EAGER: Collaborative Research: Enabling Economic Policies in Software-Defined Internet Exchange Points

因特网路由-特别是域间路由-遭受一长串众所周知的问题的困扰，这些问题使得很难创新新型的端到端服务和应用。路由决策由路由器根据用户及其应用程序几乎无法控制的策略在本地做出，导致路由决策未针对用户或其应用程序进行优化。此外，从客户到一系列处理其数据包的提供商的“资金流”是由提供商之间的业务关系（服务级别协议（SLA））决定的，而这些关系的变化非常缓慢。结果之一是，在今天的互联网中，几乎不可能提供具有任何真实的质量可预测性的端到端服务，更不用说保证了。此外，对网络供应商歧视一些供应商的担忧？内容（见网络中立性辩论）增加了另一个复杂性。软件定义网络（SDN）是一种新兴的网络范例，其中通过可编程控制器以各个流的粒度路由数据流量。以比目的地前缀更细的粒度路由流的能力，以及各种利益相关者为其流量表达和实施路由策略的潜力，使得SDN也对域间路由具有吸引力。与此同时，越来越多的供应商之间的连接正在互联网交换点实现。在这种情况下，软件定义的互联网交换点（SDX）已被提出作为一种方式，多个供应商共同控制互联网交换点（IXP）的路由决策。大多数SDX研究都集中在与提供者指定的组合和可能冲突的策略相关的问题上，或者在具有大量流的主要IXP上实现流级策略的可伸缩性问题上。智力优势：虽然SDX拥有巨大的潜力，但它们也面临着相当大的挑战：SDX提供了执行（某些类型的）策略的机制，但它们并不定义策略。确定政策所需的框架是一个开放的研究领域。政策通常来源于供应商之间或供应商与其客户之间建立的经济关系。此外，对SDX本身处的资源的访问和使用（例如，网络容量、处理和存储）要求在提供商和SDX之间建立经济关系。换句话说，SDX充当市场，将其资源销售给提供商（例如，使用链路带宽、处理周期和存储的权利），SDX为提供商提供了一种代表其客户向其他提供商推销其（中转）服务的方式。目前的SDX设计没有考虑这些经济关系，因此忽略了互联网操作的一个关键方面。该项目包括基础研究，旨在为软件定义的互联网交换点设计控制器，可以编程实现端到端（即，域间）路由策略，其与网络实体之间的显式经济关系相关联。更广泛的影响：这项研究的结果有可能对域间路由-这是互联网中网络提供商之间经济互动的核心-如何实现和用于在网络中提供新的服务产生变革性的影响。这项工作的跨学科性质-跨越工程和经济学的界限-在开发技术上合理并可在实践中采用的解决方案方面提出了特别的挑战。这项工作包括教育部分。我们的工作成果将以开源工具包和出版物的形式传播。

Internet routing---particularly inter-domain routing---suffers from a long list of well-known problems that makes it difficult to innovate new types of end-to-end services and applications. Routing decisions are made locally by routers based on policies that users and their applications have little control over, resulting in routing decisions that are not optimized for users or their applications. Moreover, the "money flow," from customers through a sequence of providers that handle their packets, is determined by business relationships (service-level agreements (SLAs)) among providers---which change very slowly. One consequence is that it is virtually impossible in today's Internet to offer an end-to-end service with any real predictability of quality, let alone a guarantee. Moreover, concerns about network providers discriminating against some providers? content (see the net neutrality debate) add another dimension of complexity. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging networking paradigm in which data traffic is routed at the granularity of individual flows by a programmable controller. The ability to route flows at a finer granularity than destination prefixes, and the potential for various stakeholders to express and enforce routing policies for their traffic have made SDN appealing also for inter-domain routing. At the same time, an increasing number of inter-provider connections are being realized at Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). In this context, Software-Defined Internet Exchange Points (SDX) have been proposed as a way for multiple providers to collectively control the routing decisions at Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). Most SDX research has focused on the problems associated with composed and possibly conflicting policies specified by providers or with scalability issues implementing flow-level policies at major IXPs with large numbers of flow. Intellectual Merit: While SDXs hold great potential, they also exhibit considerable challenges: SDXs offer mechanisms to enforce (certain types of) policies, but they do not define policies. The frameworks needed to define policies are an open area of research. Policies are typically derived from economic relationships established between providers, or between providers and their customers. Moreover, access to, and use of, resources at an SDX itself (e.g., network capacity, processing, and storage) requires that an economic relationship be established between a provider and the SDX. In other words, SDXs act as marketplaces, marketing their resources to providers (e.g., the right to use link bandwidth, processing cycles, and storage), and SDXs provide a way for providers to market their (transit) services to other providers on behalf of their customers. Current SDX designs do not consider these economic relationships and thus omit a critical aspect of Internet operation. This project includes fundamental research aimed at the design of controllers for Software-Defined Internet Exchange Points that can be programmed to implement end-to-end (i.e., inter-domain) routing policies that are tied to explicit economic relationships between network entities. Broader Impacts: The results from this research have the potential for a transformative impact on how inter-domain routing---which is at the core of economic interactions between network providers in the Internet---is implemented and used to provide novel services in networks. The interdisciplinary nature of this work---crossing the boundaries of engineering and economics---presents particular challenges in developing solutions that are technically sound and can be adopted in practice. The work involves an education component. Results from our work will be disseminated in the form of open-source toolsets and publications.