SDN workshop at ICSP 2015

Bryan Ng presented a one day workshop on SDN and its applications at the 10th International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing in Singapore.

Going forward with Google

Bryan Ng and Ian Welch are co-principal

investigators on the grant.

Victoria University has further solidified its place at the forefront of research in one of the most innovative emerging technology areas—Software Defined Networks (SDN).

After the formation of the Software Defined Networks Research Centre in 2014, Victoria’s School of Engineering and Computer Science has gone on to sign a three-year research agreement with Google to embark on work in SDN development, maintenance, and teaching.

Traditionally, networking hardware is manufactured with specific software in mind, but standardising the way that software interacts with hardware allows developers the freedom to go beyond what is provided as standard by networking hardware.

“This means software developers can write programs for their own specific networking needs, and they are less restricted by the specific set-up of the hardware, which is more conducive to innovation,” says senior lecturer Dr Ian Welch.

“The flexibility of SDN technology means network modifications can be made more readily, and system threats dealt with rapidly and effectively. Even better, we can make networks more reliable by applying well-understood techniques from software engineering such as unit testing and formal methods. Overall, this makes for a commercially nimble, cost effective solution because it allows maximisation of the use of bandwidth and is potentially more secure and reliable than existing technologies.”

According to Google’s representative software engineer at Victoria, Josh Bailey, companies such as Google, Facebook or Amazon wouldn’t be in business without the vital role of network engineers.

“SDN is set to revolutionise things further by allowing better management of things such as cloud services, big data, and consumer-interfacing technology, and it provides attractive options for scaling up business operations,” says Mr Bailey.

“This means SDN technology is set to be a growth industry and a serious option for any student considering network engineering.”

The three-year research agreement with Google provides a platform for Victoria to grow its profile in SDN teaching and research, with the hope of bringing more students into this emerging field and partnering with other academic and commercial organisations who want to explore the new field of software defined networking.

ian.welch@ecs.vuw.ac.nz, 04, 463 5664

Building networks

Final year Network Engineering student Alex Deng
working with lecturer Dr Bryan Ng in the
SDN research group's data centre 

If you’ve ever complained about internet speeds in New Zealand, then consider a career in network engineering and be part of the solution!

“The internet is the world’s largest network,” says Bryan Ng, a lecturer in the School of Engineering and Computer Science. “Network engineers are the people who keep it running; they manage the interface between software and hardware to ensure content is delivered seamlessly to the end user.”

Bryan says that in today’s connected world, top-performing companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon simply wouldn’t be in business without networks. As a result, “network engineering is such a growth industry that we simply can’t produce enough graduates to meet demand.”

Part of that growth has seen the emergence of a new networking technology—software-defined networking (SDN)—that is set to revolutionise the way computer networks operate in the future.

“Traditionally, computer hardware is manufactured and delivered to the end user complete with its own software,” Bryan explains. “But network engineers don’t want to be restricted by that anymore; they want to write their own software, and define how their networks operate—hence the term ‘software-defined networking’. By decoupling software from the hardware, network engineers can optimise software to meet their particular requirements, and manufacturers can focus on optimising their hardware. It’s more liberating and encourages innovation.”

Bryan says that one of the biggest benefits of SDN is its ability to respond to system threats faster. “If the software isn’t coupled to the hardware, network engineers can respond to attacks on the fly,” he explains. “They can quickly set a perimeter fence to isolate the threat, observe what’s going on and develop an appropriate response. They don’t have that same level of flexibility when it’s not their own software.”

The School of Engineering and Computer Science currently has a number of SDN research projects being carried out by Master’s, PhD and Honours students.Fourth-year student Alex Deng’s project requires him to implement a simple proof-of-concept system that demonstrates how SDN can improve the handover performance of Victoria University’s wifi network, as users roam from one network to another.

“The original access points weren’t designed for seamless connectivity,” explains Bryan. “Wifi would drop out for 20 or 30 seconds each time users left an access point—meaning they had to log back in again.”

Part of Alex’s research will involve investigating how the operators of mobile networks, such as Spark and Vodafone, deal with ever-increasing volumes of mobile data traffic, and leveraging what they have learned. “Mobile operators are required by law to provide reliable networks, and have invested billions of dollars to achieve the required reliability of service,” says Bryan. “Alex will be looking at how he can use SDN to achieve similar reliability for Victoria’s  wifi network, and provide seamless connectivity for students and staff.”

The idea for the project was developed in collaboration with a local IT firm that sees SDN as part of its future roadmap. “Alex had already been working for the company as part of his engineering practice hours, so it made sense to ask people what they thought would be a meaningful project in an industry sense, and this is what evolved.”

Victoria continues to remain at the forefront of SDN research in Australasia, establishing the SDN Research Centre in 2014 to foster collaboration with industry and academia, and support activities that promote SDN.

Come to our Auckland event at the end of September!

You Buys Your Ticket by Todd (CC BY 2.0)

Exploring new frontiers—software defined networks

The School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University invites network practitioners, students and interested individuals to a seminar on software defined networks (SDNs).

Future generation networking systems are pacing through a paradigm shift in how they are networked, organised, configured, optimised and recovered automatically based on their operating situation. With the emergence of SDN, context awareness and dynamic adaptive services are gaining attention, since they allow automatic configuration of devices and their parameters, systems, services and applications to users’ context change. In addition, context awareness, with the help of software-defined and cognitive systems, allows customisation of networks for better scalability and security.

This two-hour seminar will introduce software defined networking concepts for people new to the field and will also be of interest to anyone thinking of undertaking a Master’s in this area. A number of scholarships are available over the next year through the SDN Research Centre. For more information on the Centre, its areas of research and our researchers, go to www.ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Groups/SDN/

Lunch will be provided following the seminar.

When: 10.30am–12.30pm, Monday 28 September 2015

Where: Victoria University Auckland Office, Level 4, the Chancery, 50 Kitchener Street, Auckland 1010
 
RSVP by Wednesday 23 September  to suzan.hall@vuw.ac.nz with ‘SDN seminar’ in the subject line.

PhD proposal: Formal Representation and Application of Forwarding Table Entries in Software Defined Networking

Mathomatic computer algebra system by Jiri Brozovsky(CC BY 2.0)

Liang Yang is due to present his PhD proposal this coming Wednesday 2nd September 2015 from 11:00am-12:00pm in the Cotton Club (Cotton 350, Cotton Building, School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, Kelburn Parade, Wellington).

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging architecture that decouples the network control and forwarding functions. In SDN, the functionality of static configuration and routing table in a traditional network has been replaced by forwarding table entry (FTE). There is already some initial research on the relation and interaction among different FTEs from the mathematical perspective. However, these research works have not been fully explored, especially in terms of the correlation across multiple tables in multiple nodes. Based on the existing analysis of FTE, a controller cannot have comprehensive understanding of network status and effective management of network resources. To address this challenge, a systematic approach is proposed to analyse and utilise FTE from a networking perspective. This approach reexamines the relation and manipulations among FTEs across multiple tables in multiple nodes and formalises them with the help of logical syntax and formal semantics. Moreover, this representation will be applied and evaluated in two real-world scenarios: to perform large-scale network traffic analysis and to optimise global FTE placement.

Scholarships available to work on Software Defined Networking with us!

The Software Defined Networking Research Centre aims to foster collaboration with industry, academia and individuals as well as promote independent research and development activities promoting Software Defined Networking (SDN). SDN is a new networking technology which greatly improves network programmability and is changing how we design, build and operate networks.

Scholarship opportunities.

We are pleased to be able to offer multiple scholarships for students wanting to begin a full-time, research-focused Master’s degree. Students will carry out research into the application of SDN to improve the reliability, efficiency and security of networks.

The opportunity to take a new approach to networking based upon the application of software engineering techniques means that we are particularly interested in students with backgrounds in one or more of computer networking, electronics, software engineering, programming languages or formal methods.

Topics include performance measurement, traffic classification for quality of service or security, intrusion detection, application of software debugging and visualization techniques to network programmability as well as the application of formal methods to improve the reliability of networks.

More details about potential research topics are listed on our research group’s web page: http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Groups/SDN/

Conditions and Requirements.

Each scholarship consists of domestic tuition fees plus a 1-year stipend of NZ$20,000 to successful applicants. International students, other than those from Australia will be liable to pay the difference between the full international student fee and the domestic fee.

Applicants must be eligible to enrol in a Master’s degree by thesis at Victoria University. In general, this means you have a Computer Science or Engineering (Electronics/Electrical) related honours degree. Please read about this at

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/fgr/policies-and-resources#masters

Next Steps.

You should contact either Dr Ian Welch (ian.welch@ecs,vuw.ac.nz) or Dr Bryan Ng ( bryan.ng@ecs.vuw.ac.nz).

Before continuing with your final application we will provide all candidates with a set of tasks to evaluate their technical competency, programming and writing. Applicants typically have four (4) weeks to complete them. Upon satisfactory completion, we will arrange for a Skype Interview with you. Part of the interview will be centred around the tasks you have completed and the submitted report. Successfully passing these steps will result in an invitation to make a formal application via the Victoria University of Wellington’s Scholarships office.

Five short talks on Software Defined Networking 7th July

We welcome interested people to come and listen to our students progress on their software defined projects.

A series of short 10 minute talks with time at the end of the session for more questions/interaction with students for those in the audience who have time to stay.

Our honours students are at roughly the halfway mark towards the end of their project and will give an update on progress:

(1) Jarrod Bakker (Hons student) -- SDN proactive/reactive firewalls

(2) Alexander Deng (Hons student) -- Handover management and data routing in mobile networks using SDN

(3) Benjamin Riddell (Hons student) -- Handover management and data routing in mobile networks using SDN

We also have talks by two postgraduate students:

(1) Matthew Stevens (ME student) -- Local versus global knowledge in SDN

(2) Liang Yang (PhD student) -- Formalising Flow Table Entries representation for network optimisation.

UPDATE 14th JULY: the slides from the talks are available here as a zip file.