Publicado em: 28/01/2014

Dissertação de Mestrado em Redes de Computadores

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL

INSTITUTO DE INFORMÁTICA

PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM COMPUTAÇÃO

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DEFESA DE DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO

Aluno: Wanderson Paim de Jesus

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Lisandro Zambenedetti Granville

Título: Network Programming as a Service: an innovation friendly business model

Linha de Pesquisa: Gerenciamento de Redes

Data: 30/01/2014

Hora: 10h30min

Local: Prédio 43424 – Auditório Prof. Castilho, Instituto de Informática

Banca Examinadora:

Prof. Dr. Elias Procópio Duarte Jr. (UFPR)
Prof. Dr. Cristiano Bonato Both (UFRGS)
Prof. Dr. Alberto Egon Schaeffer Filho (UFRGS)

Presidente da Banca: Prof. Dr. Lisandro Zambenedetti Granville

Resumo:

Computer networks have evolved to accommodate a wide variety of services, such as streaming of high quality videos and delay-sensitive content delivery. These services have increased the demand for features not originally considered in the Internet. Promising to address novel network demands quickly, some researchers proposed Programmable Networks, in which network devices behavior can be changed using applications. Notwithstanding, such behavior might not be a consensus between computer network stakeholders. The emergence of Virtualized Networks overcame this issue by allowing the coexistence of multiple virtual networks over the same physical infrastructure. In order to have isolated virtual networks with customizable behaviors, it was proposed Programmable Virtual Networks (PVN). Faced with this new reality, network administrators are no longer just looking at network devices. They are looking at a system made of virtual devices and applications that define each virtual network behavior. This requires not just new tools and management approaches, over and above that, requires new thinking. PVN deployments are found mostly in shared experimental facilities (also known as testbeds) and Cloud Computing environments. Testbeds are very innovation friendly, but with strong limitations in regards to taking experimental solutions to production. On the other hand, Cloud computing is a great production environment, but has flexibility and innovation restrictions, once network solutions adopted are usually proprietary. Therefore, in this dissertation it is introduced Network Programming as a Service (NPaaS), a novel business model that allows to conduct innovative solutions over production environments. Different from traditional network business model, where end-users are just consumers of network services already available, in NPaaS, end-users are also able to develop and deploy novel network solutions. To support NPaaS, it is proposed a Programmable Virtual Network management platform, named ProViNet. Such platform provides all architectural and technical features necessary to enable NPaaS deployment and management. A qualitative evaluation of the NPaaS business model was performed, and the result was contrasted with some of the current played models. Thus, emphasizing the singularity of NPaaS. In the meanwhile, an experimental evaluation was conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of ProViNet platform. Results have shown that NPaaS represent a promising alternative for virtual network environments with public access, such as public clouds. Moreover, the platform prototype demonstrated the technical feasibility and proved that network applications developed using BPMN, are able to run with acceptable performance rates.

Palavras-chave: Network Virtualization, Network Programmability, Software Defined Networking, Cloud Computing.