Neto-App: A Network Orchestration Application for Centralized Network Management in Small Business Networks

Abstract

Software-defined networking (SDN) is reshaping the networking paradigm. Previous research shows that SDN has advantages over traditional networks because it separates the control and data plane, leading to greater flexibility through network automation and programmability. Small business networks require flexibility, like service provider networks, to scale, deploy, and self-heal network infrastructure that comprises of cloud operating systems, virtual machines, containers, vendor networking equipment, and virtual network functions (VNFs); however, as SDN evolves in industry, there has been limited research to develop an SDN architecture to fulfil the requirements of small business networks. This research proposes a network architecture that can abstract, orchestrate, and scale configurations based on small business network requirements. Our results show that the proposed architecture provides enhanced network management and operations when combined with the network orchestration application (NetO-App) developed in this research. The NetO-App orchestrates network policies, automates configuration changes, and manages internal and external communication between the campus networking infrastructure.While SDN can be difficult to define, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) defines an SDN architecture as a networking model that is directly and programmatically configured, decouples the network control functions from the forwarding functions, logically centralizes the control, and is open standards-based and vendor-neutral [3]. In a small business networking environment, the infrastructure incorporates both SDN and traditional devices and must use an architecture that can flexibly manage both traditional and SDN domains [13].Traditional network engineering relies on device configuration via the command line interface (CLI) and does not scale to meet the complexity of multi-vendor SDN/traditional networks in small businesses. Programmability of traditional devices is cumbersome because they lack open, programmable interfaces, which prohibits developers from programming the network in the most efficient method [21,22]. Furthermore, integrating SDN and traditional networks is difficult due to the disparities between how they function: traditional networks operate with the help of MAC address tables and routing tables, whereas SDN with OpenFlow uses flow entries in flow tables. These disparities need a different methodology to integrate as a system, and research indicates that only a limited number of tools can handle these problems efficiently [23].Network automation reduces the manual effort required for completing routine tasks and decreases the amount of human error caused by traditional, manual CLI configurations. Starting with scripting and progressing to intelligent network control and efficient translation and deployment of network plans and policies, network automation is a key tool to facilitate traditional network management and operations. While using information from configuration files and deploying routin...

Trend-Based Networking Driven by Big Data Telemetry for Sdn and Traditional Networks

“…Big data telemetry defined as the robust collection of enormous quantities of network data and its aggregation onto one centralized big data analytics platform for analysis, which is the key decision driver of the architecture designed for the system presented in this paper. Furthermore, there are previous efforts aimed at providing a solution for a network topology that includes both traditional and software-defined networking (SDN) topologies [13,15]. Additionally, network engineering practices face a major challenge of network optimization in this hybrid network scenario [8,16].…”

“…This vast global adoption led to a shift in paradigm from manageable quantities of network data to a massive volume of traffic. Automation and orchestration applications such as virtual load balancers have become critical to cloud and data center control systems [2,13,15].…”

VIVoNet: Visually-Represented, Intent-Based, Voice-Assisted Networking

“…Simplified network management has been one of the primary motivations behind innovations in networking, starting from efforts in active networking in mid -90s, to the For CES working group in the early 2000s, with SDN and OpenFlow emerging in late 2000s [1]. The centralized control plane with a global view of the network allows the administrator to manage the network from a single entity [33]. And the decoupling of the control and forwarding planes makes various network management tasks such as automation, configuration management, and traffic engineering less challenging [34].…”

Micro-Economic Benefits of Peer-Producing Containerized Network Functions

“…Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) promises lower operational costs for network service providers by offering automated elasticity, software and hardware independence, virtualized software infrastructure, service agility, and operating model changes (Valencia, Izzo, & Polonsky, 2015;Gedia & Perigo, 2018b, 2018cGandotra & Perigo, 2018). With the advent of NFV, the industries are able to eliminate the microeconomic factors associated with vendor proprietaries such as transaction costs and asset (physical and human) specificity to deal with vendor vulnerabilities in contractual relationships.…”