SWFAN 2016 - 1st International INFOCOM Workshop on Software-Driven Flexible and Agile Networking

The NFV/SDN paradigms promote the deployment of Network Functions (NF) as software components into cloud infrastructures, and the identification of relevant abstractions for their configuration, control and management. Such NFs can comprise processing elements in the data plane (e.g., packet inspection, filtering, flow-level monitoring, or access control) as well as control-plane components (e.g., signaling, routing, dynamic load balancing). This paradigm shift essentially enables new cloud service models, i.e., NF-as-a-service (NFaaS), which can lead to significant operational and technology investment cost savings for service providers. Beyond that, telecom operators can greatly benefit from NFV/SDN, considering the increasing trend to implement mobile communication network functions in software.
NFV/SDN orchestration can satisfy the evolving requirements of service and infrastructure providers with respect to the resource constraints, dynamic network conditions and service environments. Virtualized NFs should be deployed, located, scaled, and orchestrated in a holistic manner to realize novel services, through exposing their configurations using standardized interfaces, whereas SDN can provide a flexible network plane along these lines. Furthermore, the integration of protocol and application/service processing creates opportunities for enhancing the performance of cloud applications and services when accessed by mobile users.
In this respect, SWFAN aims at bringing together researchers, engineers, and practitioners to discuss challenging aspects of NFV/SDN orchestration, such as the elastic provisioning of computing, storage, and network resources for NF deployment and scaling in the cloud, the development of new models, protocols, algorithms, and abstractions for more flexible and agile network control, management and operation, as well as NFaaS negotiation, contracting, billing, and SLA management.
Topics of Interest
We solicit submissions of previously unpublished work on the following topics of interest (but not limited to):
Resource allocation for NF consolidation in clouds
Algorithms and methods for network service embedding
Interoperability among cloud providers for network service embedding
Abstractions and techniques for network service reconfiguration and scaling
Service chaining for policy enforcement
Architectures and interfaces for NF configuration and control
NF verification, systematic testing, fault management, protection
NF migration and state management
SDN for network service deployment
New models, protocols, and abstractions for flexible and agile network operations
Design and implementation of NF stores
NFaaS negotiation and contracting
Resource pricing and billing for NFaaS
SLAs for NFaaS
Mobile Edge Computing
Applications of NFV in cellular and mobile networks
Experiences from NFV/SDN deployments in production networks