Cabernet: Connectivity Architecture for Better Network Services

Abstract:

Deploying and managing distributed network services is exceptionally challenging, even for existing providers that have a large installed base of equipment. On one hand, a network provider can offer services over its own network, albeit with a relatively small geographic footprint. On the other hand, despite having servers at many locations, a service provider must rely on an underlying network that provides only besteffort packet delivery. In this paper, we propose Cabernet (Connectivity Architecture for Better Network Services), a three-layer network architecture that lowers the barrier for deploying wide-area services. We introduce the connectivity layer, which uses virtual links purchased from infrastructure providers to run virtual networks with the necessary geographic footprint, reliability and performance for the service providers. As an example, we present a cost-effective way to support IPTV delivery through wide-area IP multicast that runs on top of a reliable virtual network.