CHAPTER 1: ELEMENTS OF MODERN

NETWORKING

ITNW 4109 Innovations in Network & Security

Objectives
After studying this chapter, you should be able to
 Present an overview of cloud computing and big data concepts.
 Describe the Internet of Things.
 Present an overview of the major categories of packet traffic including elastic,
inelastic, and real-time traffic.
 Explain the concepts of
 Network Convergence
 Unified Communications
 Quality of Service
 Quality of Experience
Modern Networking
 A number of trends are driving traditional network architecture to modern
networking, which includes
 Cloud computing
 Big data
 Mobile traffic
 Internet of Things (IoT)
Cloud Computing Concepts
 Cloud computing is providing remote access to processing power, storage,
software, or other computing services, often via a web browser or client
application.
 Often, these services are rented from an external company that hosts and
manages them.
 There is an increasingly prominent trend in many organizations to move a
substantial portion or even all IT operations to an Internet-connected
infrastructure known as enterprise cloud computing.
Characteristics of cloud computing
Characteristics of cloud computing
 The National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) defines the 5
essential characteristics of cloud
computing as follows:
 On-demand service:
 Get computing capabilities as needed
automatically
 Broad Network Access
 Services available over the net using
desktop, laptop, PDA, mobile phone
 You can access the cloud from
anywhere
 Resource pooling
 Provider resources pooled to server
multiple clients
 You work with virtual machines that
could be hosted anywhere
 Rapid Elasticity
 Ability to quickly scale in/out service
 You can go from 5 servers to 50 or
from 50 servers to 5
 Measured service
 You pay for what you use
 Control, optimize services based on
metering
Cloud computing
 There has been a dramatic shift by enterprises to both public and private
cloud services.
 The widespread use of public clouds has shifted a significant amount of
what previously had been local traffic onto WANs for many enterprises,
resulting in increased and often very unpredictable loads on enterprise
routers.
 Cloud computing presents challenges for effective and efficient flow of
traffic through networks.
 Chapter 12 and 13 covers the cloud computing in more details.
Big Data
 Big data is an evolving term that describes any voluminous amount of
structured and unstructured data that has the potential to be mined for
information.
 Big Data is a collection of data on such a large scale that standard data
analysis and management tools are not adequate.
 Unstructured data includes documents, e-mail messages, voice-mail messages,
text messages, and social media data.
 In simple terms, big data refers to everything that enables an organization to
create, manipulate, and manage very large data sets (petabytes, exabytes, and
so on) and the facilities in which these are stored.
Big Data Infrastructure Considerations
 The networking environment for big data is complex. The impact of big data on
an enterprise’s networking infrastructure is driven by the so-called three V’s:
 Volume (growing amounts of data)
 Velocity (increasing speed in storing and reading data)
 Variability (growing number of data types and sources)

 More broadly, big data refers to the volume, variety, and velocity of structured
and unstructured data pouring through networks into processors and storage
devices, along with the conversion of such data into business advice for
enterprises.
Big Data Infrastructure Considerations
 The processing of huge data sets (Big data) requires massive parallel
processing on thousands of servers, all of which require a degree of
interconnection to each other.

 Therefore, there is a large and constantly growing demand for network

capacity within the data canter.

 Distributed data centers, data warehouses, and cloud-based storage are

common aspects of today’s big data networks.
Mobile traffic
 Employees are increasingly accessing enterprise network resources via
mobile personal devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and notebooks.
 These devices support sophisticated apps that can consume and generate
image and video traffic, placing new burdens on the enterprise network.
 The heavy use of mobile devices, including personal bring your own
device (BYOD) policies, results in user access to corporate content and
applications from any device anywhere any time.
 This mobile traffic is becoming an increasingly significant fraction of
enterprise network traffic.
Mobile traffic
 Wireless networks impose a broad range of new requirements and
challenges in addition to all the traditional performance, security, and
reliability requirements of wired networks
 Mobile users are continuously generating demands for new services with
high quality and efficient content delivery independent of location
 Network providers must deal with problems related to managing the
available spectrum, implementing handover mechanisms, performing
efficient load balancing, responding to QoS and QoE requirements, and
maintaining security
Internet of Things (IoT)
 The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of things having ability to transfer data over
communication technologies without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer
interaction.

 Thing: With regard to the IoT, this is an object of the physical world (physical things) or
the information world (virtual things), which is capable of being identified and
integrated into communication networks.

 Device: With regard to the IoT, this is a piece of equipment with the mandatory
capabilities of communication and the optional capabilities of sensing, actuation, data
capture, data storage, and data processing.
Internet of Things (IoT)
 The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term that refers to the expanding
interconnection of smart devices, ranging from appliances to tiny
sensors.
 The IoT is primarily driven by deeply embedded devices.
 These devices are low-bandwidth, low-repetition data-capture and low-
bandwidth data-usage appliances that communicate with each other and
provide data via user interfaces.
AAA of IoT
5 Layers of the Internet of Things
1. Sensors and actuators: These are the things. Sensors observe their
environment and report back quantitative measurements of such
variables as temperature, humidity, presence or absence of some
observable, and so on.
Actuators operate on their environment, such as changing a
thermostat setting or operating a valve.
2. Connectivity: A device may connect via either a wireless or wired link
into a network to send collected data to the appropriate data center
(sensor) or receive operational commands from a controller site (actuator).
5 Layers of the Internet of Things
3. Capacity: The network supporting the devices must be able to handle a
potentially huge flow of data.
4. Storage: There needs to be a large storage facility to store and
maintain backups of all the collected data. This is typically a cloud
capability.
5. Data analytics. For large collections of devices, “big data” is generated,
requiring a data analytics capability to process the data flow.
Convergence
 Convergence is the ability to carry voice, video, image and data traffic to
a single network infrastructure.
 Convergence involves moving traffic over networks that were originally
designed to carry data traffic.
 The foundation of this convergence is packet-based transmission using the
Internet Protocol (IP).
 Using IP packets to deliver all varieties of communications traffic,
sometimes referred to as everything over IP, enables the underlying
infrastructure to deliver a wide range of useful applications to business users.
Convergence
 Infrastructure convergence has also occurred for networks that were
designed for voice traffic.
 For example, video, image, text, and data are routinely delivered to
smartphone users over cell phone networks.
 Convergence brings many benefits, including simplified network
management, increased efficiency, and greater flexibility at the application
level.
Convergence
 The following list summarizes three key benefits of IP network convergence:
 Cost savings: A converged network can provide significant reductions in
network administration, maintenance, and operating costs
 Effectiveness: The converged environment has the potential to provide users
with great flexibility, irrespective of where they are. Mobile workers can use
a virtual private network (VPN) to remotely access business applications and
communication services on the corporate network.
 Transformation: Because they are modifiable and interoperable, converged
IP networks can easily adapt to new functions and features.
Unified Communications
 A concept related to network convergence is unified communications
(UC).

 UC focuses on the integration of communication services to one

platform to optimize business processes.

 The integration of real-time enterprise communication services such as

instant messaging, voice (including IP telephony), web and video
conferencing with non-real-time communication services such as unified
messaging (integrated voice mail, e-mail, SMS, and fax).
Unified Communications
 Real time: As fast as required. A real-time system must respond to a signal,
event or request fast enough to satisfy some requirement.

 Real-time traffic: A data flow that must meet real-time requirements, such
as low jitter and low delay.

 As with converged enterprise networks, IP is the cornerstone on which UC

systems are built.
Unified Communications
 Key elements of UC include the following:

1. UC systems typically provide a unified user interface and consistent user

experience across multiple devices and media.

2. UC merges real-time communications services with non-real-time

services and business process applications.
Types of Traffic
 Traffic on the Internet and enterprise networks can be divided into two
broad categories:
 elastic traffic and
 Inelastic traffic.

 A consideration of their differing requirements clarifies the need for an

enhanced networking architecture.
Elastic Traffic
 Elastic traffic is that which can adjust to changes in delay and
throughput across an internet and still meet the needs of its applications.
 This is the traditional type of traffic supported on TCP/IP-based
internets and is the type of traffic for which internets were designed.
 Applications that generate such traffic typically use Transmission Control
Protocol (TCP) or User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as a transport protocol.
 Applications that can be classified as elastic include the common
applications that operate over TCP or UDP, including FTP, SFTP, SMTP,
Telnet, SSH, SNMP, and HTTP, HTTPS.
Inelastic traffic
 Inelastic traffic does not easily adapt to changes in delay and
throughput across an internet.
 A common example of inelastic traffic is real-time traffic.
 Real-time applications are concerned with timing issues as well as packet
loss.
 In most cases, there is a requirement that data be delivered at a constant
rate equal to the sending rate.
 In other cases, a deadline is associated with each block of data, such that
the data are not usable after the deadline has expired.
Quality of Service (QoS)
 Quality of Service (QoS) refers to any technology that manages data
traffic to reduce packet loss, latency and jitter on the network.

 QoS controls and manages network resources by setting priorities for

specific types of data on the network.

 QoS mechanisms ensure that business applications continue to receive the

necessary performance guarantee even though they no longer run on
dedicated hardware, such as when applications are transferred to a cloud.
Quality of Service (QoS)
 The measurable end-to-end  Commonly specified properties
performance properties of a include:
network service, which can be  Throughput
guaranteed in advance by a  Delay
service level agreement (SLA)  Packet jitter
between a user and a service  Error rate
provider, so as to satisfy specific  Packet loss
customer application  Priority
requirements.  Availability
 Security
Quality of Service (QoS)
 The QoS provided by an infrastructure is partially determined by its overall
performance and efficiency.

 However, QoS is also the ability to prioritize specific workloads and

allocate the needed resources to meet required service levels.

 It can offer a powerful way to allocate processor, memory, I/O, and network
traffic resources among applications and virtual guests.

 QoS mechanisms ensure that business applications continue to receive the

necessary performance guarantee.
Quality of Experience (QoE)
 QoE is a subjective measure of performance as reported by the user.
 Unlike QoS, which can be precisely measured, QoE relies on human opinion.
 QoE is important particularly when we deal with multimedia applications and
multimedia content delivery.
 QoS provides measurable, quantitative targets that guide the design and
operation of a network.
 However, QoS processes by themselves are not sufficient in that they do not
take into account the user’s perception of network performance and service
quality
Quality of Experience (QoE)
 QoE augments the traditional QoS by providing information regarding the
delivered services from an end user point of view.
 Categories of factors and features that can be included in QoE are:
 Perceptual: This category encompasses the quality of the sensory aspects
of the user experience.
 Psychological: This category deals with the user’s feeling about the
experience.
 Interactive: This category deals with aspects of an experience related to
the interaction between the user and the application or device.
Acknowledgement : content taken from

Foundations of Modern Networking

SDN, NFV, QoE, IoT, and Cloud
William Stallings
Pearson Education, Inc.