软件定义网络中应用与网络合作的资源分配模型及机制研究

现今的互联网中，网络与应用之间没有合适的接口来实现状态信息的相互交流。随着应用种类的增加，以及应用对网络资源的需求越来越复杂，这种缺乏交流的资源分配模式越来越不能满足要求。软件定义网络的出现有望改变这一现状。软件定义网络的北向接口可以成为应用和网络之间交流状态信息和控制命令的合适平台。但是，开放的北向接口也会给资源分配问题带来新的挑战。为应对这些挑战，本项目将“网络与应用合作的资源分配”作为核心理念，提出新的资源分配控制模型，以博弈论和优化理论为建模工具，探索各个决策实体之间的互动关系。并在此基础上着重解决资源分配决策过程中的稳定性、最佳性、复杂性等关键科学问题。本项目将以混合式软件交换网络和数据中心网络为研究案例，发展具体的资源分配方法，验证所提出模型的有效性。此外，本项目还将搭建适当规模的实验网络，为相关机制和机理提供研究和验证的平台。

Today’s Internet does not feature a direct information exchange between applications and the network. Due to the varying requirements of the heterogeneous applications running top of the network, this may result in a poor user-perceived quality of applications. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) provides a promising solution to this situation. By opening the northbound interface of SDN to applications, there are chances for sharing dynamic status information between applications and the network, which could be beneficial for both network resource management and application control. However, this could be a double-edged sword. For example, Each network-aware application tries to maximize their quality based on the available resources, but may also behave egoistically trying to supersede competing traffic. In this circumstance, giving authority of network resource allocation to applications could be a disaster. To address these issues, we argue that cooperative resource allocation between network and applications could be the way out. Based on this argument, we present novel control models for network resource allocation. In these models, we take all the decision-making entities, such as SDN controller and application controllers, into account. Using game theory and optimization theory, we can capture the interaction among these entities, predict the decisions been made, and analyze the optimality, stability, and the complexity of the decision-making process. Guided by the insights gained in these models, we look more deeply into two specific use cases, the hybrid SDN and the Data-Center networks, which can be used as typical examples of integrated control of applications and the network. Besides all the theoretic effort mentioned above, we plan to implement an appropriate experiment platform to evaluate the effects and performance of the control models.