NetUNIX – A Programmable Network Operating System

Time: Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Type: Seminar Series
Presenter: Marina Thottan, Director at Bell Labs, Nokia
Room/Office: Room 328
Location:
17 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
United States

Department of Electrical Engineering & Yale Institute of Network Science Seminar 

"NetUNIX – A Programmable Network Operating System"

Marina Thottan
Director at Bell Labs, Nokia

Abstract: Driven by the growth of cloud and virtualization technologies, telecom services are under pressure to become increasingly dynamic. Cloud services can be instantiated in a matter of minutes on computing platforms, which can rapidly schedule and allocate virtualized physical resources. A similar flexibility to adapt to dynamic service requests remains a challenge with network resources. Recently, centralized controllers have been deployed in data center networks to adapt network connectivity to computational needs. However, due to the complexity and variety of carrier networking technologies, carrier networks have been slow to move towards centralized control. Telecom carriers are evolving to address this network complexity by pushing for the disaggregation of network elements and the introduction of equipment with more control flexibility.

Carriers require a new control paradigm to benefit from this new flexibility, which extends far beyond today's OpenFlow network controllers. The lack of a global network controller with a consistent network view slows down the development and deployment of the more dynamic network services required by emerging cloud technologies. In this talk, we describe a global network controller designed to function as a network operating system with multi-domain, multi-layer capabilities that will transform carrier-grade telecom services. We define the requirements for a carrier-grade Network Operating System and describe a prototype system (NetUNIX) that can control heterogeneous networks at large scale and can ensure high service reliability.

Bio: Marina Thottan is the Group Leader for the Control Research Group in Nokia Bell Labs. She joined Bell Labs Research in 1999, and has contributed to a wide variety of projects, including Online Gaming, Content Distribution, Routing protocols, Data over Optical networks, High Speed Router Design, Network Management and Anomaly Detection. Most recently she has been leading work on Reliable Software Defined Networks (SDN). She has also made significant contributions to the field of Smart Grid Communication Networks and Analytics. Marina received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rensselaer in 2000.

Hosted by: Professor Leandros Tassiulas

Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 2:00pm
Location: 17 Hillhouse Ave Room 328