[SDS 2020] Latency-Sensitive Web Service Workflows: A Case for a Software-Defined Internet

July 2nd: Today the Seventh International Conference on Software Defined Systems (SDS) went virtual. I had to present my paper "Latency-Sensitive Web Service Workflows: A Case for a Software-Defined Internet" in Paris at this conference. But, due to COVID19, we all uploaded the presentations with audio recordings. The sessions were asynchronous. But the keynotes were live, followed by Q&A. Due to this approach, the conference lasted only one morning 8 am - 1 pm Atlanta time (1 - 6 pm Paris time). The keynotes went on for 8 - 12 followed by an hour-long discussion with all the participants. This additional hour allowed us to network. However, we all noted that it cannot replace the physical networking that we usually have at the SDS conferences.

This is the last paper of my Ph.D. research. My Ph.D. was indeed an interesting 5 years of my life!

Abstract — The Internet, at large, remains under the control of service providers and autonomous systems. The Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing provide an increasing demand and potential for more user control for their web service workflows. Network Softwarization revolutionizes the network landscape in various stages, from building, incrementally deploying, and maintaining the environment. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) are two core tenets of network softwarization. SDN offers a logically centralized control plane by abstracting away the control of the network devices in the data plane. NFV virtualizes dedicated hardware middleboxes and deploys them on top of servers and data centers as network functions. Thus, network softwarization enables efficient management of the system by enhancing its control and improving the reusability of the network services. In this work, we propose our vision for a Software-Defined Internet (SDI) for latency-sensitive web service workflows. SDI extends network softwarization to the Internet-scale, to enable a latency-aware user workflow execution on the Internet.