How to buy a network: trading of resources in the physical layer

Recently, a number of new research initiatives, most notably UCLPv2 and GENI, have promoted the dynamic partition of physical network resources (infrastructure) as the means to operate the network, and to implement new protocols and services. This has led to a number of open issues such as resource discovery, implementation of resource partitioning, and the aggregation of resources to create arbitrary network topologies. To us, the key issue is the design of a mechanism to trade, acquire, and control network resources, given a choice of providers of physical resources (infrastructure providers). In this article we present an architecture that allows physical resources to be traded, while granting users controlled access to the acquired resources via a policy enforcement mechanism. In addition, it allows resource provider domains to be linked via configurable, provider-neutral resource exchange points that are the physical resource equivalents of the pooling point, or Internet exchange point (IXP). We demonstrate how our trading system will operate by presenting a use case in which a network topology is constructed using resources from multiple providers, be it Internet service providers (ISPs), or National Research Experimental Network (NREN) providers. The use case also shows how a dynamic reconfiguration can be effected by the customer though the use of simple access control policies, without involving the provider