Abstraction and control of transport networks

Current transport network has been established that separation of data plane and control plane including distributed signaling for path setup and protection, centralized path computation for planning and traffic engineering, provides significant benefits, but additional network resource virtualization and abstraction mechanisms are also required. By separating network resources and representing resources and topologies via abstracted concepts, it can facilitate the possibility of effective sharing, or slicing, of physical infrastructure into logical network instances corresponding to multiple virtual network topologies, that may be used by specific applications and services. In the presentation of possible technical options in a solution space to achieve the aforementioned goals of network virtualization, we will discuss (i) Control and Interface Models that show alternative control flows and architectures and interfaces; (ii) Computation Models that investigates computational aspects such as accuracy of network resource representation, resource efficiency in mapping from virtual to physical resources, admission control, etc. Also will be discussed evolution perspectives that illustrate how existing infrastructures can be reused where possible in an effort to minimize total cost including the CapEx and OpEx.