• Information and Communications Magazine
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.18-26
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• 2016

Network and network functions virtualization (NFV) promise a number of attractive benefits and thus have driven mobile network operators to transform their previously static networks to more dynamic and software-defined networks. In this article, we share a mobile network operator's view based on implementation and deployment experiences in the wild during the past few years towards a software-defined 5G core network. More specifically, we present a practical point of view from mobile network operators and elaborate on why some of the virtualization benefits such as total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction are not easily realized as initially intended. Then, we describe 5G visions, services, and their requirements commonly agreed across mobile operators globally. Given the requirements, we then introduce desirable characteristics of 5G mobile core network and its key enabling technologies.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.19-23
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• 2016

The design, management, and operation of network infrastructure have evolved during the last few years, leveraging on innovative technologies and architectures. With such a huge trend, due to the flexibility and significant economic potential of these technologies, software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are emerging as the most critical key enablers. SDN/NFV enhancing the infrastructure agility, thus network operators and service providers are able to program their own network functions (e.g., gateways, routers, load balancers) on vendor independent hardware substrate. They facilitating the design, delivery and operation of network services in a dynamic and scalable manner. In NFV, the management and orchestration (MANO) orchestrates other specific managers such as the virtual infrastructure manager (VIM) and the VNF Manager (VNFM). In this paper, we examine the contents of these NFV MANO systematically and proposes a security system in a virtualized environment.

• KNOM Review
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.1-10
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• 2020

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a key technology of 5G networks that has the advantage of enabling building and operating networks flexibly. However, NFV can complicate network management because it creates numerous virtual resources that should be managed. In NFV environments, service function chaining (SFC) composed of virtual network functions (VNFs) is widely used to apply a series of network functions to traffic. Therefore, it is required to dynamically allocate the right amount of computing resources or instances to SFC for meeting service requirements. In this paper, we propose Deep Q-Networks (DQN)-based auto-scaling to operate the appropriate number of VNF instances in SFC. The proposed approach not only resizes the number of VNF instances in SFC composed of multi-tier architecture but also selects a tier to be scaled in response to dynamic traffic forwarding through SFC.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.1-8
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• 2021

With the rapid growth of intelligent devices and communication technologies, 5G network environment has become more heterogeneous and complex in terms of service management and orchestration. 5G architecture requires supportive technologies to handle the existing challenges for improving the Quality of Service (QoS) and the Quality of Experience (QoE) performances. Among many challenges, traffic steering is one of the key elements which requires critically developing an optimal solution for smart guidance, control, and reliable system. Mobile edge computing (MEC), software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), and deep learning (DL) play essential roles to complementary develop a flexible computation and extensible flow rules management in this potential aspect. In this proposed system, an accurate flow recommendation, a centralized control, and a reliable distributed connectivity based on the inspection of packet condition are provided. With the system deployment, the packet is classified separately and recommended to request from the optimal destination with matched preferences and conditions. To evaluate the proposed scheme outperformance, a network simulator software was used to conduct and capture the end-to-end QoS performance metrics. SDN flow rules installation was experimented to illustrate the post control function corresponding to DL-based output. The intelligent steering for network communication traffic is cooperatively configured in SDN controller and NFV-orchestrator to lead a variety of beneficial factors for improving massive real-time Internet of Things (IoT) performance.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.479-485
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• 2013

Virtualization is a promising approach to consolidating multiple online services onto a smaller number of computing resources. A virtualized server environment allows computing resources to be shared among multiple performance isolated platforms called virtual machines. Through server virtualization software, applications servers are encapsulated into VMs, and deployed with APIs on top generalized pools of CPU and memory resources. Networking and security have been moved to a software abstraction layer that transformed computing, network virtualization. And it paves the way for enterprise to rapidly deploy networking and security for any application by creating the virtual network. Stochastic reward net (SRN) is an extension of stochastic Petri nets which provides compact modeling facilities for system analysis. In this paper, we develop SRN model of network virtualization based on virtual switch. Measures of interest such as switching delay and throughput are considered. These measures are expressed in terms of the expected values of reward rate functions for SRNs. Numerical results are obtained according to the virtual switch capacity and number of active VMs.

• KNOM Review
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.35-45
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• 2018

As Network Slicing functionality gets applied to mobile networking, a mechanism that enables the selection of network slices becomes indispensable. Following the 3GPP Technical Specification for the 5G Architecture, the inclusion of the Network Slice Selection Function (NSSF) in order to leverage the process of slice selection is apparent. However, actual implementation of this network function needs to deal with the dynamic changes of network instances, due to this, a platform that supports the orchestration of Virtual Network Functions (VNF) is required. Our proposed solution include the use of the Central Office Rearchitected as a Data Center (CORD) platform, with the specified profile for mobile networks (M-CORD) that integrates a service orchestrator (XOS) alongside solutions oriented to Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (VNF) and virtual machine management through OpenStack, in order to provide the right ecosystem where our implementation of NSSF can obtain slice information dynamically by relying on synchronization between back-end services and network function instances.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.8
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• pp.3701-3727
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• 2016

Recently Service Function Chaining (SFC) is promising to innovate the network service mode in modern networks. However, a feasible implementation of SFC is still difficult due to the need to achieve functional equivalence with traditional modes without sacrificing performance or increasing network complexity. In this paper, we present a configurable network service chaining (CNSC) mechanism to provide services for network traffics in a flexible and optimal way. Firstly, we formulate the problem of network service chaining and design an effective service chain construction framework based on integrating software-defined networking (SDN) with network functions virtualization (NFV). Then, we model the service path computation problem as an integer liner optimization problem and propose an algorithm named SPCM to cooperatively combine service function instances with a network utility maximum policy. In the procedure of SPCM, we achieve the service node mapping by defining a service capacity matrix for substrate nodes, and work out the optimal link mapping policies with segment routing. Finally, the simulation results indicate that the average request acceptance ratio and resources utilization ratio can reach above 85% and 75% by our SPCM algorithm, respectively. Upon the prototype system, it is demonstrated that CNSC outperforms other approaches and can provide flexible and scalable network services.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.41 no.12
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• pp.1914-1924
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• 2016

In this paper, considering virtualized Evolved Packet Core(vEPC) network for 5G mobile network, we propose architecture for supporting Service Function Chaining(SFC) in 5G mobile network. Using SFC in 5G network, dynamic path configuration and providing network services based on subscriber and traffic information. SFC technology provides logical ordered set of network functions and delivers packet through providing logical path over the physical network. Based on the perspective of 5G core network in distributed manner, we design hierarchical SFC architecture to manage SFC for global path including vEPC and SGi-LAN network, and internal path between virtualized network functions in each cloud. In this paper, we define architecture and call flow for establishing data path using SFC. Finally, we design testbed architecture for real implementation based on open source software.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.41 no.10
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• pp.1290-1300
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• 2016

Recently, various middle box services have been developed and applied to provide network functions to end nodes of the network. Especially, network virtualization is increasingly proceeding by applying the virtualization technologies of cloud computing field to network field, and network platforms for various flexible services are being developed to connect among the virtual network devices. Carrier-grade Network Address Translation (CGNAT) is also one of these flexible network services. This paper designs and implements the DPDK-based CGNAT framework that provides flexibility and maximizes address translation throughput. Our framework achieves 15.5 times higher throughput than the address translation service by Linux kernel.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.497-507
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• 2018

Tactical networks are evolving into an All-IP based network for network centric warfare(NCW). Owing to the flexibility of IP based network, various military data applications including real-time and multi-media services are being integrated in tactical networks. Because each application has diverse Quality-of-service(QoS) requirements, it is crucial to develop a QoS provisioning method for guaranteeing QoS requirements efficiently. Conventionally, differentiated services(DiffServ) have been used to provide a different level of QoS for traffic flows. However, DiffServ is not designed to guarantee a specific requirement of QoS such as delay, loss, and bandwidth. Therefore, it is not suitable for military applications with a tight bound of QoS requirements. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer network virtualization scheme that allocates traffic flows having different QoS requirements to multiple virtual networks, which are constructed to support different QoS policies such as virtual network functions(VNFs), routing, queueing/active queue management(AQM), and physical layer policy. The experiment results indicate that the proposed scheme achieves lower delays and losses through multiple virtual networks having differentiated QoS policies in comparison with conventional networks.