All posts by Mosharaf

Recent News

ViNE-Yard has been accepted at INFOCOM’2009

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Just in. Our paper “Virtual Network Embedding with Coordinated Node and Link Mapping”, which presents D-ViNE and R-ViNE algorithms,  has been accepted at INFOCOM’2009. Apparently, I have overtaken myself and will be presenting my first paper in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil next April. :D

Here goes the abstract:

Recently network virtualization has been proposed as a promising way to overcome the current ossification of the Internet by allowing multiple heterogeneous virtual networks (VNs) to coexist on a shared infrastructure. A major challenge in this respect is the VN embedding problem that deals with efficient mapping of virtual nodes and virtual links onto the substrate network resources. Since this problem is known to be NP-hard, previous research has focused on designing heuristic-based algorithms which have clear separation between the node and link mapping phases.

This paper proposes VN embedding algorithms with better coordination between the two phases. We formulate the VN embedding problem as a mixed integer program through substrate network augmentation. We then relax the integer constraints to obtain a linear program, and devise two VN embedding algorithms D-ViNE and R-ViNE using deterministic and randomized rounding techniques, respectively. Simulation experiments show that the proposed algorithms increase the acceptance ratio and the revenue while decreasing the cost incurred by the substrate network in the long run.

You can access a copy of the paper in the publications page along with my other works.

Some stats now: This year Infocom received 1435 papers (after post-submission withdrawals) of which 282 papers were accepted after a thorough review process. Hence the acceptance ratio would be 19.65%.

List of papers accepted into the main conference is available here.

Recent News

I’ve been awarded the ACM CoNEXT’2008 Student Travel Grant

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Yes, you have read the title right. :D Hopefully, my first big conference is going to be CoNEXT’08 instead of IM’09, where I will be presenting a paper. This has come as a pleasant surprise !!! While I tried to make my case to the award committee as strongly as possible, the probability of really winning one is always very low due to the presence of a lot of applicants in such large conferences.

I would like to thank the award committee to give me the opportunity and the sponsors of the conference (Silver supporter Microsoft Research, Bronze supporters CISCO, Thomson, Nokia, CONTENT NoE and Patron IBM Corp.) for making it possible.

Aside from the conference, I am also excited about my first trip to Europe. I will try to cover some more cities apart from Madrid, since a schengen visa allows free movement between a whole bunch of countries.

Recent News

iMark has been accepted at IM’2009

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Our paper “iMark: An Identity Management Framework for Network Virtualization Environment” has been accepted at IM’2009. Hopefully, I will be presenting my first paper at a major conference in New York next June :-D . The abstract of the paper is given below:

In recent years, network virtualization has been propounded as an open and flexible future internetworking paradigm that allows multiple virtual networks (VNs) to coexist on a shared physical substrate. Each VN in a network virtualization environment (NVE) is free to implement its own naming, addressing, routing, and transport mechanisms. While such flexibility allows fast and easy deployment of diversified applications and services, ensuring end-to-end communication and universal connectivity poses a daunting challenge.

This paper advocates that effective and efficient management of heterogeneous identifier spaces is the key to solving the problem of end-to-end connectivity in an NVE. We propose iMark, an identity management framework based on a global identity space, which enables end hosts to communicate with each other within and outside of their own networks through a set of controllers, adapters, and well-placed mappings without sacrificing the autonomy of the concerned VNs. We describe the procedures that manipulate these mappings between different identifier spaces and provide performance evaluation of the proposed framework.

If you are interested, head to my publications page to get the full paper.

The acceptance rate of IM’2009 is approximately 32%.

Recent News

“A Survey of Network Virtualization” is now available as a technical report

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Update: This technical report has been superseded by an updated version published in the Computer Networks journal [LINK].

Finally, our survey on network virtualization is available as a technical report. If the abstract seems interesting (given below), you can download the report from here.

Due to the existence of multiple stakeholders with conflicting goals and policies, alterations to the existing Internet are now limited to simple incremental updates; deployment of any new, radically different technology is next to impossible. To fend off this ossification once and for all, network virtualization has been propounded as a diversifying attribute of the future inter-networking paradigm. By allowing multiple heterogeneous network architectures to cohabit on a shared physical substrate, network virtualization provides flexibility, promotes diversity, and promises security and increased manageability. In this paper, we present a network virtualization model with a set of quintessential design goals, survey the past and the state-of-the-art of network virtualization, and discuss the future challenges that must be addressed to realize a viable network virtualization model.

Since it is quite long (29 pages), here goes a brief summary. This article

  1. puts network virtualization into a historical perspective,
  2. presents a model network virtualization environment,
  3. surveys existing projects that are directly or indirectly related to network virtualization,
  4. summarizes key directions for future exploration.

We have tried our best it to make it informative and useful for the network virtualization research community. But any comment or critique from you will enrich it for sure. Don’t hesitate to grill or greet me. :-D

You should also check out my two presentations based on this survey: “An Introduction to Network Virtualization” and “Network Virtualization: Present and Future”.

On personal level, I have one chapter for my Master’s thesis. w00t !!!

Recent News

eNVy formed !!!

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Last Tuesday our on-going investigation on network virtualization has taken a formal shape after the formation of the eNVy project. For anyone interested, eNVy stands for NV or network virtualization, all credits to Fida. (I think at some point I thought about eNVious, but that’s just me being myself)

Members of eNVy will be working on different aspects of network virtualization, ranging from theoretical foundation to real-life implementation.

Right now eNVy is headed by Prof. Raouf Boutaba, and consists of five members: Constantine, Fida, Muntasir, Nabeel, and I. Hopefully we will be having regular project meetings starting next week.

I will be posting updates in this blog regularly.