Project title: Data Center Network and Application Characterization.

Supervisor name: Dr Andrew Moore or someone with the same level of experience and/or expertise.

PhD enrolment: Y

Objectives: Identify metrics for measurement in data centers and Software defined networking (SDN), e.g. via Openflow, provides a new opportunity to control and extend networks, and has been enabled by such flexible prototypes as the NetFPGA platform. Extending the NetFPGA SDN with measurement primitives will be core to this effort.

Tasks and methodology:

• Acquiring skills in SDN, Openflow and NetFPGA platform. Y1
• Specifying metrics&workloads for monitoring requirements in Data Centers. Y1/Y2
• Performance Evaluation of Capabilities for monitoring based control Y2/Y3.

Results: An extension of the SDN and OpenFLow Architectures to make monitoring a first class component of the system. A performance evaluation of such an architecture in the context of realistic data center workloads and requirements.

Thi task will contribute to identify the requirements for large data set and requirements for processing in relationship with SDN as tool.

This task will also contribute to initial usage of measurements by applications which will provide the definition of mechanisms to use measurement information by applications.

Dissemination: Typically contribute to standards. Publications targeted for IMC, SIGMETRICS and NSDI.

Planned secondment: Narus.

ESR will get the understanding from Narus software that includes real-time traffic intelligence and analytics technologies enables customers to identify and act on anomalous traffic in its network. Secondment might also be possible in Telefonica which is one of the major European operators.