Speaker: Masoud Moshref (USC)
Title: Resource Virtualization for Software-defined Networks
Date/time: 12-1.30pm Wednesday Nov 12 (lunch provided)
Location: COS 402

Abstract: Software defined networking centralizes control plane
functionality, separating it from the data plane which is responsible
for packet forwarding. Many management tasks such as finding heavy
hitters for multi-path routing may run using SDN in a network with
limited resources. However, by abstracting them from resources at
individual switches, a resource manager at the controller can optimize
their resource usage. As management tasks often have a
measurement-control loop, my projects, DREAM and vCRIB, work on
measurement and control tasks, respectively: First, Dream ensures a
minimum user-specified level of accuracy for tasks instead of
allocating a fixed amount of resources to each task. Therefore, it
dynamically allocates resources across tasks in reaction to traffic
dynamics and task dynamics, which allows resource multiplexing. DREAM
is 2x better at the tail of minimum accuracy satisfaction comparing to
current practice even in cases with moderate load. Next, vCRIB
automatically distributes control rules on all switches in the network
giving the abstraction of a centralized rule repository with resources
equal to the combined resources of all switches. vCRIB can find
feasible rule placement with less than 10% traffic overhead in cases
where traffic-optimal rule placement is not feasible with respect to
CPU and memory constraints.

Bio: Masoud Moshref is a 5th year PhD candidate in University of
Southern California. He works on resource virtualization in
Software-Defined Networks in Networked Systems Lab under supervision
of Ramesh Govindan and Minlan Yu. He got MSc and BSc in Information
Technology Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran.