NaaS: Networks as a Service
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cambridge
Department Name: Computer Science and Technology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Fay D
(2014)
Graph metrics as summary statistics for Approximate Bayesian Computation with application to network model parameter estimation
in Journal of Complex Networks
Galea S
(2017)
EMU: RAPID FPGA PROTOTYPING OF NETWORK SERVICES IN C#
Han Jong Hun
(2016)
Prototyping RISC Based, Reconfigurable Networking Applications in Open Source
in arXiv e-prints
Sultana N
(2016)
Light at the middle of the tunnel
Sultana N.
(2019)
EMU: Rapid prototyping of networking services
in Proceedings of the 2017 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, USENIX ATC 2017
Sultana N.
(2017)
Emu: Rapid Prototyping of Networking Services
Sultana Nik
(2017)
Extending programs with debug-related features, with application to hardware development
in arXiv e-prints
Zilberman N
(2014)
NetFPGA SUME: Toward 100 Gbps as Research Commodity
in IEEE Micro
Zilberman N
(2015)
Reconfigurable Network Systems and Software-Defined Networking
in Proceedings of the IEEE
Zilberman N
(2016)
From photons to big-data applications: terminating terabits.
in Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences
Description | The objective of this research was to explore how the natural structure of computer (datacenter) networks could be exploited to improve the performance of network-centric applications. Our original approach, utilising OCaml as a source language was adapted to capitalise on some internal (Kiwi) work using C#; considerable insight was drawn from the OCaml expertise in house but some of the (3rd party) hardware generation tools were found to be too immature at the time. The project explored how a language source code base could be used as the source to describe hybrid systems; this in turn would permit network-centred designs to be programmatically shared across multiple sub-systems solving the problem that has plagued heterogeneous hardware designs. With heterogeneous hardware in datacenters now becoming common place the momentum gained by the work of this project will continue to serve as an important reference for the future. |
Exploitation Route | Alongside open-source tools and implementations we make widely available, we consider followup projects that attend issues of both performance and a wider suite of datacenter application implementations to be enabled by the work of NaaS to date. Further, we have already had commercial exploitation interest - mostly in the form of enthusiasm for further development of the current prototype ideas. The EMU system also provides the ideal platform for research and development on enhanced network-control functionality and we anticipate exploitation of the EMU system in this way in the future. |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
URL | https://lsds.doc.ic.ac.uk/projects/naas |
Description | Engaging with representatives of industry on the potential for developing the software outputs flIck and EMU into more-widely available products; the NetFPGA platform continues to be the leading project for high-speed networking research and prototype. Our team continues to engage with both the consumers of exotic hardware and the producers of exotic hardware as the challenge of interworking these systems continues to evolve. It has become abundantly clear this research has created / founded an entire discipline of in-network computing. Members current and past of this project team continue to develop and lead this field. |
First Year Of Impact | 2015 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education |
Impact Types | Economic |
Description | ECH2020 INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP (IL) H2020-ICT-2014-1 |
Amount | € 4,294,265 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 09/2014 |
End | 09/2017 |
Description | ECH2020 INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP (IL) H2020-ICT-2014-1 |
Amount | € 6,702,748 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2015 |
End | 01/2018 |
Title | Where Has My Time Gone? Reproduction Environment and Dataset |
Description | A dataset accompanying the PAM 2017 paper "Where Has My Time Gone?". This dataset includes both the scripts used for the measurements, and the results files. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Description | naas |
Organisation | University of Nottingham |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Technical expertise and problem-space knowledge |
Collaborator Contribution | Open Source software |
Impact | Early days. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Title | Emu: Rapid Prototyping of Networking Services |
Description | Emu, a new standard library for an FPGA hardware compiler that enables developers to rapidly create and deploy network functionality. Emu allows for high-performance designs without being bound to particular packet processing paradigms. Utilising the Kiwi toolchain, EMU sees a implementation on the NetFPGA-SUME platform. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | Due to their performance and flexibility, FPGAs are an attractive platform for the execution of network functions. It has been a challenge for a long time though to make FPGA programming accessible to a large audience of developers. An appealing solution is to compile code from a general-purpose language to hardware using high-level synthesis. Unfortunately, current approaches to implement rich network functionality are insufficient because they lack: (i) libraries with abstractions for common network operations and data structures, (ii) bindings to the underlying "substrate" on the FPGA, and (iii) debugging and profiling support. This paper describes Emu, a new standard library for an FPGA hardware compiler that enables developers to rapidly create and deploy network functionality. Emu allows for high-performance designs without being bound to particular packet processing paradigms. Furthermore, it supports running the same programs on CPUs, in Mininet, and on FPGAs, providing a better development environment that includes advanced debugging capabilities. We demonstrate that network functions implemented using Emu have only negligible resource and performance overheads compared with natively-written hardware versions. |
URL | https://github.com/NetFPGA/NetFPGA-SUME-public/wiki/Reference_emu-Contrib-Project |
Title | Open Source Network Tester |
Description | The world's first open-source hardware traffic generator and capture system. OSNT is low cost: it is based on the NetFPGA platform and can be built for less than $2000. OSNT is open source: all the hardware and software designs are freely available for you to use and extend. OSNT works out of the box: it comes with some standard libraries for generating and capturing user-selected packet lenghts at different rates. OSNT is extensible: it is easy to add new features and adapt it to your needs. Our approach has demonstrated lower-cost than comparable commercial systems while achieving similar levels of precision and accuracy; all within an open-source framework extensible with new features to support new applications, while permitting validation and review of the implementation. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2016 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | This system sees wide use in commercial, research, and education scenarios across a number of UK, US and other international organisations. Notable deployments include CERN, Stanford University, Western Digital, NetApp, and Barefoot Networks. The system has seen extensions for a wide range of protocols, and been ported to higher-performance hardware platforms (OSNT-SUME on NetFPGA-SUME). |
URL | http://osnt.org/ |