Going 4WARD 

Newsletter

4WARD
Architecture and Design for the Future Internet

Issue No. 2 Editors: Luis M. Correia and Lars Lundgren

Nov. 2008

Inside this Issue through a tightly coupled design. For example,

1. Editorial
2. On the Spotlight: Focus on WP4
3. Inside 4WARD: News from WPs
4. Looking Outside: Views on 4WARD
5. What’s Next: Incoming Events
1. Editorial
The project 4WARD has concluded its 1st
milestone with good results from all the WPs. We
will further emphasise a coherent architecture
and will work jointly to achieve this. In this
newsletter, we focus on an area that is
"forgotten" in general network design, namely
network management. Having this as inherent
part of the architecture should shorten the lead
times and give substantial cost reductions. We
have been very successful with dissemination
both with our own organised activities and
participating in other events. We are also
congestion control is a function that, even if
implemented inside a Generic Path (WP5), can be
integrated into INM: it can then be queried, e.g.,
for the generation of Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) without the addition of external dedicated
components. Other management functions, like
hop-by-hop testing, are on a different level of
embedding, and can be inherently supported by a
network function. Today, this design approach is
adopted, for example, in certain Ethernet
standards, but its generalisation to upper
network functions can sensibly simplify the
construction of network-wide processes for
service provisioning, as depicted in the figure
below.
User
(activation of INM cap.)

participating in the preparation of Future Internet

Service provisioning

Assembly in Madrid, where 4WARD will

participate in several sessions and lead some of
INM
them.
Henrik Abramowicz Operator

Hardware failures
NetInf storage
Vnet reinstantiation
2. On the Spotlight: …
Objectives and Key 
Focus on WP4 Indicators
WP4 is continuing its effort to introduce self-
management functions through embedded
management capabilities and peer-to-peer
interaction. The new paradigm we are The functionality of the distributed algorithms
developing, called “In-Network Management” developed in WP4 includes real-time monitoring
(INM) will finally provide a self-organising and anomaly detection. A key aspect of such
management plane inside the network that is algorithms is controllability. INM distributed
scalable, adaptive and robust. algorithms can be tuned in real-time to achieve
performance objectives (e.g., resource
WP4 defined a set of architectural elements to consumption). A set of distributed monitoring
support management and network functions algorithms has been developed and evaluated.

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4WARD Newsletter
Examples of this work include a self-stabilising
protocol for estimating the distribution of local
variables across the network, a gossip protocol
for detecting threshold crossings, and an
aggregation protocol that allows controlling
various performance trade-offs at run-time.
The results to date prove that the WP4 is driving
towards promising results to introduce self-
management in the Future Internet. The INM
functions will support operators in reducing
operational costs that today are of major concern
to deploy new services.
3. Inside 4WARD:
News from WPs
WP1
Business Innovation, Regulation & Dissemination
The First BIRD Workshop on “Future Internet
Business Innovation and Regulation Challenges”
was held in Brussels on 2nd October 2008, being
focused on non-technical areas in the context of
Future Internet technologies, regarding clean-
slate technical approaches, and making business
innovations out of them by addressing the driving
forces in an appropriate way. More than 50
participants attended this workshop.
A good mixture was obtained amongst
participants from 4WARD (about 1/3 of the
participants) and external attendees, spreading
from the European regulator to participants from
the US with a GENI/FIND background or from
Japan with involvement in NICT/AKARI.
Speakers from industry on systems providers and
operators, universities and public authorities,
addressed technical as well as non-technical
areas, and discussed about their mutual impact.
Besides presentations from 4WARD participants,
showing the first project results, the workshop
had talks from Rainer Zimmermann (European
Commission), Dipankar Raychaudhuri (WINLAB,
Rutgers University, USA), Roland Honekamp
(European Commission), Daniel Kofman (EuroNF
NoE project), and Andrea Soppera (TRILOGY IP
project).
Finally, in a panel discussion “Network of the
Future: Is there a business for a radically new
approach?”, consensus was achieved that
research on clean-slate approaches is
indispensable for overcoming severe
impediments of the current Internet. These new
concepts, however, might then lead to
evolutionary steps in business migration.
WP2
New Architecture Principles and Concepts
4WARD’s work towards the design of New
Architecture Principles and Models comprises the
www.4ward-project.eu
Issue No. 2, Nov. 2008
specification of an integrated Architecture
Framework that enables the design of customised
interoperable networks as they are envisioned for
the vast variety of existing and upcoming
applications. This first draft of the integrated
Architecture Framework has resulted after the
integration of two approaches:
(i) the Bottom-Up approach, which mainly
focused on the specification of the
functionalities that should be configured
inside a node (according to the defined Node
Architecture and Netlets) in order to meet
specific requirements and, thus, provided a
microscopic view of the network;
(ii) the Top-Down approach, which was mainly
focused on the macroscopic view and on
identification of main tasks inside a network
(in terms of strata), how to sort them, and
how all these functionalities could be
encapsulated in order to provide services to
other networks or third parties.
These two approaches provided complementary
views of the network: the microscopic (specifying
how the functionalities can be efficiently
composed inside a Node) and the macroscopic
(defining the general structuring available in a
network and identifying reference points) ones.
This integrated Architecture Framework provides
a well known set of reference points in order to
allow the modelling and implementation of
multiple business relationships through technical
interfaces. Furthermore, in order to support the
Network Architect in the design and development
of new Network Architectures, WP2 has also
specified a design process that guides through
the different steps to be followed by the Network
Architect. The first draft of this design process
considers 3 phases: (i) Requirements
identification, (ii) Network Architecture Model,
and (iii) Software Architecture Model.
WP3
Network Virtualisation
The current achievements of the provisioning of
virtual networks (VNets) in 4WARD consist of a
design and evaluation of matching, selection and
binding processes to ensure on demand
provisioning of virtual networks. The matching
process is grounded on a conceptual clustering
technique grouping resources depending on
similarity in offered services, characteristics,
properties and functions. Following preliminary
discovery and matching of virtual resources to
the initial virtual network graph request by the
users (service providers or virtual network
operators), virtual network providers split the
graph into sub-graphs and ask infrastructure
providers to return a number of candidate
resources.
A distributed selection algorithm produced by the
VNet Innovation activity in 4WARD can be used
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4WARD Newsletter
by infrastructure providers to select the physical
resources to build the virtual networks needed for
each sub-graph. Infrastructure providers
propose candidate resources to the virtual
network providers, which in turn pick the best
match and request a binding to (or reservation
of) these resources. As of now, the provisioning
framework in 4WARD provides a set of algorithms
to achieve matching and selection of resources to
fulfil virtual networks requests. As the virtual
network providers interact with multiple
infrastructure providers that compose virtual
resources and networks from their physical
resources, the provisioning and management
framework in VNet is currently finalising a third
algorithm to ensure peering between
infrastructure providers. The peering is modelled
as a max-flow problem and solved using
minimum cut approaches. A solution for multiple
(more than 2) infrastructure providers is actively
pursued.
WP4
In Network Management
On the Spotlight in this issue.
WP5
Forwarding and Multiplexing for Generic Paths
WP5 - after converging on an architecture
deliverable - is turning towards technical work
that is intended to demonstrate the benefits that
arise from a restructured communication
paradigm. This restructuring understands all
communication in the Internet, regardless of the
layer or technology, as inter-process
communication (IPC) and identifies functional
blocks that will be developed into some sort of
“design patterns” for protocols. In parallel to the
evolution and refinement of the architecture,
WP5 investigates, for example, the idea of
Network Coding under realistic networking
assumptions (e.g., using different types of
background traffic or for different networking
technologies like PONs - Passive Optical
Networks), bringing known theoretic results
closer to practicability.
This evaluation works shows reasonable benefits
up to doubling the available bandwidth in the
downlink of a PON, and a framework to integrate
such network coding, as well as more general
cooperation techniques into a protocol stack,
specifically one based on generic paths, has been
developed and is currently under evaluation. It
becomes evident that a clever placement of
sources and sinks of communication as it is
possible in peer-to-peer networks drastically
improves the gain of network coding techniques
that exploit the existence of a broadcast channel.
Moreover, first steps towards concrete control
approaches for coding operations in specific
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Issue No. 2, Nov. 2008
technologies have been developed; similar efforts
are underway for routing and mobility.
WP6
Network of Information
WP6 develops a communication architecture,
called NetInf, based on an information-centric
communication paradigm. The information
model distinguishes between information objects,
capturing the semantics of an object, and data
objects, meaning a particular sequence of bytes
independently of semantics. Metadata provide
the relation between information objects and
data objects. The concept of information object
is general enough to also handle real-world
objects as well as services.
A naming scheme for objects is an important part
of the NetInf architecture. After analysing the
partly contradicting goals, we have defined a
flexible naming scheme that has the capability of
handling the varying characteristics of the
different object types. The naming scheme
provides object identification independently of
location. A name resolution process has been
defined with the purpose to resolve object
identifiers into locations where the corresponding
objects can be found.
A first version of guidelines for making the NetInf
architecture self-managing has been developed in
the joint task with WP4. The guidelines indicate
how to design NetInf functionality to make it
inherently self-managing as well as how NetInf
can integrate existing self-managing
functionality. In addition, the joint task has
investigated how NetInf functionality can be used
for information gathering and dissemination for
management purposes.
An overview paper describing NetInf, called
“Design Considerations for a Network of
Information”, is being presented at the ReArch’08
workshop that is held in conjunction with ACM
CoNEXT’2008.
4. Looking Outside:
Views on 4WARD
4WARD has been mentioned in the AKARI
Conceptual Design, which is a Japanese project
organised by NICT. The document is available at
http://akari-project.nict.go.jp/eng/concept-
design/AKARI_fulltext_e_translated_version_1_1.
pdf.
4WARD has participated and contributed to a
number of conferences, e.g.:
• EuroNF workshops in Würzburg, Germany,
and Paris, France;
• PIMRC’2008, in Cannes, France;
• FIREWORKS launch, in Paris, France;
• W-GREEN 2008, in Lapland, Finland;
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• DSOM 2008, in Samos, Greece;
• MACE 2008, in Samos, Greece.
In the near future, presentations will be held at
other conferences, like ReArch'08, and WTC'08
and DANMS'08, which are held in conjunction
with GLOBECOM in New Orleans, USA.
5. What’s Next:
Incoming Events
4WARD has held its 3rd General meeting. It was
held on 21st-23rd October 2008, in Bilbao, Spain,
and was very successful. Almost all of the
4WARD partners were in attendance. The next
General meeting will be held in Lisbon on 27th-
29th January 2009.
We are now announcing FISS’09, the Future
Internet Summer School, organised by 4WARD.
The event will take place on 19th-24th July 2009,
hosted by the University of Bremen, in Bremen,
Germany. The Summer School will feature
courses, labs, invited talks and presentations by
leading experts from European projects and their
partners in the US and Asia.
Among others the following questions will be
addressed concerning the Networks of the
Future:
• How can new network architectures coexist
and interoperate?
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Issue No. 2, Nov. 2008
• How can new business roles support on-
demand networking?
• How will users access information and
services?
• How can a built-in self-management improve
network operations?
• How will networks facilitate the creation of
new mobile applications?
For further information please go to the 4WARD
web site (http://www.4ward-project.eu), or go to
the FISS'09 homepage
(https://www.comnets.uni-
bremen.de/typo3site/index.php?id=101).
4WARD will participate in the Networking Session
organised by France Telecom for the ICT 2008
Conference on the 27th November 2008. Other
projects will also participate, i.e., eMobility,
SENSEI and PSIRP. For more information, go to
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/i
ct/2008/index_en.htm.
Final Notice
For more information, go to the project website
(http://www.4ward-project.eu), or contact via
email at 4ward-contact@verkstad.net.
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