Utilizing ICN/CCN for Service and VM Migration Support in
Virtualized LTE Systems
Morteza Karimzadeh, Triadimas Satria and Georgios Karagiannis
Department of Computer Science and the Electrical Engineering, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Keywords: Virtualized LTE, Service Migration, VM Migration, Service Continuity, ICN/CCN.
Abstract: One of the most important concepts used in mobile networks, like LTE (Long Term Evolution) is service
continuity. A mobile user moving from one network to another network should not lose an on-going service.
In cloud-based (virtualized) LTE systems, services are hosted on Virtual Machines (VMs) that can be moved
and migrated across multiple networks to such locations where these services can be well delivered to
mobile users. The migration of the (1) VMs and (2) the services running on such VMs, should happen in
such a way that the disruption of an on-going service is minimized. In this paper we argue that a technology
that can efficiently be used for supporting service and VM migration is the ICN/CCN (Information Centric
Networking / Content Centric Networking) technology.
1 INTRODUCTION
Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the fourth generation
(4G) technology, which is standardized by the 3rd
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). It is capable
of providing high data rates as well as support of
high-speed mobility. LTE features low latency in
both the control plane and the user plane, which
creates new opportunities for real-time applications
such as video surveillance, telemedicine, and
distance learning. In the LTE system two main
network parts can be identified which are called
Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network
(e-UTRAN) and the Evolved Packet Core (EPC).
The e-UTRAN consists of base stations denoted as
Evolved Node-Bs (eNodeBs). The EPC is composed
of several network elements. The main important
ones are the Serving Gateway (S-GW), the Packet
Data Network Gateway (P-GW) and the Mobility
Management Entity (MME). The P-GW, that is the
main mobility EPC anchor point, connects the EPC
to other external networks. The S-GW supports the
transport of the user data between the User
Equipment (UE) and the external networks. The
MME is the control node that processes the mobility
management signalling (i.e. handover) between the
UE and the EPC. Even though LTE promises a
faster and more efficient data network, its
architecture is still highly centralized, thus it may
lead to very high bandwidth requirements on core
network equipments. Long communication paths
between users and servers can increase delay and
waste network resources. The Mobile Cloud
Networking (MCN) project (EU FP7 MCN, 2013),
as one of the EU FP7 projects, integrates the use of
cloud computing concepts in LTE mobile networks.
This is accomplished with the objective of
increasing LTE’s performance by building a shared
distributed LTE mobile network that can: (1)
optimize the utilization of computation, storage and
networking resources, (2) minimize communication
delays, (3) avoid bottlenecks, and (4) enable
multiple network operators to create their own
virtual network depending on their requirements and
goals, while using a common physical infrastructure.
The integration of cloud computing concepts in an
LTE system, see (EU FP7 MCN, 2013), can be
realized by: (1) extending the cloud computing
concept beyond the typical (macro) data centers
towards new smaller (micro) data centers that are
distributed within the Radio Access Network (e.g.,
e-UTRAN) and the Mobile Core Network (e.g.,
EPC), see Figure 1, and (2) deploying and running
cloud-based (virtualized) Radio Access Networks,
denoted as RAN as a Service (RANaaS), and Mobile
Core Networks, defined as EPC as a Service
(EPCaaS). This trend is also in line with the
emerging ETSI activities in Network Functions
Virtualization (NFV).
633
Karimzadeh M., Satria T. and Karagiannis G..
Utilizing ICN/CCN for Service and VM Migration Support in Virtualized LTE Systems.
DOI: 10.5220/0004945606330638
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER-2014), pages 633-638
ISBN: 978-989-758-019-2
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
Service continuity is a critical issue in mobile
networks implying access to the requested services
without disruption, while the user moves from one
network to another.
MobileEndUser
Radio
Access
Network
DataCenter
FutureMobil eCloudNetworking
Core
Network
CurrentCloudComputing
XaaS
XaaS
Figure 1: A view of future LTE mobile cellular network.
As illustrated in Figure 2, in cloud based mobile
cellular network systems services are hosted on VMs
that may migrate across multiple physical networks
(i.e. datacentres) with the aim of better service
delivery. A service could be a content delivery or
content generation and manipulation service. The
migration of VMs and the services running on such
VMs should occur in such a way that the disruption
of an on-going service is minimized.
Distributed
Cloud
AccesstoMobile
CloudService
Servicecontinuity
UserMoving
DistributedVirtualizedEPC
DataCenterA
DataCenterB
SeamlessServiceMigration
S/P‐GW
SeamlessVM/FunctionMigration
Virtualized
CoreNetwork
Virtualized
RadioNetwork
S/P‐GW
Figure 2: Service continuity in the virtualized LTE system.
A service continuity solution should be able to
support the migration of services, implying the
support for:
IP Address Continuity: When a user moves to
another sub-network, the application will not
observe the change of the IP address.
Session Continuity: It is a combination of IP
address continuity and service context migration.
Service context migration occurs when a user
moves to a new location and the service context
used by the function in the previous location
should be able to be migrated and used by the
same function at the new location.
Content Continuity: Refers to migration and
delivery of the requested content from a location
close to the mobile user. The requested content
can be migrated and delivered from a location
close to a mobile user.
Storage Continuity: Storage should be able to
migrate to a new location close to the mobile
user.
Function Continuity: The same function in a
new location can be run using context used by
the same function in the previous location.
Function migration needs to be supported in
order to maintain function continuity.
Several technologies can be considered as possible
candidates for the support of service and VM
migration in virtualized LTE systems. For example,
live VM migration solutions have been proposed in
the literature, see e.g., (Mandal et al., 2013), but
none of these can be used efficiently to support the
service continuity requirements listed above.
Moreover, in this paper we argue that the best
candidate technology that can efficiently be used for
the support of service and VM migration in
virtualized LTE systems is the Information Centric
Networking/Content Centric Networking (ICN/
CCN). In particular, this paper answers the following
research question:
“Can the ICN/CCN technology be used
efficiently for the support of service and VM
migration in the virtualized LTE?”
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2
provides an overview of the ICN/CCN concept and
explains how it could be exploited to support service
continuity in virtualized LTE systems. Section 3,
briefly introduces other possible candidate
technologies and compares them with the ICN/CCN
approach. Section 4 explains by using an example
how the ICN/CCN concept can be applied in the
virtualized LTE system. Moreover, Sections 3 and 4
are answering the research question listed above.
Finally, Section 5 concludes the article and provides
recommendations for future work.
2 ICN/CCN
ICN is an Internet architecture approach based on
Named Data Objects (NDOs), see e.g., (Ahlgren et
al., 2012), (Pentikousis et al., 2013). It changes the
focal point of the network architecture from the "end
host" to "information" (content or data). The ICN
architecture leverages in-network storage for
caching, multiparty communication through
replication, and interaction models decoupling
senders and receivers (Koponen et al., 2007). The
NDO, such as web page, video, document, or other
kind of information, is independent of the location,
the storage method, the application program, and the
CLOSER2014-4thInternationalConferenceonCloudComputingandServicesScience
634
transportation method. A unique name for each
NDO is required in ICN in order to identify objects
independently of their locations. Information about
the source of an object is also useful to associate
with the name. ICN has an API, which is used, as an
interface for publishing or getting NDOs. By using
the ICN API, a producer can publish NDOs to the
Internet and a consumer can get them from internet.
Advantages of the ICN approach could be
summarized as follows (Koponen et al., 2007):
The ICN approach offers scalable and cost-
effective content distribution as it leverages in-
network caching, so that requests for NDOs can
be served by any network node holding a copy of
the requested NDOs.
It benefits from persistent and unique naming of
NDOs, and also a service model that decouples
senders and receivers, so that it does not have a
problem with name-object binding.
The ICN approach has an interesting security
model. It provides name-data integrity and
original verification of NDOs, independently of
the immediate source. Hence, it enables
ubiquitous caching with retained name-data
integrity and authenticity.
The ICN approach supports IP address continuity
and multi-homing. A mobile client just needs to
send requests for NDOs to a new access and the
requests will be served by a network node that
might be different from the previous network
node.
The ICN approach provides better reliability and
performance compared to the current networks
since it leverages optimized hop-by-hop
transport and in-network caching.
Currently there are several ICN approaches that have
been developed, such as Data-Oriented Network
Architecture (DONA) (Koponen et al., 2007),
Content-Centric Networking (CCN) (Jacobson et al,
2009), Publish-Subscribe Internet Routing Paradigm
(PSIRP) (Fotiou et al., 2012), Network of
Information (NetInf) (Dannewitz et al., 2013) and
Translating Relaying Internet Architecture
integrating Active Directories (TRIAD) (Gritter and
Cheriton, 2000). These ICN approaches undergo the
lack of efficient support of session and function
continuity. However, the Service-Centric
Networking (SCN) (Braun et al., 2011) concept,
which is a new ICN based concept is able to support
session and function continuity. SCN is a new
networking paradigm for the future Internet, in
which routing and forwarding are based on service
identifiers. SCN is an extension of CCN, see Section
2.1, which is designed based on an object-oriented
approach, in which the contents and the services are
considered as objects. In SCN, the content not only
can be retrieved but also can be processed before
being delivered to users. In SCN, services are
represented as functions to be invoked by users. By
using an object-oriented approach, both functions
and data are integrated into objects. In SCN, clients
can request for both services and contents by using
object names.
2.1 CCN Concept
The transport protocol used in CCN (Jacobson et al.,
2009) is called CCNx that is used to distribute
information related to the location of NDOs
published on nodes. There are two types of CCNx
messages, namely the Interest message, which
contains the request for an NDO and the Data
message, which contains the response for an Interest
message.
a. Interest message processing b. Data forwarding
Figure 3: CCN protocol Overview.
The CCNx protocol, see Figure 3, operates based
on three main data structures as follows:
Content Store (CS): CS represents a buffer
memory used for data retrieval by prefix match
lookup on names.
Forwarding Information Base (FIB): FIB
contains a list of entries with interfaces to where
the Interest messages should be forwarded. Each
entry in the FIB may point to multiple interfaces
to where the Interest messages could be
forwarded.
Pending Interest Table (PIT): PIT is used to
keep track of Interest messages forwarded
upstream. It contains information of sources of
unsatisfied Interests. Each entry in the PIT may
point to multiple sources.
Start
Receive a Interest
message
Exist in
Content Store?
Exist in PIT?
Exist in FIB?
End
Send data through
the arrival face
Add the arrival face to
the existing PIT entry
Add a new PIT entry
Send the Interest through
the outgoing face
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
UtilizingICN/CCNforServiceandVMMigrationSupportinVirtualizedLTESystems
635
3 MOTIVATION: WHY ICN/CCN
SHOULD BE USED FOR
SERVICE AND VM
MIGRATION SUPPORT IN
VIRTUALIZED LTE SYSTEMS
This section introduces other possible candidate
technologies for service and VM migration support
and analyses and compares them with the ICN/CCN
approach in order to verify whether they can be
applied in a virtualised LTE system.
3.1 Mobile Content Distribution
Networks (M-CDN)
The deployment and distribution of cache servers in
the Internet, enables the distribution of load in
serving the increasing number of requests of content,
such as web content, video content or software.
Current caching products can be deployed solely
outside a mobile operator’s network, such as the
solutions offered by Akamai (Nygren et al., 2010),
or close to/at the mobile operator’s gateways that
support mobility anchor functionality. The aim of
M-CDN, see e.g., (Saroiu et al., 2002), is to integrate
cache servers with the mobile operator’s core
network or even with its access and backhaul
network in order to move these cache servers, as
content sources, closer to mobile users.
3.2 Software-Defined Networking
(SDN)
Open Networking Foundation (ONF) defined SDN
as an emerging network architecture where network
control is decoupled from forwarding and is directly
programmable (
ONF, April 2012). The SDN
architecture supports network virtualization since the
underlying network infrastructure can be abstracted
from the applications and network services. It
provides a new dynamic network architecture, which
changes traditional network platforms into rich
service-delivery platforms. In practice, SDN refers
more broadly to logically centralized software
control. The network appears to the applications and
policy engines as a single logical switch since the
network intelligence that maintains a global view of
the network is logically centralized in software-
based SDN controllers.
3.3 Host Identity Protocol (HIP)
HIP introduces a new layer between the network and
transport layers, which maps the host identifiers to
network addresses and vice versa (Moskowitz and
Nikander, 2006). In the HIP architecture, the end-
point names and locators, which are both
represented by IP addresses in the current Internet
architecture, are separated. IP addresses will act as
locators, while the host identifiers take the role of
end-point identifiers. The existence of Host Identity
Layer ensures that the transport layer connections
are no more bound to IP addresses, so that if the
location of a host changes, the connections will not
have to be broken.
3.4 SCTP with Dynamic Address
Reconfiguration Extension
T. Dreibholz in (Dreibholz et al., 2003) proposed a
new scheme for mobility management for IP-based
networks relying on a transport protocol called
Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), with
the extension for dynamic address reconfiguration,
and the Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) protocol
suite. The proposed solution is transparent to
application, and does not require changes in the
network infrastructure. SCTP, specified in IETF
RFC 4960, is a transport protocol that provides a
more flexible data delivery by separating reliable
transfer of messages between endpoints from the
actual delivery to the user process. It supports multi-
homed endpoints with more than one IP address, so
that it provides an improved network-level fault
tolerance.
3.5 Proxy Mobile Ipv6 (PMIpv6)
PMIPv6 is a network-based mobility management
protocol (Gundavelli et al., 2008) based on the
Mobile IPv6 concept, specified in IETF RFC 3775,
which is designed to provide mobility management
support to a mobile node without requiring
participation of the mobile node in any IP mobility
related signalling. There are two core functional
entities in PMIPv6 used to track movements of
mobile nodes and initiate the mobility signalling and
set up the required routing state, namely Local
Mobility Anchor (LMA) and Mobile Access
Gateway (MAG). The LMA is the topological
anchor point for the mobile node’s home network
prefixes used to maintain a reachability state of the
mobile node, while the MAG is the entity used to
perform mobility management for the node attached
to its access link.
CLOSER2014-4thInternationalConferenceonCloudComputingandServicesScience
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3.6 Identifier-Locator Network
Protocol (ILNP)
Randall Atkinson in (Atkinson et al., 2009) proposed
the ILNP, a naming architecture which addresses
issues of mobility, multi-homing, and end-to-end IP
security. It evolves the naming in the Internet by
splitting an address into two different entities, as
Identifier (I) used for end-to-end identity and
Locator (L) used for routing and forwarding packets.
It provides an integrated solution to the issues
mentioned above without changing the core routing
architecture, while offering incremental deploy-
ability through backward compatibility with IPv6.
3.7 Analysis and Comparison
To support service continuity in virtualised LTE
systems, the selected technology needs to support
requirements, such as IP address continuity, session
continuity, content continuity, storage continuity and
function continuity, see Section 1. Table 1 analyses
and compares ICN/CCN with other candidate
technologies that were briefly described in the
previous subsections, taking into account the
requirements listed in Section 1.
Table 1: The list of solutions and their ability in
supporting service continuity (S: Supported, NS: Not
Supported).
Solutions /
Approaches
IP Address
Continuity
Session
Continuity
Content
Continuity
Storage
Continuity
Function
Continuity
ICN
S S S S S
M-CDN
S S S S NS
SDN
S S S S S
HIP
S NS NS NS NS
SCTP
S NS NS NS NS
PMIPv6
S NS NS NS NS
ILNP
S NS NS NS NS
Based on the analysis and comparison given in
Table 1, it can be deduced that the ICN/CCN and
SDN solutions can satisfy all requirements for
service continuity. This also implies that the
ICN/CCN technology is a promising candidate that
can efficiently be used for the support of service and
VM migration in the virtualized LTE system. The
proposed ICN/CCN approach could also offer
reliable, scalable and cost-effective content
distribution by leveraging in-network caching. This
solution may be integrated with the SDN approach,
by utilizing OpenFlow switches in order to provide a
dynamic network architecture that fosters network
virtualization and can improve network scalability,
manageability and agility. The centralized network
state in the control layer provides simplicity and
flexibility for network designers and network
operators to configure and improve their networks
using automated SDN programs. However, the
deployment of SDN requires significant changes on
the existing network infrastructure.
4 EXAMPLE OF INTEGRATING
ICN/CCN IN A VIRTUALIZED
LTE SYSTEM
This section provides an example on how the
ICN/CCN concept can be applied in a virtualized
LTE system. As shown in Figure 4, the assumption
in this architecture is that the eNodeBs, S-GWs and
P-GWs are CCN capable (i.e., able to support the
CCNx protocol) and that the routers deployed in the
infrastructure used to interconnect the RAN and
EPC components are non CCN capable.
Furthermore, it is also considered that the
Content Delivery Network (CDN) engine/ repository
is CCN capable and could provide the requested
content/data to the CCN infrastructure faster than the
main server that stores the content. Utilizing the
CDN repository could effectively accelerate the
content delivery to users and reduce bandwidth
consumption in the network.
In this figure Virtualization Controlling Platform
(VCP) represents the cloud components, which carry
out the signalling and configuration of the
virtualized LTE elements (e.g., eNodeBs, S-GWs
and P-GWs) in order to support service continuity,
see (EU FP7 MCN, 2013).
It is also considered that UEs are CCN capable,
meaning that they are able to generate, send and
receive the Interest and Data messages.
IProuters
S‐GW+CCN
eNodeB+CCN
eNodeB+CCN
Movi ng
Handovering
P‐GW+CCN
Int er net
Content
Server(CCN)
CDNEngine
VCP
Figure 1: Integrating ICN/CCN in LTE system.
When a UE that uses both a service and a
virtualized CCN process hosted on a (source) data
centre, moves towards another (destination) data
centre hostsing another virtualised CCN process, the
UtilizingICN/CCNforServiceandVMMigrationSupportinVirtualizedLTESystems
637
ICN/CCN approach can be used to migrate the on-
going service from the source data centre to the new
destination data centre. The ICN/CCN approach can
also be used to migrate a VM running on the source
data centre to the new destination data centre. The
latter can be accomplished by enabling the
destination data centre to request an on-going VM
from the source data centre, by using one or more
Interest messages.
5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
WORK
By analyzing and comparing different technologies,
this paper argued and verified that the ICN/CCN
technology is a promising candidate that can
efficiently be used for the support of service and VM
migration in the virtualized LTE system.
In order to further validate this statement, the use
of the ICN/CCN technology for the support of
service and VM migration in the virtualized LTE
system will be prototyped and evaluated within the
context of the EU FP7 project (EU FP7 MCN,
2013).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is accomplished in the context of the EU
FP7 Mobile Cloud Networking (MCN) project.
Therefore, we would like to acknowledge the
European Commission, since the MCN project is an
EC funded Integrated Project under the 7th RTD
Framework Programme, FP7-ICT-2011-8-grant
agreement number 318109.
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