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Special Workshop on Intelligence at the Network EdgeUSENIX

 
Technical Program      Monday, March 20, 2000
8:45 am - 9:00 am   Welcome and administrative details
9:00 am - 11:00 am   Session 1 - QoS at the Edge
SmartBox: An Add-on Solution for Guaranteed QoS [9:00 am]
Bulent Yener, Bell Laboratories
The current trend for providing QoS is toward differentiated services (diffserv) as an alternative to the integrated services (intserv) which is not scalable. However, the diffserv approach falls short of ensuring deterministic guarantees -- in particular for the services that belong to the same class.

This work proposes a hybrid solution based on enhancing the IP routers with a programmable, add-on device called the Smart Box (SboX). The SboX separates and forwards the traffic with deterministic QoS requirements by emulating virtual circuit switching (VCS) on the IP network. However, in contrast with traditional VCS networks, SboX employs class based queuing (CBQ). Although the SboX architecture performs VCS over IP, its operation is totally transparent to the IP based network infrastructure and protocols.

Integrating Active Networking and Commercial Grade Routing Platforms [9:30 am]
R. Jaeger and S. Bhattacharjee University of Maryland; J.K. Hollingsworth, R. Duncan, T. Lavian, and F. Travostino, Nortel
This paper described the implementation of a programmable network service platform built on a Gigabit Ethernet L3 Routing Switch to support the dynamic introduction of application services that can alter packet processing. The Oplet Runtime Environment (ORE) and the JAVA Forwarding (JFWD) API are the two major software components added to the routing switch. This paper describes how existing active networking environments can be ported onto the ORE/JFWD platform and present performance results for dynamically loaded network services on a commercial gigabit routing switch.

Panel: "QoS Provisioning at the Network Edge" [10:00 am]
Michel Burge, Nortel; Rob Jaeger, Chair, University of Maryland; Hilarie Orman, Novell; Jonathan Smith, University of Pennsylvania; John Vicente, Intel;
This panel will address the questions of what level of intelligence at the edge will be sufficient to achieve QoS on the network. Technologies such as programmable and active networks will be explored to determine how they can be used, as intelligent devices are deployed at the edge to provision services or customize underlying mechanisms to enable QoS or resource provisioning.

11:00 am - 11:30 am   Break
11:30 am - 1:00 pm   Session 2 - Addressing at the Edge
RSIP: Address Sharing with End-to-End Security [11:30 am]
Michael Borella, 3Com; Gabriel Montenegro, Sun Microsystems
Realm Specific IP (RSIP) is a new architecture under consideration in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that can potentially alleviate some of the problems associated with the shortage of Ipv4 addresses. It is being positioned as a replacement for Network Address Translation (NAT), because it can support end-to-end security via IPSEC, which NAT cannot. This paper introduces the motivation behind RSIP architecture and provides a basic overview of the RSIP protocol.

Panel: "Internet Addressing at the Edge" [12:00 pm]
Michael Borella, 3Com; Dave Cheriton, Stanford University; Steve Deering, Cisco; Gabriel Montenegro, Chair, Sun Microsystems; Christoph Schuba, Sun Microsystems
The influx of a large number of network embedded devices may have profound implications to the mechanisms and perhaps the architecture of the Internet. In addition, to their sheer numbers, these devices are commonly limited in platform and networking capabilities, and exhibit requirements in terms of automated configuration and availability. Keeping these in mind, is it practical or desirable to retain the availability of end-to-end connections? How are these devices identified and addressed? What are the requirements on the addressing scheme and how are they best met? This panel will explore answers to these questions as well as the tradeoffs of specific technologies which can be deployed at the network edge such as: NAT, RSIP, Ipv6, alternative naming schemes, and TRIAD.

1:00 pm - 2:30 pm   Lunch
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm   Session 3 - Content Caching at the Edge
Proxy Caches Move to Middleware Pillars [2:30 pm]
Hilarie Orman, Gary Tomlinson, and Ron Lee, Novell
Web caching is the foundation for an important class of new application accelerators at the network edge. This is ushering in a new notion of the Internet, who engineers it and how, and it blurs the line between application and communications infrastructure. This trend is likely to continue and it illustrates the mechanisms that will continue transforming the Internet through the next few decades.

Panel: "The Content IS the Network: Trends and Forecasts in Internet Publishing Infrastructure" [3:00 pm]
Peter Danzig, Akamai; Sean O'Malley, Network Appliance; Hilarie Orman, Chair, Novell; Gary Tomlinson Novell; and Lixia Zhang, UCLA
Internet engineering makes data move efficiently from source to destination, but the massive amount of content has changed many of the assumptions. This panel will discuss the new protocols and platforms that move and adapt content as it moves through the Internet.

4:00 pm - 4:30 pm   Break
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm   Session 4 - Why Put Intelligence at the Network Edge?
Open session on Intelligence at the Network Edge
Dan Nessett, 3Com
All workshop attendees will be encouraged to participate in this open mike session which will discuss the question, "Why move intelligence and processing to the network edge?" This is an opportunity for workshop attendees to consolidate information and results from the previous sessions and bring examples of moving intelligence and processing to the network edge. This session explores the following questions:
  • What did we learn at this workshop?
  • What is best done in the core of the network and what is best done at the edge?
  • What trends in networking and distributed system technology will encourage the movement of intelligence and processing to the network edge?
  • What trends will militate against such movement?

 

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