An Architecture for Externally Controllable Virtual Networks and Its Evaluation on NYNET

Abstract : The goal of this work was to develop a communication architecture that allows the creation of a virtual enterprise network for a geographically distributed corporation that is made up of a private high-speed backbone and islands of private component networks connected using a public broadband infrastructure. The management and control system of the enterprise network is, as far as possible independent of the characteristics of the underlying public network services and it guarantees quality of service and survivability end-to-end. It allows reconfiguration of the virtual enterprise network during operational time in response to external conditions through dynamic bandwidth allocation on different network control layers, which operate on different time scales. A key idea in the proposed architecture is the enhancement of external control through the use of the Virtual Path Group concept in the construction of the virtual enterprise network. The results of this effort are directly applicable to the extension of the Global Grid backbone into theaters of operations. Validation of the design was based on network emulation, which included executing the behavior of the network components and their interactions under the control of a parallel simulation kernel running on a high-performance computer. The architecture was implemented on a network emulator on two supercomputers located at the Cornell Supercomputer Center. The emulation system was interactively controlled by and visualized on an Open GL-based graphics workstation at Columbia University that was connected to Cornell over high-speed NYNET links. A set of performance management capabilities was also realized for this service, including quality of service management, virtual path management, and priority management.