On-demand virtual network service for dynamic networks

Recent advances in software and hardware in terms of computing power and storage capabilities and the availability of open source frameworks combined with the emergence of Network Processors motivated much research and development for new router and switch technologies to face the challenges of future Internet services and applications. This thesis was motivated by these advances and by the need for extensible and programmable routers to support dynamic configuration and networking for future generation context aware fixed and wireless networks and services. The initial objective of the thesis has consequently been to conceive an open, extensible and programmable software based router architecture to achieve ubiquitous networking via the dynamic and run time establishment of overlay networks according to situation and user needs. The objective gradually grew into the design of an autonomic router architecture for on demand virtual routing services provisioning. Deploying network services within a router in a dynamic and flexible manner requires open architectures and standard interfaces capable of supporting and controlling new components and packet processing functionality at run time. This is a great challenge when addressing Dynamic Networks, such as Personal Networks, where network dynamics, mobility and adaptation induce important and drastic changes in state and secure networking needs. In order to keep private and secure communications for each Dynamic Network across a shared Networking Infrastructure, our investigation and research objective is to explore how Service Providers can offer "on demand" Virtual Network Services to customers to support their dynamic networks and services. The Virtual Network Service itself is composed of two services: Virtual Routing Link and Virtual Routing Service. The provisioning of the Virtual Routing Services in Provider Edge Routers should be achieved automatically and at run time to support the on demand Virtual Network services. However, traditional edge routers have monolithic architectures that prevent the dynamic and automated deployment of network services at run time. The objective of this work is to conceive an architecture that can enable such automated Virtual Routing Service provisioning in current Provider Edge RoutersEVRY-INT (912282302) / SudocPARIS-BIUSJ-Mathématiques rech (751052111) / SudocSudocFranceF