Session Abstract

Virtualization has been a common theme in e-Infrastructure for many years: Virtual Circuits, Virtual LANs, Virtual Private Network, and Virtual Machines are just a few prominent examples of this service concept as seen in the networking community. However, this concept has made substantial strides in recent years, and more advanced and comprehensive services are being deployed that bring these independent notions of virtual resources into a common framework for virtualized e-infrastructure.

This session will present three talks.

The first will address the "readiness" factor - is virtualization ready for high performance networks? We will present a Generalized Virtualization Model (GVM) and the GEANT Testbeds Service (GTS) that is implementing this model. GTS, initially conceived to serve the network research community, is being seen now as a mechanism to accelerate the deployment and maturation of new applications and services capabilities.

The second talk of the session will present a virtualization example in SDN switching - work that brings together both virtualization and SDN technologies. This talk will describe a novel approach to virtualized SDN switch fabric. This feature, implemented on the Corsa Technology switch platform, addresses several aspects of inter-domain SDN visibility and control, operational considerations, and virtualization of the fast-path at 100Gbps+.

A third talk will present experimental extensions to the the GTS implementation to implement network function virtualization and function chaining. This work, was developed under student internship at NORDUnet and the University of Glasgow.