Architectures and resource management for WAN cloud networking

云计算服务预计在2012-2016年期间每年增长25% （IDC预测）。事实上，这一增长是IT行业整体增长的5倍，这表明了重大的技术转变。此外，公共云服务是企业支出的重要组成部分，预计到2016年这一支出将达到2070亿美元（gartner的it支出报告）。公共云计算越来越依赖于广域网，因为云资源可以位于离用户相当远的地方。传统互联网有许多限制，为了支持云计算，云支持网络应该更加敏捷和经济有效。网络即服务（NaaS）是一种重要的新型网络范例，可以帮助实现这些云网络目标。虽然NaaS有许多定义，但在本项目中，我们认为NaaS是由虚拟网络运营商（位于云中）提供给用户（主要是企业用户）的服务，目的是管理和优化用户应用程序感知到的WAN性能。特别关注的是延迟、可靠性和安全性。一般来说，NaaS可以与其他云服务结合提供，也可以作为单独的服务提供。思科最近斥资12亿美元收购了中小型企业NaaS领域的领导者Meraki，这一事实证实了NaaS概念的重要性。请注意，虽然NaaS提供了一个可以促进WAN云网络的框架，但它本身并没有解决传统Internet的局限性，而是允许创建构建在Internet之上的更好的体系结构和机制，可以解决几个问题。因此，除了优化当前互联网的NaaS外，研究哪些未来的互联网架构最适合云网络也很重要。

Cloud computing services are expected to grow annually 25% in the period 2012-2016 (IDC forecast). In fact this growth is five times bigger than the overall growth of IT industry, which indicates a major technological shift. Also, public cloud services constitute a significant part of enterprise spending and it is expected that this spending will reach $207 billion by 2016 (Gartners’s IT spending report). Public cloud computing is increasingly relying on WAN networking since the cloud resources can be located quite far from the users. Traditional internet has many limitations and in order to support cloud computing, a cloud support network should be significantly more agile and cost effective. Network as a Service (NaaS) is an important new networking paradigm that can help in achieving these cloud networking objectives. While NaaS has many definitions, in this project we consider NaaS as a service that is offered to users (mostly enterprise users) by a virtual network operator (located in a cloud) in order to manage and optimize WAN performance perceived by the user’s applications. In particular the focus is on latency, reliability and security. In general NaaS can be offered in combination with other cloud services or as a separate service. The importance of NaaS concept is validated by the fact that Cisco recently spent $1.2 billion to acquire Meraki - a leader in NaaS for small and medium companies. Note that while NaaS provides a framework that can facilitate WAN cloud networking it does not solve by itself the limitations of traditional Internet but rather allows creating better architectures and mechanisms build on top of the Internet that can address several issues. Therefore, apart optimization of NaaS for current Internet, it is also important to study which future Internet architectures are fitted best for cloud networking. In this project we propose to develop resource management mechanisms for WAN cloud networking that are based on different NaaS architectures including architectures build on top of future Internet and involving the SDN (Software Defined Networking) concept. These algorithms will be build based on an economic framework that can integrate many objectives of cloud networking. Apart giving solutions for particular NaaS architectures, the objective is to compare the performance to see which NaaS architectures and which future Internet options are most promising for cloud networking. We believe that the project results will be useful in two dimensions. First, the derived models and algorithms for NaaS can help virtual network operators to improve performance of cloud networking. Second, the study of the future Internet options in the context of cloud networking can be useful to decision makers that have a say in the future Internet developments.