Current
SMART NEtworks and ServiceS for 2030 (SMARTNESS)
The SMARTNESS Engineering Research Center aims to advance cutting-edge research in computer networks and digital application services focused on strategic areas where scientific and technological impacts can be achieved towards the year 2030, in collaboration with communities of cloud search and networks. With the deployment of 5G and the 6G vision being developed, the main challenges for SMARTNESS are how to design and operate cloud computing infrastructures and networks with adequate capabilities to leverage the next generation of Internet services and applications. The scope of end-to-end services at the Internet scale is exceptionally broad and requires contributions across multiple disciplines along with large investments in capital and human resources.
SMARTNESS aims to explore well-planned opportunities through an appropriate methodology based on the confluence of Research Strands (RS) designed to successfully impact world-class research and innovation to address challenging use cases. in Internet scenarios for industry and society with a vision horizon for the year 2030.
Funded by FAPESP and Ericsson
Role: Principal Researcher
Period: 2022 – 2032
Design and implementation of an In-network Load-aware Fast Rerouting mechanism
Failures in communication networks affect the quality of the services running on the end-hosts. Although some applications may tolerate a certain delay to resolve the failure, others are highly latency-dependent and need fast solutions for traffic rerouting. Fast Rerouting (FRR) is a mechanism used to quickly reroute traffic upon failures completely in the dataplane. Although there are several works related to FRR, there is no current solution that considers the status of the network to define the backup paths. In this work, we benefit from the In-network computing and programmability to design and implement a mechanism entirely in the dataplane to define backup paths based on the load of the network. The mechanism should be aware of the status of the links in terms of, e.g., end-to-end latency to set the best backup paths. Upon a failure, our solution must fast reroute the traffic to such paths without the control plane help. We will develop the mechanism totally in the dataplane by using P4 and evaluate it using real minimalist scenarios as well as simulations.
Funded by FAPESP
Role: Principal Investigator
Period: 2022 – 2024
Past
Leveraging the Future Internet in Brazil through the Coexistence and Interconnection of Multiple Architectures
The Internet is one of the most important artecfats created by the man. However, the main protocols being used are still the same since long decades ago what have motivated several initiatives to propose the research of new protocols for replacement of the TCP/UDP/IP. Such proposals are known as Future Internet Architectures (FIA) and, among them, we can cite the brazilians ETArch and NovaGenesis (NG). There are dozen of projects in Europe and USA also related to FIA, such as RINA, XIA, and CCNx. Each architecture has its particular purpose and its own set of requirements but all of them try to advance in several aspects related to the current Internet architecture. The integration of all the aspects in a single architecture seems to be difficult and several people ask if such integration is really necessary. Then, we can expect that a set of FIAs could coexist among them and with the current Internet (including IPv6). The purpose of this project is to investigate the use of different architectures coexisting together. The idea is to research the NG, RINA and ETArch by specifying and implementing points of interconnections named Future Internet Exchange Points (FIXPs). The project intends also to implement a multi FIA socket in a point of presence. Finally, a simple application must be developed to test the interconnections among FIAs through the FIBRE testbed and the RNP network.
Funded by FAPESP
Role: Principal Researcher
Period: 2019 – 2021
NECOS – Novel Enablers for Cloud Slicing
The NECOS project addresses the limitations of current cloud computing infrastructures to respond to the demand of new services, as presented in two use-cases, that will drive the whole execution of the project. The first use-case is Telco service provider focussed and is oriented towards the adoption of cloud computing in their large networks. The second use-case is targeting the use of edge clouds to support devices with low computation and storage capacity. The envisaged solution is based on a new concept Lightweight Slice Defined Cloud (LSDC) as an approach that extends the virtualization to all the resources in the involved networks and data centers and provides a uniform management with a high-level of orchestration. The NECOS approach will be manifested in a platform whose main distinguishing features are: 1. The Slice as a Service – a new deployment model. A slice is a grouping of resources managed as a whole and that can accommodate service components, independent of other slices. 2. Embedded algorithms for an optimal allocation of resources to slices in the cloud and networking infrastructure, to respond to the dynamic changes of the various service demands. 3. A management and orchestration approach making use of artificial intelligence techniques in order to tackle with the complexity of large scale virtualized infrastructure environments. 4. Making reality the lightweight principle, in terms of low footprint components deployable on large number of small network and cloud devices at the edges of the network. The NECOS platform will be based on state of the art open software platform, which will be carefully selected, rather than start from scratch. This baseline platform will be enhanced with the management and orchestration algorithms and the APIs that will constitute the research activity of the project. Finally the NECOS platform will be validated, in the context of the two proposed use cases, using the 5TONIC and FIBRE testing frameworks.
Funded by MCTIC and EU
Role: Principal Researcher
Period: 2018 – 2020
Monitoring of physical and virtual resources in cloud computing environments and virtualized infrastructures
After a decade of deployment of cloud computing infrastructures and virtualized networks, either for experimental purposes or for production environments, we have now to face the need for monitoring of these environments. The monitoring consists in actuating in two aspects: monitoring of servers, physicals and virtuals, and monitoring of network devices, also physicals and virtuals. The monitoring of network devices consists in collecting data about the resources usage in terms of ports, flows and aggregated. By collecting these data, it is possible to reroute the flows through different routes then avoiding packets dropping and improving the network efficiency. The monitoring of servers consist in analysing the usage of CPU, RAM and hard disk so that management actions can be taken to balance the load, for example, by migrating virtual machines. The purpose of this project is to design and implement an architecture for managing the resources of virtual and physical network devices and servers in cloud and virtualized network environments in order to apply actions to better use the infrastructure as a whole.
Funded by FAPESP
Role: Principal Investigator
Period: 2016 – 2018
Study and design for Inter-Data Centers communication
The evolution and growth of large data centers developed by service providers for cloud computing has given rise to standardized and proprietary Layer 2 and Layer 3 routing solutions. We have observed that many solutions optimize existing protocols and technologies to be applied in data centers. At the same time, we realize that new approaches have emerged considering the specific characteristics found in these scenarios. Examples of existing solutions include VL2, BCube, SPB, TRILL and more recently the OpenFlow paradigm. All of these approaches, and others that exist, basically focus on solving problems internal to the data center. However, little has been studied about inter-data center communications in the most diverse aspects involved, such as efficient routing, interconnection and transfer of large masses of data.
Funded by CNPq
Role: Principal Investigator
Period: 2013 – 2016
Study and evaluation of network technologies and cloud computing platforms
Recently there has been a change in the way we interact with services and applications. The (still evolving) paradigm of cloud computing provides services and applications over the Internet with the promise of infinite capacity and pay-as-you-go service models. However, this new computing model requires major changes in the network infrastructure and IT systems of providers, as they need a high level of flexibility to be able to effectively manage a greater computing potential for processing applications, services and data storage. This project aims to investigate the cloud computing paradigm from the point of view of network infrastructures and technologies and development and experimentation platforms. The project consists of using OpenFlow and NetFPGAs boards to study, evaluate and propose solutions for cloud computing.
Funded by FAPESP
Role: Principal Investigator
Period: 2011 – 2014
Collaborative Communication: Study and design of a context-aware architecture for mobile applications
The diversity of devices available today makes us realize a growing trend that miniaturization and ubiquity are already part of our everyday life. The Internet, when conceived almost 40 years ago, did not imagine providing the global connectivity of the most differentiated islands of applications and contents spread around the planet. These islands of applications not only access information through the Internet, but are also taking on a life of their own, making communication and interaction increasingly localized. In this sense, the term collaborative communication appears to represent the most varied forms of interaction carried out through the devices available today (PDAs, laptops, smartphones, etc.) in a local scope. Examples of this type of scenario include the interaction of devices to exchange content (songs, movies, files, etc.), peer-to-peer communication and opportunistic communication (sensor and vehicle networks). This project aims to investigate collaborative communication and understand the interoperability aspects of devices, taking into account different applications and their use in real scenarios. It is intended to study the different communication technologies including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and how such technologies can be used to implement collaborative situations. The project also aims to carry out real experiments on the campus of the Federal University of São Carlos, based in Sorocaba, encouraging students of the Computer Science course to invest in the line of research related to collaborative communication.
Funded by CNPq
Role: Principal Investigator
Period: 2009 – 2012