/Lisbon, Portugal.  The event is now being prepared as a forum for project-internal experience exchange and a basis for further project-wide integration towards the project end.  To present a comprehensive and sound story for the public demonstration event at the project end (Dec. 2012), people eagerly started to discuss a common storyboard around the scenario and use cases of a realistic “flash crowd event” (e.g., the Royal wedding) as presented at the past FIA meeting in Warsaw.

Security Theme

Despite the diversity of the security and privacy related research topics, which are addressed in the WP-B, WP-C and WP-D, the theme members identified common guidelines and methodology.  Both, common ground and WP specific ambitions in protection goals, are documented and discussed in context, amongst other architectural aspects, in D.A.2 “Draft Architecture Guidelines and Principles“.

This first year result is now carried forward and the security theme prepares the strategy to validate that the implementation of security and privacy objectives is well-coordinated across WPs, i.e., this implementation avoids duplication of work and appears being consistent.

Network Management Theme

At the end of the fourth quarter, the network management theme has completed the first version of a project‑wide management architecture.  The theme provides the following main contributions:

• Definition of a concise set of management guidelines: the network management theme has defined five fundamental guidelines according to which management functions shall be implemented in individual parts of SAIL’s overall architecture.  Compliance with these guidelines assures that architectural elements (e.g., NetInf caches) are understood as manageable resources with known context (e.g., security constraints), which interoperate via defined management interfaces, and which adhere to the same data models that define the management data processed and exchanged by manageable resources.
• WP-specific application of management guidelines and concepts: based on the definition of the management guidelines, the network management theme has illustrated how to apply network management concepts uniformly to the individual WPs’ architectures.  In doing so, the theme has applied a WP-D-centric view, in which WP-D’s key management concepts are applied in the context of other WPs consistent with the guidelines.
• Inter-WP application of management guidelines and concepts: the network management theme has further illustrated how guideline adherence facilitates and eases the creation of homogeneous and comprehensive network management architecture that spans all of the technical WPs (WP-B, WP-C, and WP-D).  For example, it was shown how interfacing with a shared knowledge plane can benefit the various WPs in performing their management tasks, e.g., how WP-D is able to more flexibly create flash slices based on more extensive knowledge about storage resources.

Figure 2: Interfacing with Shared Knowledge Plane

In the second year, the network management theme will focus on refining the proposed architecture and address important open management questions, such as the investigation of the layering of the different work packages’ architectures with respect to one another, and how such layering impacts the overall management architecture.

4. Looking Outside:
Views on SAIL

Article in SvD

SAIL has once again got media coverage in Sweden.  On May 30, Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), one of the major daily newspapers, had detailed article on SAIL as an example of new innovative initiatives for the third phase of the internet evolution “Internet sailing on the third wave of SAIL” (Google translated version).

IEEE article

During fall 2010, IEEE Communications Magazine issued a call for papers addressing “Future Internet Architectures: Design and Deployment Perspectives”, with a deadline on Dec. 2010.  As this topic was right on the target for SAIL, a group of people in the project was set up to write the paper, and did manage to submit the paper in due time: “Content, Connectivity, and Cloud: Ingredients for the Network of the Future”, Bengt Ahlgren, Pedro A. Aranda, Prosper Chemouil, Luis M. Correia, Holger Karl, Sara Oueslati, Michael Söllner and Annikki Welin.  The paper was accepted (from an acceptance ratio of 15%), and was published in the July issue of the journal.  Recently, we became aware that this article was in the top ten of the most read in IEEE Communications Society, for that month.

FuNeMS Warsaw

The project actively participated at the ‘Future Networks & Mobile Summit‘ in Warsaw. A t FuNeMS, SAIL had a poster stand in the exhibition hall where the work of all WPs was presented.  Two blog posts from FuNeMS were published on Sailors Inn:

• http://www.sail-project.eu/sailorsinn/2011/06/sail-funems-warzaw/
• http://www.sail-project.eu/sailorsinn/2011/06/grand-vision-european-network-research/

The following papers have been accepted or published:

• Mehani Olivier, Boreli Roksana, Maher Michael, Ernst Thierry, “User- and Application-Centric Multihomed Flow Management”, 36th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, Bonn, Germany, 4-7 October, 2011.
• Lúcio Studer Ferreira, Luís M. Correia, “Radio Resource Management for Optimising Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks Deployments”, WPMC 2011: 14th International Symposium on Wireless Personal and Mobile Communications, Brest, France, 3-7 Oct. 2011.
• B. Ahlgren, B. Ohlman, E. Axelsson, and L. Brown, “Subversion Over Open NetInf and CCNx”, WASA-NGI-IV, Bonn, Germany, 4 October 2011.
• Aidan Lynch, Stephen Farrell, Alex McMahon, Stefan Weber and Kerry Hartnett, “DTN Trials and Router Updates”, ExtremeCom’11, Brazil, 26-30 September.
• J.F Peltier, “Information-Centric Networking in the Future Internet”, ETSI Future Network Technologies Workshop, Sophia Antipolis, France, 26-27 September 2011.
• Johnny Choque, Ramón Agüero, Luis Muñoz, “Simulation framework for the evaluation of access selection algorithms over heterogeneous wireless networks”, 3rd International ICST Conference on Mobile Networks and Management, Aveiro, Portugal, 21-23 September 2011.
• Lúcio Studer Ferreira, Luís M. Correia, “Energy-Efficient Radio Resource Management in Self-Organised Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks”, Proceedings of IEEE PIMRC 2011: 22nd IEEE Symposium on Personal, Indoor, Mobile and Radio Communications , Toronto, Canada, 11-14 September 2011.
• G. Carofiglio, M. Gallo, L.Muscariello, D. Perino. “Modeling data transfer in content-centric networking”, ITC23, San Francisco, 6-9 September 2011.
• G. Carofiglio, M. Gallo, L.Muscariello, “Bandwidth and storage sharing performance in information centric networking”, ACM SIGCOMM’11 – ICN Workshop, Toronto, Canada, 19 August 2011.
• Matteo D’Ambrosio, Christian Dannewitz, Holger Karl, and Vinicio Vercellone, “MDHT: A Hierarchical Name Resolution Service for Information-centric Networks”, SIGCOMM 2011 – ICN workshop, Toronto, Canada, 19 Aug 2011.
• Bengt Ahlgren, Pedro Aranda, Prosper Chemouil, Luis M. Correia, Holger Karl, Sara Oueslati, Michael Söllner, and Annikki Welin, “Content, Connectivity, and Cloud: Ingredients for the Network of the Future”, IEEE communication magazine, July 2011.
• Shubhabrata ROY, Thomas BEGIN, Paulo GONÇALVES, “Workload Modeling Using Epidemiologic Models in Video on Demand System”, Cloud computing Summer School in Otaniemi, Finland, and CONTRAIL Summer School in Hyeres , France, June/July 2011.
• A.G. Prieto, D. Gillblad, A. Miron, R. Steinert, “Toward Decentralized Probabilistic Management”, IEEE Commag, July 2011.
• Johnny Choque, Ramón Agüero, Luis Muñoz, “Optimum selection of access networks within heterogeneous wireless environments based on linear programming techniques”, ACM/Springer MONET.
• Tanyingyong, M. Hidell, P. Sjödin, “Improving PC-based OpenFlow Switching Performance using Commodity Hardware”, IEEE Workshop on High Performance Switching and Routing, 29-31 June 2011.
• Thomas Edwall, “The Vision of the Future According to SAIL”, Future Network & Mobile Summit, Warsaw, Poland, 15-19 June 2011.
• Bengt Ahlgren, Börje Ohlman, Erik Axelsson, Lars Brown, “Experiments with Subversion over OpenNetInf and CCNx”, SNCNW 2011, Linköping, Sweden, June 13-14, 2011.
• Pascale Vicat-Blanc, Guilherme Koslovski, Paulo Gonçalves et Fabienne Anhalt, “Clouds and Networks”, ResCom Summer school, La Palmyre, France, 5-10 June 2011.

5. What’s Next:
Coming Events

SAIL will be participating in upcoming conferences and workshops:

·  Future Internet Assembly, Poznan, Poland, 25-26 October 2011

· Capacity sharing workshop in Stuttgart, 13 October, 2011.

· 36th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, Bonn, Germany, 4-7 October, 2011

· 14th International Symposium on Wireless Personal and Mobile Communications, Brest, France, 3-7 October 2011  

To Probe Further

For more information, go to the project website (http://www.sail-project.eu), or contact via email (info@sail-project.eu).

Visit also the project blog, http://sail-project.eu/sailorsinn

You may subscribe to the quarterly newsletters from SAIL by entering your email address in the form below.

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SAIL Project Newsletter, issue #3 – June 2011

Editor: Luis M. Correia

1. Editorial
With 30% of the project months passed, we have a bright outlook for our remaining voyage. There is an intense work on-going in all Work Packages (WPs) and Themes, and we have a tightly united team with a willingness to cooperate at everyone’s best. “Everyone” in SAIL terms now mean 25 partners, as we are welcoming Lyatiss as new partner in the consortium!

The second General Meeting of SAIL was held in Santander, Spain, 21-23 February, where the beautiful Palacio de la Magdalena was overtaken by SAILors for three days. The organiser of this successful meeting was University of Cantabria. During these days, the ground for the upcoming intense work on the architectural deliverables from the respective WP was laid. The work with these deliverables is now in its most intense phase, and each WP has had or is in the preparation phase for dedicated face-to-face meetings.

Prototyping and the other Themes of the project will be the unifying glue that brings the technical aspects of NetInf, CloNe and OConS together, and leverage the added value that comes with an Integrated Project. During the Santander meeting, this became evident at the extremely well populated Prototyping Theme meeting.

Our first review meeting was held March 17th in good and constructive spirit, resulting in a lot of good discussions, valid comments and some remarks. The received feedback is taken in, and is now implemented into our project work plan.

We are now approaching summer and a much longed for vacation period for most of us. “Summer” for most of us usually contains references to “clear skies” in one way or another. Call it a paradox if you like, that in this issue of our newsletter we will challenge that conception by taking a jump up into the clouds while exploring the exciting area of Cloud Networking! You will learn why distributed Clouds, residing at arm’s lengths from us, will be a key ingredient of the future Internet.

So, let the sun wait for a while and enjoy the Clouds!

Thomas Edwall
(Project Manager)

2. Under the Spotlight: Focus on WP-D – Cloud Networking

Cloud computing is today changing the way applications and software can be deployed and managed.  The concept of on-demand and pay-per-use software services is highly attractive to large and small enterprises that wish to reduce IT costs.  Through cloud computing, one is able to outsource the management of entire systems, letting companies focus on their core businesses.

The work in the Cloud Networking WP is centred on two premises. The first one is that in the near future we will have a distributed cloud, that is, a cloud deployed in the network and at network edges.  This cloud will be closer to the end-user, minimising latency and maximising end-user experience.  Not less importantly, that cloud will avoid congested network links, since the application will be placed close to the user.

The second premise is that applications that are currently deployed in data centres will need flexible, secure and high speed connections in “customer – data centre” and “data centre –data centre” links.  The provisioning of those connections should be performed in a time scale that is compatible with the allocation of computing resources in a data centre.  We call this flexible network service a flash network slice.  We envision a pay-per-use model for this network service as well, which will enable small and medium enterprises to get access to those in an affordable way.

In that scenario, applications can be deployed in the network, in data centres, or in both at the same time.  In order to allow that, the Cloud Networking architecture is designing a Distributed Infrastructure Service plane that will decompose and distribute applications across different administrative domains, e.g., data centres, and operators networks (figure above).

Recently, we presented our work in the Future Internet Assembly in Budapest, at a session named “The network lost in the cloud”.  The one topic that seemed to be a consensus amongst all presenters was the need for a cloud end-to-end contract (in the form of an SLA) that includes networking.  For example, the project GEYSERS uses optical networks to provide cloud connectivity.  SAIL Cloud Networking is investigating the use of MPLS/BGP, OpenFlow and Virtual Networks to provide inter-cloud connectivity.

One of the interesting questions in that session was about the need for visibility into the networks.  The project RESERVOIR has implemented a federation of clouds and without knowing what is happening in the networks, a little could be done when transfer of large datasets or VMs has to be performed.  In SAIL, we foresee the network operator as being part of this eco-system, offering a network service.  Thus, cloud providers do not need to have visibility into the network, rather, they will see a service that is offered by the network provider.

Yet another interesting aspect is the business implications of how we implement the Distributed Infrastructure Service.  One possibility is the use of a centralised scheme, which knows the topology/status of all underlying providers.  This scheme could make optimal decisions, but is unlikely to happen in practice, since providers are not willing to expose such type of information.  The second possibility is through the use of distributed schemes, where each provider is treated as a black box with internal decision making.  In that case, we can have one instance negotiating with all providers for a request (hierarchical model), or we can have fully distributed negotiation between providers for a given request (peering model).  Both cases are part of CloNe’s architecture.

3. Inside SAIL: News from WPs and Themes

WP-A - Impact and Collaboration Enabling (ICE)

WP-A has now started the activities for the definition of a strategy for migration.  SAIL’s contributions to ETSI’s Future Network Technologies Workshop are being coordinated by WP-A.

A paper presenting the main challenges within the project was accepted to a special call of IEEE Communications Magazine, to be issued July 2011.  The project will participate with a booth at FuNeMS’2011.  A presentation has been agreed to be given in the SESERV project workshop in June in Oxford (Building the Future Internet – the Social Nature of Technical Choices).

Work on Deliverable D.A.7 has continued, and the 1st full draft version will be ready by mid-May.

If you haven’t already, please visit Sailors Inn, the blog of SAIL.  Since the last newsletter, there has been blog posts around the 2nd SAIL general meeting, some thoughts around the launch of Open Networking Foundation and a post from the first ASMONIA workshop.  Visit the blog for even more interesting posts posted the last quarter.

You are also welcome to join the SAIL LinkedIn group, or to follow SAIL on Twitter.  In both these fora, you can interact with us.

WP-B - Network of Information (NetInf)

WP-B is developing an Information-Centric Networking (ICN) architecture with a focus on support for heterogeneous technology and administrative domains.  We are following an approach of defining fundamental architectural elements – instead of a comprehensive architecture that is imposed on all possible scenarios and networks. Following this approach, we are currently investigating the details of a minimal set of architecture elements.

One particular example is information object naming, which we consider a key element of the ICN thin hour glass waist.  For naming, WP-B has developed the NetInf naming that can provide globally unique naming of objects with secure name to content binding. NetInf naming employs a URI format for representing NetInf names that provides the necessary flexibility to cater for different naming and security requirements in different domains.  We have submitted the specification of our naming format to the IETF as draft-farrell-ni-00.

We have taken NetInf naming as one of the elementary building blocks for sketching a future information-centric “Internet of Things” in a contribution to a recent Interconnecting Smart Objects with the Internet Workshop organised by the IAB.  In this workshop contribution, we presented the idea that an “Internet of Things” should not be treated as totally different network – instead accessing named information based on NetInf naming would be a 1st order principle for interconnecting all kinds of network, including networks of power-constrained or otherwise challenged devices.

WP-C - Open Connectivity Service (OConS)

The focus has been put on the Architectural Concepts of Connectivity Services deliverable, with the initial requirements in place, the design principles to follow, and the architectural framework drafted.  This public OConS deliverable will also include the mechanisms for connectivity services and the management of these services, congregating contributions from WP-C partners around a common functional architecture.

We have also progressed with the experimentation and prototyping activities, intensifying our internal cooperation by clustering the prototyping activities into a common context for project-wide scenarios, demos and prototypes.

Finally, even if we salute the launch Open Networking Foundation, with OpenFlow as its flagship, we reckon that it is the high time to have scalable-by-design networking solutions enhanced with more advanced connectivity services, such as Multi-P*, Quality-of-Service, and why not Mobility.

WP-D - Cloud Networking (CloNe)

Under the spotlight in this issue.

Prototyping and Experimentation Theme

Currently, WPs are about to detail their specific prototyping activities for the first development and experimentation cycle that end in month 24.  In parallel, the architectural framework with services and interfaces in each WP, as well as from a project-wide perspective, are being elaborated and documented in deliverables by July 2011.  This will be the next main checkpoint for the Theme Prototyping and Experimentation to consolidate the cross-WP interactions and progress.  In the meantime, requirements and support tools for an environment to manage, configure and visualise the planned demonstrations are under study.

Security Theme

As WPs continue to progress their technical ideas, we note that all of these technical proposals encompass specific security solutions to typically protect integrity or avoid misuse.  Even though SAIL is not a security project, it would be a surprise if the WPs would not think of security.  The security theme is now gathering these approaches, to ensure consistency, i.e., avoid contradictions or duplication of work. This approach and results will be documented and completed with security guidelines for SAIL in the upcoming deliverable D.A.2 “Draft Architectural Guidelines and Principles”.

4. Looking Outside - Views on SAIL

SAIL has got media coverage in the Swedish weekly technical newspaper Ny Teknik in terms of two articles with bearing on the SAIL-project.  Both from an Ericsson-perspective, as overall coordinators of the project, and also one more specifically around our partner SICS’s involvement in SAIL.
Thomas Edwall and Börje Ohlman were interviewed as SAIL project manager and sub-project manager respectively.  On Sailors Inn, a blog post is written that links to Google-translated versions of the articles.

The following papers have been accepted or published:

• Matteo D’Ambrosio, Christian Dannewitz, Holger Karl and Vinicio Vercellone, “MDHT: A Hierarchical Name Resolution Service for Information-centric Networks”, SIGCOMM 2011 – ICN workshop, Toronto, Canada, Aug. 2011.
• Bengt Ahlgren, Pedro Aranda, Prosper Chemouil, Luis M. Correia, Holger Karl, Sara Oueslati, Michael Söllner and Annikki Welin, “Content, Connectivity, and Cloud: Ingredients for the Network of the Future”, IEEE Communication Magazine, July 2011.
• Reuven Cohen and Guy Grebla, “Efficient allocation of CQI Channels in Broadband wireless Networks”, INFOCOM 2011, Shanghai, China, Apr. 2011.
• Rami Cohen and Danny Raz, “Cost Effective Resource Allocation of Overlay Routing Relay Nodes”, INFOCOM 2011, Shanghai, China, Apr. 2011.
• David Breitgand, Gilad Kutiel and Danny Raz, “Cost-aware live migration of services in the cloud”, Hot-ICE ’11, Boston, MA, USA, Mar. 2011.
• Dominique Dudkowski, “SAIL Cloud Networking”, ASMONIA Workshop, Heidelberg, Germany, Mar. 2011.
• Dirk Kutscher and Stephen Farrell, “Towards an Information-Centric Internet with more Thing”, Interconnecting Smart Objects with the Internet Workshop, Prague, Czech Republic, Mar. 2011.

5. What’s Next: Coming Events

SAIL will be participating in upcoming conferences and workshops:

• Future Network & Mobile Summit 2011, Warsaw, Poland, 15-17 June 2011.
• SIGCOMM 2011, Toronto, Canada, 15-19 Aug. 2011.

Some conferences have paper submission deadlines in the upcoming weeks:

• Capacity Sharing Workshop, Stuttgart, Germany, 13 Oct 2011. Deadline: 15 July 2011.

To Probe Further

For more information, go to the project website (http://www.sail-project.eu), or contact SAIL through the contact web page.

Visit also the project blog, http://sail-project.eu/sailorsinn.

You may subscribe to the quarterly newsletters from SAIL by entering your email address in the form below.

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SAIL Project Newsletter, issue #2 – March 2011

Editor: Luis M. Correia

1. Editorial

The first half-year period of SAIL has passed and already we are showing results of our architectural work. Our first public deliverables are due and available at the web-site for download and we are preparing for our first periodical review with the Commission.  Research work wise we are now at the stage of the detailed architecture work and iteration of the first prototyping approaches.  It means there is an intense activity on-going across all Work Packages.

In a project of the size of SAIL, how do you connect the deep scientific research work produced within each Work Package, to something that is understandable and concrete to an outside follower of the project? How do you secure that you maintain alignment in-between the work-packages so that the initial objectives with the project is kept intact?  And from another angle, how do you maintain an innovative and free-thinking work environment where prosperous ideas are allowed to grow – even though they might not be fully in-line with what you originally have foreseen?  How do you balance between control and free-thinking?   Well, good questions all of them and no given answer.

In this 2nd newsletter we go under the spotlight and shed light on how we in SAIL will address these aspects in a way we believe will be a successful one, namely by looking more into detail on our recent project wide work with “scenarios” and “use cases” and the related deliverable that summarised this work. In SAIL we put a lot of emphasis in securing that in whatever work we do, and whatever result we disclose, we refer to it in a context that shall be easy to relate to for a broader audience.  That it makes sense to everyday people with an interest in our industry!  Sometimes the scenarios are deliberately stretched and perhaps too visionary – yet, they refer to situations we envision our technologies will be used in – by people in the generation of our grand-children.  It is our strong intent not to see the scenario work as a “tick-in-the-box-document” that is put aside once approved, but instead repeatedly use it as guidance and sanity check for the research work to come.  Let us know once you see that we deviate from this approach!

Thomas Edwall (Project Manager)

2. Under the Spotlight: Focus on WP-A

The main focus for WP-A during the initial phase of the project has been Deliverable D.2.1/D.A.1 “Description of project wide scenarios and use cases”.  The deliverable describes overall scenarios that tie together the work in the different WPs.  These scenarios have been refined into specific use cases, highlighting important functions, technologies, and capabilities enabled by SAIL technology and network architecture.  The deliverable includes an extensive business analysis of the scenarios and use cases.  The project-wide scenario has three iterations, each adding additional aspects and functionality, which have been defined to guide the main direction of the research in the project.

Alice is in the base scenario streaming video from her mobile handset to a personal content repository. Initially, just a few friends are interested in watching, but it turns out that the content is exceptionally popular, and a consumer crowd is forming.  In the next two scenario iterations, a multi-operator network, and multiple people providing content from the same event are added, respectively.

While the scenario starts out with a simple case of small-scale distribution of user-generated content, the iterations add complexity and scale that is very difficult to handle with today’s technology.  The scenario thus provides ample challenges for the research in SAIL.

Deliverable D.2.1/D.A.1 “Description of project wide scenarios and use cases” is already available at the project website.

Another main responsibility for WP-A is to enable and coordinate SAIL dissemination activities.  In order to reach as wide an audience as possible, SAIL is trying out a wide range of dissemination methods and channels.  Besides the more traditional means of dissemination, the project is also engaged in new social networks approaches, like a blog and a LinkedIn group.  The SAIL project also has a Slideshare account and is engaged in YouTube, which is being used for videos and presentation slides.  Other channels, such as Twitter are also explored.  The blog, for example, has received some positive reactions.

SAIL workshops will constitute one of the primary channels for SAIL to interact with the surrounding research community.  The first workshop, planned for October/November 2011, will focus on the topics of Information Centric networking, Open Connectivity and Cloud Networking in a way that can bring input to the architectural and technical development work in the SAIL project.  The focus of the second workshop, planned for fall 2012, will be on disseminating SAIL results.

As the legal and regulatory landscape will delimit which technologies will be possible to deploy in the future internet, SAIL is considering arranging a set of national regulatory workshops during 2011 to understand the critical issues.  If the workshop results indicate that it would be meaningful to address these issues on a European level, we will consider a European regulatory workshop in 2012.

These workshops will be open, and announced in due time at the project website.

3. Inside SAIL: News from WPs and Themes

WP-A - Impact and Collaboration Enabling (ICE)

Under the spotlight in this issue.

WP-B - Network of Information (NetInf)

The Information-Centric Networking (ICN) paradigm that SAIL is investigating in WP-B is gaining momentum in the international research community.  SAIL is taking a leading role in these efforts and has co-organised and contributed to a seminar in Dec. 2010, Dagstuhl Seminar on Information-Centric Networking. The seminar was attended by an international group of renowned researchers that are involved in different projects on ICN.  At the seminar, fundamental elements of ICN such as information object naming, name resolution and routing, as well as APIs and migration possibilities have been discussed. The seminar proceedings are available online.  One of the results of the seminar is an ACM SIGCOMM 2011 Workshop on ICN that will be co-organised by SAIL members and will help to further advance the research on ICN and enlarge the community around it.

The SAIL research on ICN is progressing towards an inter-domain architecture with a focus on interoperability (between different domains as well as between different ICN approaches).  In addition to this architecture design, WP-B has defined first concrete specifications, e.g., on a universal naming scheme for information objects.

WP-C - Open Connectivity Service (OConS)

Work continued on the Open Connectivity Service architectural framework and its interfaces.  WP-C focused on building a shared view about the context/information management, the decision making and the executing functional entities; likewise, we have started the mapping of this framework onto use-cases previously defined.

In parallel, we took a bottom-up approach, identifying the deficiencies of current transport mechanisms and proposing possible solutions based on the Multi-P schemes (point, path, protocol).  We have also started to identify WP-C internal cooperation opportunities and clustering of prototyping activities and we have initiated the discussions for project-wide demos and prototypes.

Finally, WP-C partners are organising the International Workshop on Mobility Management for Flat Networks, with topics closely related to the work on mobility management from OConS.

WP-D - Cloud Networking (CloNe)

In the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011, some of our efforts were put on the analyses of the business perspective of the CloNe scenarios.  The market potential for the cloud services is large and growing very rapidly.  The strongest incentive for deployment of services in the cloud is cost efficiency.  In many ways, CloNe will try to bring the benefits of the pay-as-you-go model to networking, something that is new to the market.

An important achievement of CloNe in the beginning of 2011 was the specification of a draft architecture. The architecture builds upon existing components in the cloud world.  A bottom up approach was taken, starting from the basic elements of the full architecture: computing, networking and storage resources. Infrastructure services are built on top of that for each one of the administrative domains of the architecture (e.g., cloud provider, network operator provider).  Finally, the proposed distributed control plane is the bridge across different administrative boundaries.

The next step is the specification of the full CloNe architecture, including initial management and security frameworks.  In parallel, the prototyping plan will be developed and the testbed will be deployed.  The progress on the architecture work will be presented in next FIA meeting in Budapest.

Prototyping and Experimentation Theme

By the second plenary meeting in Feb 2011, all the dedicated prototyping tasks in the work packages had taken up their work as planned.

So, for the first time, it was possible to present and discuss a complete overview of WP-specific prototyping plans in the theme meeting, and relate the planned practical work to the overall scenario and use case stories developed in Deliverable D.2.1/D.A.1 “Description of project wide scenarios and use cases”.  The work packages are now further detailing their experimental contributions to the SAIL-internal prototyping workshop, scheduled to be held early in 2012 in conjunction with the 4th general project meeting.

The Theme started to support these WP activities with considering how generic interfaces between partner components could look like (e.g. based on REST-ful web interface principles), how the experimentation network and platform planned in WP-D could be used by other WPs, and how virtualisation techniques would enable hardware and platform independent cooperation between partners and WPs.

Security Theme

There is a systematic approach to address security in SAIL, e.g., in the case of cloud networking, SAIL starts by defining security goals that needs to be achieved in cloud networking and looks at relevant attackers that try to break these security goals.  On this basis SAIL compiles cloud networking specific security challenges that need to be addressed during the project.

Network Management Theme

The Network Management Theme has intensified its studies of management-related topics in SAIL.  For that purpose, the following structure is being used as a guideline:

On the one hand, this structure shows how an overall management architecture will integrate parts of each of the architectures in WP-B, WP-C, and WP-D, which are not management-specific and include also data and control plane concepts.  On the other, the management architecture will contain subsets of management-related concepts that also contain non-architectural components, such as management algorithms.  At this time, the theme is analysing each of the work packages’ initial architectural drafts in order to identify in which parts of these architectures management needs to be taken into account.  These considerations will be integrated again with the overall SAIL architecture at a later time.

Interprovider Management Theme

In the Interprovider Theme we are starting to consolidate a common view on the evolution of the domain concept. We need it in order to understand if we can or should establish boundaries, where these boundaries should be and what interactions we expect between domains in the different WPs.  We also got a paper accepted in the Network Virtualisation – Challenges and Solutions Workshop of the Communications in Distributed Systems ’11 conference in Kiel, Germany.

4. Looking Outside: Views on SAIL

The following papers have been accepted or published:

• Bengt Ahlgren, Christian Dannewitz, Claudio Imbrenda, Dirk Kutscher, and Börje Ohlman, “A Survey of Information-Centric Networking”, Dagstuhl Seminar on Information-Centric Networking 2010; Schloss Dagstuhl, Dagstuhl, Germany, Dec. 2010.
• Anders Lindgren, “Efficient content-distribution in a hybrid opportunistic network”, IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference, Las Vegas, NV, USA, Jan. 2011.
• Pedro Aranda, Jorge Carapinha, “Cloud Networking: Implications of Agile Virtualisation on Provider Relationships”, KIVS 2011 Workshop on Challenges and Solutions for Network Virtualization, Kiel, Germany, Mar. 2011.

5. What’s Next: Coming Events

SAIL will be participating in upcoming conferences and workshops:

• IM 2011 – 12th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management, Dublin, Ireland, May 23-27, 2011.
• SIGCOMM 2011, Toronto, Canada, Aug. 15-19, 2011.

Some conferences have paper submission deadlines in the upcoming weeks:

• ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Information-Centric Networking – ICN 2011, Toronto, Canada, Aug. 19, 2011. Deadline: Mar. 18, 2011.
• Future Internet Assembly, Budapest, Hungary, May 17-19, 2011.
• IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications – PIMRC 2011, Toronto, ON, Canada, Sep. 11-14, 2011. Deadline: Mar. 21, 2011.
• International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications, Brest, France, Oct. 3-7, 2011. Deadline: Mar. 31, 2011.
• International Workshop on Mobility Management for Flat Networks, Brest, France, Oct. 3-7, 2011. Deadline: May 15, 2011.

To Probe Further

For more information, go to the project website (http://www.sail-project.eu), or contact SAIL through the contact web page.

Visit also the project blog, http://sail-project.eu/sailorsinn.

You may subscribe to the quarterly newsletters from SAIL by entering your email address in the form below.

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SAIL Project Newsletter, issue #1 – December 2010

Editor: Luis M. Correia

1. Editorial

Welcome to the SAIL project and our very first Newsletter. It is our belief that this quarterly update from our project is going to be something that you look forward to, that stands out in the massive flood of information that cross your way during a typical quarter of a year of work.

The SAIL project is a research project within the European Commission ICT Work Program, targeting The Network of the Future. With a birds-eye view, projects within this call are aiming at “Overcoming structural limitations of the current Internet architecture arising from an increasingly larger set of applications, of devices and edge networks to be supported”.

Now, this got me thinking – who are we to define the networks of our grandchildren?

Can we, even if we are working in the forefront of the evolution, really foresee what the Internet will look like – and how it will be used – 20 years from now? Remember that the first web-browser is less than 20 years old. Since then, we have seen many, at that time unforeseen, usages of the web emerge. The Internet, the web and the cloud will redefine themselves numerous times in the coming two decades.

So I doubt that we can predict all the usage patterns of the future. Nevertheless, I am certain that SAIL will contribute to this future, whatever it may bring. For a starter, we are now doing the work on ‘Scenarios’, describing how our foreseen technical architectures can fit into the industry architectures of tomorrow, and giving you a teaser of what to look forward to in coming Newsletters. Having that said, find a quiet place, lean back and read more about the progress of our project and our journey to come!

Under the Spotlight in this issue is Network of Information, and our work to develop a network architecture and protocols for global scale Information-Centric-Networking – an approach that has recently received considerable attention in the research community and in the industry.

Enjoy your reading!

Thomas Edwall, Project Manager.

2. Under the Spotlight: Focus on WP-B

WP-B (Network of Information – NetInf) work is motivated by recent observations and predictions for exploding capacity needs for mobile video communications, the proliferation of CDN technology for large-scale content distribution, and the growing acceptance for ICN concepts in mainstream applications, such as P2P-based distribution/streaming. WP-B is investigating how ICN concepts, such as name-based routing, receiver-oriented transport, and ubiquitous caching can be employed as cornerstones for a future network architecture.

SAIL is currently analysing technology and business aspects for applying ICN to different scenarios: the Next-Generation Mobile Communication Network scenario is an important scenario with respect to addressing current and future bandwidth demands for content/service distribution in mobile communication networks. The analysis shows that NetInf-based approach can provide significant simplifications and efficiency improvements by integrating support for in-network storage and processing capabilities into network nodes – for content distribution, but also for providing new services.

The NetInf-TV scenario explicitly addresses content-distribution-related requirements for a NetInf infrastructure. Here, we analyse how NetInf can provide CDN-like functionality – without the limitations of current CDN technology. We also analyse how NetInf can enable services in an ISP multiplay environment.

The Developing Regions scenario is focusing on robustness and resilience aspects of the NetInf technology. Here, we analyse how NetInf can help to reduce the digital divide by enabling low-cost, yet robust and reliable communication services that could be offered by a community ISP. The general proposition is that NetInf can provide a better, more robust and efficient, solution to the communication needs of communities in developing regions than the existing Internet protocols. The information-centric approach and the inherent caching features as well as its improved resilience to disruptions make NetInf a good option here.

This analysis is aligned with the overall work in SAIL on socio-economic aspects, and serves for identifying important requirements for the ICN architecture.

Figure 1: Information-centric networking node architecture

The ICN architecture work in SAIL is leveraging results from previous projects, such as 4WARD and PSIRP, and will be based on a set of architecture invariants that enable global interoperability, while providing sufficient room for domain-specific adaptations and experiments.

An important aspect of the ICN work within SAIL is migration from and interworking with existing networks and applications. WP-B is therefore actively contributing to standardisation of related and potential base technologies for ICN, such as the IETF work on access to in-network storage (DECADE) and P2P streaming (P2PSP). SAIL has established links to the ICN research community, and SAIL members are co-organising a Dagstuhl seminar on ICN together with members of the NSF-NDN project.

3. Inside SAIL: News from WPs and Themes

WP-A – Impact and Collaboration Enabling (ICE)

WP-A is called Impact & Collaboration Enabling, a name that reflects well its main missions. Starting with the collaboration part, WP-A is providing the technical coordination between the technical work packages (WP-B, WP-C and WP-D) through the Technical Manager and POET team. It also provides a set of tools and fora that is aimed at stimulating the cross communication between WPs.

WP-A has a task devoted to Migration and Standardisation, which helps the technical WPs to find the appropriate channels for the technical results to find its way into the appropriate standardisation fora. It will also support the overall migration planning for how to get from today’s Internet to a future communication network built from SAIL technology.

The Dissemination task of WPA facilitates publication of results and creates concrete opportunities for spreading SAIL technical ideas through arranging workshops and an in-depth summer school. Details of these events will be available in future newsletters, as well as from the SAIL web site.

Finally, the Socio-Economic task is currently doing a business analysis of the scenarios being developed within SAIL. It also provided two well received contributions to the Socio-Economics of the Network of the Future workshop at the FP7 Concertation meeting in Brussels, on Oct. 18-20, 2010.

WP-B – Network of Information (NetInf)

Under the spotlight in this issue.

WP-C – Open Connectivity Service (OConS)

WP-C focused so far on the description of scenarios and use-cases to be developed and covered by Open Connectivity Services. Several use-cases are considered, including wireless challenged networks, optimised services with heterogeneous content, and cloud and operator services.

To see what are main the drivers for adopting OConS, we are currently analysing these use-cases from a business viewpoint and from each stakeholder’s perspective.

Finally, we have also initiated discussions on the architectural framework and on the required mechanisms to be implemented as Connectivity Services.

WP-D – Cloud Networking (CloNe)

It has been a quick and intensive start for all of the tasks in the Cloud Networking WP. Most of the efforts have currently been put on the definition of the use cases and scenarios. The definition of clear scenarios and use-cases is crucial for the good development of our architecture. The use-cases should demonstrate the benefits of the research we will perform, from either a technical or business perspectives. Many of the use-cases enabled by cloud networking will create new business models.

Two large scenarios are being developed in CloNe. The first one addresses the issues related to the migration of enterprise IT resources to the cloud, and the new possibilities of managing businesses related to the flexibility enabled by it. The second one focuses on the distribution of media content to large audiences in an elastic manner.

In that context, the manageability of the solution and the security levels enabled by it are key questions. That is why both the management and the security tasks have started their work mapping out the technical challenges that will be addressed in the project.

Prototyping and Experimentation Theme

The SAIL consortium stands for compelling, prototype-based evidence that its approach will be a core part of the Network of the Future. To emphasise this, project results shall be demonstrated at industry-relevant events.

The objective in this theme is to ensure the necessary project-wide coordination of prototyping and experimentation activities in order to foster a roadmap for the common demonstration across WPs. The theme will collect and consolidate the project wide principles, guidelines and requirements for prototyping and experimentation.

During the on-going first phase, the theme started working by collecting initial prototyping plans from partners, and will next discuss how to consolidate these views across them. After that, the theme will drive the identification of cross-WP services and interfaces, and harmonise cross-WP platform and development issues in order to ensure effective cooperation.

Security Theme

The objectives of the Theme “Security” are to create a coherent and comprehensive security framework in which the project results can be evaluated regarding common security objectives, enforce coherent security solutions, and to understand potential misuse and remaining deficiencies. Accordingly, each WP has assigned a supporter of this theme. Its role is to maintain relation to the security theme, inform about developments and results such that the progress is harmonised.

At this time, the theme consequently participates in scenario work, depending on the commitments in security related tasks, i.e., more in WP-D, with a separate security task and less in other WPs, where security is encompassed in architectural work or elsewhere. Consequently, members of the WP-D task on security participate in developing scenarios and use cases to identify in more details the security specific challenges on Cloud Networking. Members in WP-B and WP-C elaborate on protection of NetInf and OConS technology components and the prevention of their misuse respectively.

Network Management Theme

The network management theme is defining a coherent overall management architecture based on the decentralized self-management paradigm that will be applied in NetInf, OConS, and CloNe. The theme builds on SAIL’s architectural concept of flash slices as the basic object of management, which designates a flexible and dynamic virtualized portion of an ICT infrastructure combining networking, processing, and storage. Because the management of flash slices is a novel and complex problem, the network management theme is identifying and consolidating the management-related concepts developed in each of the technical work packages in order to achieve a coherent overall solution.

In the first phase, the theme has gathered detailed information of the diverse management landscape in SAIL from a questionnaire, in which first important relations between the work packages’ management tasks could be identified. For example, both cache management and the management of forwarding tables show very similar properties in terms of distribution, embedding, and self-organization, which may lead to synergies and simplifications in the anticipated management architecture. The questionnaire furthermore identified an important relation between the network management theme and the interdomain theme, because interdomain considerations are of great importance as flash slice management will likely extend across multiple administrative domains.

4. Looking Outside: Views on SAIL

SAIL has issued a Press Release by the launching of the project. This Press Release was also translated and launched by several partners in other countries, e.g., Germany, France, Spain and Portugal. With this Press Release, the project has done a first step to its visibility, towards not only the ICT community in particular but also the society in general. Further press releases may be issued, accompanying major public achievements of the project, like public workshops and demonstration events.

The following papers have been accepted or published:

• P. Schoo, V. Fusenig, V. Souza, M. Melo, P. Murray, H. Debar, H. Medhioub and D. Zeghlache, “Challenges for Cloud Networking Security”, MONAMI 2010 – 2nd International ICST Conference on Mobile Networks and Management, Santander, Spain, Sep. 2010.
• D. Kutscher, H. Flinck and H. Karl, “Information-Centric Networking”, 6th GI/ITG KuVS Workshop on Future Internet, Hannover, Germany, Nov. 2010.
• D. Dudkowski, B. Tauhid, G. Nunzi and M. Brunner, “A Prototype for In-Network Management in NaaS-enabled Networks”, IM 2011 – 12th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management, Dublin, Ireland, May 2011.

5. What’s Next: Coming Events

SAIL will be participating in incoming conferences and workshops:

• Information-Centric Networking Dagstuhl Seminar, Dagstuhl, Germany, Dec. 05-08, 2010.
• Future Internet Assembly, Ghent, Belgium, Dec. 16-17, 2010.
• ITG/VDE Workshop on Challenges and Solutions for Network Virtualisation, Kiel, Germany, Mar. 10-12, 2011.
• IM 2011 – 12th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management, Dublin, Ireland, May 23-27, 2011.
• SIGCOMM 2011 Workshop on Information-Centric Networking, Toronto, Canada, Aug. 15-19, 2011.

Some conferences have paper submission deadlines in the incoming weeks:

• Future Network and MobileSummit, Warsaw, Poland, June 15-17, 2011. Deadline: Dec. 10, 2010.
• IWCMC’2011 – 7^th International Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, July 08–11, 2011. Deadline: Dec. 15, 2010.

To Probe Further

For more information, go to the project website (http://www.sail-project.eu), or contact SAIL through the contact web page.

Visit also the project blog, http://sail-project.eu/sailorsinn.