Search

Thanks to virtualization, network operators are opening their network & IT infrastructure and offering network & IT Cloud services. Soon after this trend spreads within endusers devices, the edge will be able to instantiate virtual resources on-the-fly, share connectivity, computing and storage resources with edge devices or even be integrated as fully part of the infrastructure. In this article, we provide architectural guidelines and depict the typical phases required for enabling this extension at the edge. After having defined the concepts of resource node and domain, we present the Resource Discovery, Domain Orchestration, Resource Federation and Domain Supervision phases. The actions required to fulfill the phases are highlighted. An illustrating example and running proof-of-concept named TANC: Towards Autonomic Network Connectivity is depicted. This demonstration shows how edge resource nodes can firstly be embedded in the network & IT infrastructure, before being dynamically specialized and modelled depending on the instantaneous needs. In particular, software components are dynamically fetched from a component repository. Furthermore, before specialization, the resource nodes cannot be distinguished one from the other, just like a stem cell is firstly generic before becoming a specific cell. Our work is a first step towards the marking out of edge usages, which are currently drastically evolving.

This specification defines extensions to the Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) protocol that allow a mobile access gateway (MAG) to register more than one proxy care-of address (pCoA) with the local mobility anchor (LMA) and to simultaneously establish multiple IP tunnels with the LMA. This capability allows the MAG to utilize all the available access networks to route the mobile node's IP traffic. This document defines the following two new mobility header options: the MAG Multipath Binding option and the MAG Identifier option.

The recent explosion of mobile Internet traffic is accelerating the evolution of mobile network architectures toward flat architectures with all IP backhaul support. IP mobility support protocols are thus required to be adopted in such mobile network architectures. Accordingly, the IETF Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) working group was recently chartered to address such architectural changes with rapidly increasing mobile Internet usages. Unlike existing IP mobility support protocols, DMM protocols being considered at the IETF aim at distributing mobile Internet traffic in an optimal way while not relying on centrally deployed mobility anchors. In this article, we first discuss motivations and requirements of DMM. We then present two different possible approaches: host-based and network-based DMM approaches. Furthermore, comprehensive comparison results are provided. Finally, we discuss challenges in developments of DMM protocols.

In this article new architectures for network- assisted management of vertical handovers are proposed, relying on IP-based protocols, aiming at achieving the most relevant intersystem mobility decision with respect to user satisfaction and operator added value. The key design principle used is ease of deployment, with flexible hierarchical handover decision entities allowing the distribution of the decision process across local and global levels. The decision itself relies on a broad set of parameters at the radio, networking, application, user preferences, and operator policies levels. The advantage of the approach is highlighted in the specific cellular/WLAN scenario, and a proof-of-concept testbed has enabled to validate it. Standardization in this area is currently ongoing in 3GPP, IEEE, and IETF.

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core components of the TCP/IP protocol suite. It has been extensively used for the past three decades (and counting) as the privileged connection-oriented transport mode for many Internet applications, including access to web contents. Nevertheless, experience with TCP can sometimes be rather poor for various reasons which include (but are not limited to) sub-optimized forwarding path capabilities. Because a TCP session can only be established over a single path (by definition), this restriction is not only unable to take into account the dramatic evolution of terminal technologies towards multi-interfaced devices, but also the ability to benefit from several yet potential forwarding paths for the sake of improved Quality of Experience (QoE).

Telecommunications networks are undergoing ma- jor changes so as to meet the requirements of the next gener- ation of users and services, which create a need for a general revised architectural approach rather than a series of local and incremental technology updates. This is especially manifest in mobile broadband wireless access, where a major traffic increase is expected, mostly because of video transmission and cloud-based applications. The installation of a high number of very small cells is foreseen as the only practical way to achieve the demands. However, this would create a struggle on the mobile network operators because of the limited backhaul capacity, the increased energy consumption, and the explosion of signalling. In the FP7 project CROWD, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has been identified as a solution to tame extreme density of wireless networks. Following this paradigm, a novel network architecture accounting for MAC control and Mobility Management has been proposed, being the subject of this paper. TRUE pub

This paper presents the key ideas behind the ICT CROWD (Connectivity management for eneRgy Optimised Wireless Dense networks)project, funded by the European Commission. The project moves from the observation that wireless traffc demand is currently growing exponentially. This growing demand can only be satisfied by increasing the density of points of access and combining different wireless technologies. Mobile network operators have already started to push for denser, heterogeneous deployments; however, current technology needs to steer towards effciency, to avoid unsustainable energy consumption and network performance implosion due to interference. In this context, CROWD promotes a paradigm shift in the future wireless Internet architecture, towards global network cooperation, dynamic network functionality configuration and fine, on demand, capacity tuning. CROWD pursues four key goals: (i) bringing density-proportional capacity where it is needed, (ii) optimising MAC mechanisms operating in very dense deployments by explicitly accounting for density as a resource rather than as an impediment, (iii) enabling traffic-proportional energy consumption, and (iv) guaranteeing mobile user's quality of experience by designing smarter connectivity management solutions. TRUE pub

International audience; Users have at their disposal more and more ter- minals to enjoy multimedia services. However, inter-user in- teractions are limited. Means allowing a user to transfer a running session from one terminal to another already exist, but it is usually impossible for extra terminals, belonging to the same user or not, to retrieve this session, as they have no knowledge about its existence. In this paper, we propose a new framework, wherein a dedicated entity collects session information and redistributes it to identified terminals, from the same user or not, according to criteria, such as the user preferences and the session characteristics. This framework can be applied to IPTV to enable seamless session mobility. We also discuss its implementation in Next Generation Networks.

There is an increasing user demand for multimedia services, which have strong requirements in terms of network resources. Both requirements and network resources may vary during the service lifetime. Therefore an adaptation process is required to permanently make sure service requirements match network capabilities. To this end, we propose an architecture made of two decision entities, namely the Service Manager and the Mobility Manager. The inter-manager interface allows network resource use to be optimized, while providing services with the maximal available QoS, thus maximizing the user experience. We present related algorithms for single- and multi-homed terminals. Finally, the whole architecture was implemented in a testbed, which allows scalable video contents to be simultaneously streamed over multiple heterogeneous network connections.

International audience; There is an increasing user demand for video streaming service. This represents a major challenge for both operators and content providers. Besides maximizing the user satisfaction, they also have other objectives, such as optimizing the network resources utilization or balancing load between the content sources. In order to deal with this multi-objective problem we propose the association of two algorithms. The first one analyzes the environment and deduces the best long-term adaptation strategy. If this algorithm fails to maximize the user satisfaction, then the second one reacts and temporarily adapts the video streaming. A mapping of these algorithms in the IMS architecture is finally discussed.