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The lack of high-performance RINA (Recursive InterNetwork Architecture) implementations to date makes it hard to experiment with RINA as an underlay networking fabric solution for different types of networks, and to assess RINA&rsquo, s benefits in practice on scenarios with high traffic loads. High-performance router implementations typically require dedicated hardware support, such as FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) or specialized ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). With the advance of hardware programmability in recent years, new possibilities unfold to prototype novel networking technologies. In particular, the use of the P4 programming language for programmable ASICs holds great promise for developing a RINA router. This paper details the design and part of the implementation of the first P4-based RINA interior router, which reuses the layer management components of the IRATI Linux-based RINA implementation and implements the data-transfer components using a P4 program. We also describe the configuration and testing of our initial deployment scenarios, using ancillary open-source tools such as the P4 reference test software switch (BMv2) or the P4Runtime API.

The lack of high-performance RINA implementations to date makes it hard to experiment with RINA as an underlay networking fabric solution for different types of networks, and to assess RINA's benefits in practice on scenarios with high traffic loads. Typically high performance router implementations require dedicated hardware support, in the form of FPGAs or specialized ASICs. The advance of hardware programmability during the last years have opened new possibilities when it comes to prototyping new networking technologies. In particular, the use of P4 for programmable ASICs holds great promise for developing a RINA router. This paper has carried out the first Proof of Concept (PoC) implementation of a RINA interior router using the P4 language and its associated open-source tools; deploying and testing the development using the P4 reference test software switch (BMv2).

Looking at the ever-increasing amount of heterogeneous distributed applications supported on current data transport networks, it seems evident that best-effort packet delivery falls short to supply their actual needs. Multiple approaches to Quality of Service (QoS) differentiation have been proposed over the years, but their usage has always been hindered by the rigidness of the TCP/IP-based Internet model, which does not even allow for applications to express their QoS needs to the underlying network. In this context, the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) has appeared as a clean-slate network architecture aiming to replace the current Internet based on TCP/IP. RINA provides a well-defined QoS support across layers, with standard means for layers to inform of the different QoS guarantees that they can support. Besides, applications and other processes can express their flow requirements, including different QoS-related measures, like delay and jitter, drop probability or average traffic usage. Greedy end-users, however, tend to request the highest quality for their flows, forcing providers to apply intelligent data rate limitation procedures at the edge of their networks. In this work, we propose a new rate limiting policy that, instead of enforcing limits on a per QoS class basis, imposes limits on several independent QoS dimensions. This offers a flexible traffic control to RINA network providers, while enabling end-users freely managing their leased resources. The performance of the proposed policy is assessed in an experimental RINA network test-bed and its performance compared against other policies, either RINA-specific or adopted from TCP/IP. Results show that the proposed policy achieves an effective traffic control for high QoS traffic classes, while also letting lower QoS classes to take profit of the capacity initially reserved for the former ones when available.

This paper describes multi-operator IPC VPN slices consisting of (a) compute hosts with linux processes at user device, networks and data centers, (b) connectivity with overlay virtual private networks (VPNs) and underlay VPNs with Carrier Ethernet Services, and (c) multi-operator Orchestration. The slice’s overlay network used Recursive Internet Network Architecture (RINA) based Distributed Inter-Process Communication (IPC) Facilities (DIFs) for on-demand association of application End Points. The multi-operator IPC VPN slice has been initially demonstrated as a proof of concept (PoC) at the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Summit 2018, as part of the End-to-End Network Slicing (E2ENS) project group activities. This paper describes the elements and lessons learned in this first PoC demonstration, and discusses additional aspects such as application mobility and orchestrated slice creation that will be demonstrated at the ICIN RINA Workshop live demo.

The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) is a back to basics computer network architecture that offers solutions for current and future networks. This paper presents the Error and Flow Control Protocol (EFCP), the data transfer protocol of RINA, and its first complete implementation. It will be shown that EFCP allows to fulfil both the RINA-required features and the general requirements of a transport protocol. Also, the paper explains how flexible and generic is EFCP to support different operational requirements when it is used in different layers of a RINA network, via the separation of EFCP mechanisms and policies. Finally, the paper discusses IRATI, the RINA implementation for the Linux/OS and presents a number of experiments that illustrate the main features of EFCP design.

MEC or Multi-Access Edge Computing is a network service delivery architecture that enables cloud computing capabilities at the edge of the access network. Realisation of the MEC vision is challenging with current network technologies: service discovery and routing, secure network slicing and distributed mobility management require complex capabilities in the network. This demo features an OMEC use case realised via RINA, the Recursive Network Architecture. RINA provides interesting properties for OMEC, due to its support for multi-homing, mobility and slicing without special protocols, and security as a first class element of the architecture.

Network renumbering in the IP world is a complicated and expensive procedure that has to be carefully planned and executed to avoid routing, security (firewall, ACLs) and transport connection integrity problems. The source of most of these issues is in the lack of a complete naming and addressing architecture in the TCP/IP protocol suite. This paper analyses the issues related to IP networks renumbering, identifying its root causes. Then it looks into how these issues affect renumbering in networks based on RINA, a network architecture with a complete naming scheme. Theoretical analysis backed up by experimentation results indicate that renumbering in RINA networks not only is seamless (can be done without impacting existing flows) but also does not require any special mechanisms.

IRATI is a open source implementation of RINA for OS/Linux systems that allows researchers and innovators to experiment with RINA networks. RINA is a new Internetwork architecture that supports without the need of extra mechanisms mobility, multi-homing and Quality of Service, provides a secure and configurable environment and allows for a seamless adoption. IRATI implements the core RINA protocols and multiple policies to customize such protocols to different environments. Policies can be developed via a Software Development Kit (SDK). IRATI provides an API for applications to natively use RINA IPC services, as well as multiple monitoring utilities and example applications.

With the proliferation of cloud computing and the expected requirements of future Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G network scenarios, more efficient and scalable Data Centers (DCs) will be required, offering very large pools of computational resources and storage capacity cost-effectively. Looking at todays' commercial DCs, they tend to rely on well-defined leaf-spine Data Center Network (DCN) topologies that not only offer low latency and high bisectional bandwidth, but also enhanced reliability against multiple failures. However, routing and forwarding solutions in such DCNs are typically based on IP, thus suffering from its limited routing scalability. In this work, we quantitatively evaluate the benefits that the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) can bring into commercial DCNs. To this goal, we propose rule-based topological routing and forwarding policies tailored to the characteristics of publicly available Google's and Facebook's DCNs. These policies can be programmed in a RINA-enabled environment, enabling fast forwarding decisions in most scenarios with merely neighboring node information. Upon DCN failures, invalid forwarding rules are overwritten by exceptions. Numerical results show that the scalability of our proposal depends on the number of concurrent failures in the DCN rather than its size (e.g., number of nodes/links), dramatically reducing the total amount of routing and forwarding information to be stored at nodes. Furthermore, as routing information is only disseminated upon failures across the DCN, the associated communication cost of our proposals largely outperforms that of the traditional IP-based solutions.

With the increasing usage of cloud computing and dependence on a diverse set of distributed applications, users are reliant on consistent outcomes from a shared infrastructure. This drives the need for improved QoS guarantees for heterogeneous communication requirements over shared networks. The Recursive Inter-Network Architecture (RINA) is a fundamental programmable network architecture that provides a consistent model for supporting QoS across multiple layers. In this work we evaluate the performance outcomes provided by such polyservice RINA networks in conjunction with per-layer ΔQ-based resource allocation policies. ΔQ provides a resource allocation model able to enforce strict statistical limits on the maximum experienced losses and delays through the smart utilization of traffic policing and shaping strategies, together with an analytical pre-dimensioning of buffer thresholds. Our target scenario is a backbone network that prioritizes communications among geographically distributed datacentres using resources shared with best-effort background traffic. Results obtained with the RINASim simulation software show that a ΔQ-enabled RINA network can yield the desired absolute QoS guarantees to the assured traffic classes without negatively impacting the rest, unlike current MPLS-based VPN solutions.