Cabo: Concurrent Architectures are Better than One

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Cabo Concurrent Architectures are Better than One

• Nick Feamster, Georgia TechLixin Gao, UMass
  AmherstJennifer Rexford, Princeton

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Today ISPs Serve Two Roles
Role 1 Infrastructure Providers
Role 2 Service Providers

• Infrastructure providers Maintain routers,
  links, data centers, other physical
  infrastructure
• Service providers Offer services (e.g., layer 3
  VPNs, performance SLAs, etc.) to end users

No single party has control over an end-to-end
path.
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Coupling Causes Problems

• Deployment stalemates Secure routing, multicast,
  etc.
• Focus on incremental deployability cripples us
• Shrinking profits and commoditization ISPs
  cannot enhance end-to-end service
• No single ISP has purview over an entire path

How do you think they're going to get to
customers? Through a broadband pipe.. we have
spent this capital and we have to have a return
there's going to have to be some mechanism for
these people who use these pipes to pay for the
portion they're using. Edward Witacre

• Peering Tiffs End-to-end connectivity is in the
  balance

As of 530 am EDT, October 5th, 2005, Level(3)
terminated peering with Cogent without
causeeven though both Cogent and Level(3)
remained in full compliance We are extending a
special offering to single homed Level 3
customers. Cogent will offer any Level 3
customer, who is single homed to the Level 3
network on the date of this notice, one year of
full Internet transit free of charge at the same
bandwidth currently being supplied by Level 3.
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Proposal Concurrent Architectures are Better
than One (Cabo)

• Infrastructure providers maintain physical
  infrastructure needed to build networks
• Service providers lease slices of physical
  infrastructure from one or more providers

• The business entities that play these two roles
  may be the same in some cases

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Similar Trends in Other Industries

• Commercial aviation
• Infrastructure providers Airports
• Infrastructure Gates, hands and eyes, etc.
• Service providers Airlines

BOS
ORD
SFO
ATL

• Other examples Automobile industry

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The Internet is not a plane.
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Communications Networks, Too!
Two commercial examples

• Packet Fabric share routers at exchange points
• FON resells users wireless Internet connectivity

Broker

• Infrastructure providers Buy upstream
  connectivity, broker access through wireless
• Nomads Users who connect to access points
• Service provider FON as broker

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Application 1 End-to-End Services

• Secure routing protocols
• Multi-provider VPNs
• Paths with end-to-end performance guarantees

Today
Cabo
Competing ISPs with different goals must
coordinate
Single service provider controls end-to-end path
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Application 2 Virtual Co-Location

• Problem ISP/Enterprise wants presence in some
  physical location, but doesnt have equipment
  there.

• Today Backhaul, or L3 VPN from single ISP
• Cabo Lease a slice of anothers routers, links

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Challenge 1 Simultaneous Operation

• Problem Service providers must share
  infrastructure
• Approach Virtualize the infrastructure
• Nodes (lessons from PlanetLab will help)
• Links (previous lessons in QoS?)
• Tomorrows talk on VINI
• Cabo will exploit many of the same functions that
  are needed for VINI
• Cabo philosophy virtualization is the
  architecture

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Challenge 2 Substrate

• Problem Service providers must be able to
  request/create physical infrastructure
• Discovering physical infrastructure
• Decision elements (cf. 4D proposal)
• Creating virtual networks
• Requests to decision elements (initially out of
  band), which name virtual network components
• Instantiating virtual networks
• Challenges include embedding and accounting

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Economic Questions

• Being a service provider a great deal
• Opportunity to add value by creating new services
• Infrastructure providers
• Profit margins may be low
• Back to CLEC/DSL battles?
• Who will become infrastructure providers?

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Partial Wish List

• Router virtualization
• Scheduling of node CPU, link bandwidth, etc.
• Programmable software in each slice
• Service providers will customize
• Support for substrate
• Out-of-band communication
• Accounting features

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Summary

• ISPs are infrastructure service providers ---
  Problematic
• Deployment stalemate
• Commoditization
• Cabo Concurrent Architectures are Better than
  One
• Separate infrastructure from service providers
• Applications
• Multi-provider VPNs, end-to-end services and
  protocols,
• Challenges
• Simultaneous operation
• Bootstrapping

More Information http//www.cc.gatech.edu/feamst
er/papers/cabo.pdf