Design and Implementation of a Unified Network Information Service

A holistic view of the network is key to the successful operation of many distributed, cloud-based, and service-oriented computing architectures. Supporting network-aware applications and application-driven networks requires a detailed representation of network resources, including multi-layer topologies, associated measurement data, and in-the-network service location and availability information. The rapid development of increasingly configurable and dynamic networks has increased the demand for information services that can accurately and efficiently store and expose the state of the network. This work introduces our Unified Network Information Service (UNIS), designed to represent physical and virtual networks and services. We describe the UNIS network data model and its RESTful interface, which provide a common interface to topology, service, and measurement resources. In addition, we describe the security mechanisms built into the UNIS framework. Our analysis of the UNIS implementation shows significant performance and scalability gains over an existing and widely-deployed topology, service registration, and lookup information service architecture.