[At the recent highly acclaimed Terena networking conference
in Iceland there were several significant steps forward to move to “federated”
R&E networks in Europe.
Federated R&E networks is considered by many to
be the new Internet architecture not only for the R&E community, but for
the Internet as a whole. With federated networks there is far less hierarchical
structure of campus, regional, national and pan national networks. Instead
universities, regional networks and even individual university departments
establish their own network connections to Open Internet Exchange Points (OIXs)
and more traditional IXs and peer directly with each other. These networks can then interconnect to commercial Clouds and Content
Deliver Networks (CDNs) as well wireless partners at the OIX and/or IX. Some national and pan-national R&E
networks still see federated networks as a threat to their existence as local institutions
or regional networks can bypass their backbone and thereby undermines their
current business model. But the role of R&E networks is not to insure their
permanent existence, but instead make sure that the needs of the research and
education community are addressed first and foremost, even if that means surrendering
their traditional role as national aggregators.
Forward looking national and pan-national R&E networks have started
to realize that this is the future direction for their network architecture and
are now focusing on Net+ services in terms of their core service delivery.
I am pleased to see that both Internet 2 with OpenFlow and
now GEANT in their recent partnership with OpenNaaS have taken a step forward
in the direction of supporting federated networks. ESnet as well is doing some
very interesting work with OpenFLow in the last mile of regional networks. OpenNaaS allows institutions or regional
networks to create their own virtual IP network. It was built upon the foundations
of Canada’s User Controlled LightPaths (UCLP) and the concept of Articulated
Private Networks (APNs). The original
proposition of UCLP and now OpenNaaS is to allow end users or institutions
construct their own networks with their own independent forwarding, management
and control planes. These end user controlled networks interconnect with each
other at OIXs. Sadly in Canada, UCLP
development has largely ground to a halt as the major development centers for
UCLP and Software Defined Networks (SDN) - Communications Research Center and CANARIE
have largely discontinued further work in these areas. UCLP is also the foundation for the GreenStar
network.
There still remains many outstanding issues with respect to
the deployment of federated networks in terms of issues that all regional
networks or institutions have direct access to an OIX and need a backhaul
facility. Who pays for these circuits and how they are managed remains a significant
issue. Policy and Governance of OIXs are
still being debated in various forums as for example GLIF. – BSA]
Further reading
GLIF paper on Open Internet Exchanges
GEANT and OpenNaaS announcement
NORDUent OIX in London
Federated POPs in Europe
ESnent Openflow for last mile end to end networking
UCLP
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.
email:
Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog:
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro