Intelligent Solutions for Virtual Networks

ABSTRACT: The key innovation of this proposal is the development of a powerful virtualization solution that supports agile mission assurance by facilitating automated management of virtual networks and underlying shared substrate. Our comprehensive solution provides virtual networks with the capability to rapidly adapt to new conditions using information such as link metrics, ongoing traffic flows and incoming traffic constrains. Our design applies to a wide range of environments, including dynamic mobile wireless environments such as Tactical Edge. More specifically, our flow management mechanisms, such as dynamic performance-aware channel splitting and migration will support selection of links that best suit preference of incoming and currently active flows. Additional mechanisms such as intelligent virtual router migration facilitate deployment of new virtual routers for purposes of maintenances and horizontal network growth. Our proposed solution relies on simple yet powerful control applications that leverage our enhanced virtual routing tables containing status information about the underlying substrate. Our flow management applications will use this information to support the dynamic performance-aware and preference-aware management of traffic flows. In concert, these mechanisms will provide a comprehensive management solution that will support secure, reliable, mission-oriented communications over virtual networks including connectivity with the nodes at the tactical edge. BENEFIT: Our proposed virtualization techniques address some challenging problems in virtual networks and provide a feasible solution for resource management and allocation in these networks. We expect to produce a mature software tool equipped with the proposed techniques for military, as well as civilian applications. The proposed solution has tremendous application potential for military information systems. The proposed architecture, channel splitting and migration techniques, enhancement of virtual routing table, and virtual router migration technique can be applied to essentially all military networks. Our proposed techniques in virtual network management can also be applied in a wide range of application scenarios. Essentially, any kind of computer network can potentially benefit from our technology. The size of the market is extremely large and may grow rapidly as the world becomes more and more digitalized and connected. As efficient connectivity and communications becomes more critical, we expect that the aggregate market size will be similar to or larger than that of military networks.