© 2006 IBM Corporation Challenges in Service-Oriented Networking Bob Callaway Ph.D Candidate, NC State University Software Engineer, WebSphere Technology.

© 2006 IBM Corporation

Challenges in Service-Oriented Networking

Bob CallawayPh.D Candidate, NC State University Software Engineer, WebSphere Technology Institute, IBM

Authors: Bob Callaway (NCSU & IBM),Dr. Adolfo Rodriguez (IBM & Duke)Dr. Mike Devetsikiotis (NCSU)Jerry Cuomo (IBM)

IEEE GLOBECOM 2006

April 18, 2023 | IBM Software Group

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WebSphere Technology Institute

Challenges in Service-Oriented Networking © 2006 IBM Corporation

Presentation Outline

Viewing the Network as a Service

– Telecommunication vs. Information Services

– The OSI Model (revisited)

– Why Next Generation Networks Should Provide Value Added Services

Overview of Service-Oriented Networking

– Application-Aware Networking

– Active & Overlay Networks

– XML: A Standard for Data Interoperability

– Service-Oriented Architectures

Service-Oriented Networking Functions

– Examples

Conclusions & Future Work

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Telecommunication vs. Information Services

Telecommunication Services

– “the offering of telecommunications for a fee directly to the public, or to such classes of users as to be effectively available to the public, regardless of facilities used”

– Implies the form/content of the information sent/received is not altered by the telecommunication service.

Information Services

– “the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications”

– Consist of value-added services, which are complementary to the telecommunication service

* Definitions from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Telecommunications Act of 1996

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Why Next Generation Networks Should Provide Value Added Services

Economic Reasons

– Telecommunications services are commoditized, have low margins with high investments, and must provide a near-perfect service

– Economic theory states that profit and degree of commoditization are inversely proportional

– Example: POTS

– Local calling (basic voice transport service) is a commodity

– Value added services (long distance, caller ID, voicemail) are where network operators make profits

– Value added services allow providers to differentiate themselves in the marketplace

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Why Next Generation Networks Should Provide Value Added Services(continued)…

Technical Reasons

– We could make smarter routing decisions or more efficiently utilize the network if we understand the information in the network traffic

– Placing value added services in the network allows for significant advantages in service adoption, maintenance, reuse, etc.

– These are goals also addressed by adopting service-oriented architectures

Start to move from:– a “bipolar” model (no intelligence in the network, push all complexity to

the end host)

– to a more hierarchical distributed model (offload value added services that make sense into the network fabric, leave rest at the end host)

This allows for a (potentially price) differentiated choice of network services

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Overview of Service-Oriented Networking

Definition

– Service-Oriented Networking (SON) is an emerging network architecture that gains greater overall IT efficiency by providing intelligent functionality in the network fabric that was previously unavailable or impractical to implement.

Details

– Application awareness in the network fabric is key

– Breaks end-to-end principle of networks (don’t touch the payload)

– Assumes that the network can make “intelligent” decisions based on application data

– Revisits earlier research in application-aware networks

– NGN standards are emerging in this area (TeleManagement Forum, etc)

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The OSI Model (revisited)

Application, Presentation, & Session

Transport

Network

Data Link

Physical Transmit bits over physical medium

Transmit message segments between hosts on one network

Transmit message segments between hosts on different networks

Transmit messages between hosts

Description of Service

Handles business processing, content transformation, middleware function, etc

In End

Hosts

In NetworkFabric

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Previous Application-Aware Networking Research

Active Networks– Attempted to add application layer functionality by executing user-

supplied byte code in “smart” packets in specific active nodes (programmable routers, switches)

– Suffers from issues of security, resource allocation, performance, and cost of deployment

Overlay Networks– Consist of peer nodes that self-organize into a distributed data structure

based on application criteria

– Goals are to alleviate the effects of slow or sporadic deployment of new services in the Internet, and to directly provide application-level functionality that is out-of-scope for the underlying network

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XML: A Standard for Data Interoperability

Until recently, the bulk of application data that traversed the network was built around a wide array of closed and proprietary data specifications

With the introduction and proliferation of XML, an open standard is now widely used for representing application layer data

Open standards for searching (XPath), transforming (XSLT), security (WS-Security), transport (SOAP), etc. all exist today!

Estimated Percentage of XML in Network Traffic

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Service Oriented Architectures

Major Problems in Information Technology– Change is the only constant

– Integration of heterogeneous systems is difficult Definition of SOA

– SOA is an architectural style that encourages the creation of loosely coupled business services

– An SOA solution consists of a composite set of business services that realize an end-to-end business process

Loosely Coupled Services– Represent a reusable business function

– Removes dependencies on implementation specifics through standardized interfaces

– Standardized interfaces enable the flexibility of SOA

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Service-Oriented Networking Functions:Functional Offloading

Offload services into the network fabric that can leverage specialized hardware (cryptographic or XML processing ASIC/FPGA)

In this example, the network offers a value added service of securing SOAP/XML requests and responses inline

In certain situations, the network could provide a full offload of endpoint services (caching stock prices, etc), and would be managed by a caching policy

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Service-Oriented Networking Functions:Service Integration

With an open standard for data representation, we can remove the burden of integration from the end user and place this value added service in the network

In this example, the network appliance provides the ability to transform purchase orders into the format which is preferred by the provider

This could also be a XML Binary or Binary XML mapping as well to support legacy systems

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Service-Oriented Networking Functions:Content-Based Routing

Content-based routing typically involves applying a rule against some part of a service request (header or content) to derive a token as a result.

This token is then used to make a routing decision

In this example, where requests are XML messages, we utilize XPath to extract the appropriate routing token

This value-added service can be used to enable service partitioning

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Conclusions & Future Work

Conclusions

– We believe that SON provides exciting new multidisciplinary research opportunities in service-oriented computing, hardware, software, and networking that could have dramatic effects on the development of emerging network services.

Future Work

– Develop a methodology for deciding what value added services should reside where in the network

– Given a business process, how can one choose an optimal set of services to leverage given cost, performance, SLA constraints

– What are the issues with pricing value added services on a commoditized network fabric?

© 2006 IBM Corporation Challenges in Service-Oriented Networking Bob Callaway Ph.D Candidate, NC State University Software Engineer, WebSphere Technology.

Documents

services overview of

service telecommunication

service adoption

valueadded services

ibm corporation challenges

ibm authors

services long distance

ibm software group slide