Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Network virtualization offers a powerful way to operate multiple networks, each customized to a specific purpose, at the same time over a shared substrate. One of the key challenges facing the research community is how to better utilize all elements in the network infrastructure by means of reusing a physical or logical resource. To this end, by aggregating multiple resources, network operators and service providers are able to offer a great range of new functionalities and services. The objective of this project is to carry out research activities in the area of network virtualization and develop solutions to help overcome the limitation of the current world-wide Internet architecture. It will explore new virtual network architecture based on a business model that separates between network infrastructure providers, virtual network providers and service providers. From this business model, we expect that new protocols, services, and possibly architectures can be dynamically created with the advantage of sharing a common physical infrastructure. This approach is inline with the vision for the evolution of current networks, agreed by the major players of all sectors. As a result operators shall benefit from reduced OPEX; service providers will gain through easy and unified access to network resources; and end-users will come to appreciate the simplified use of the network infrastructure and services. To achieve the project objectives, the University of Ottawa jointly with École des Technologies Superieure (ETS) and Ericsson Canada will provide the necessary effort to carry out network virtualization research in four main activities: (i) Novel network virtualization architecture, (ii) Resources discovery and allocation, (iii) Control, Management and Performance Monitoring, (iv) Quality of Protection. A proof of concept activity will be developed to demonstrate the value of the research.