CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS
Emerging Automation Techniques for the Future Internet
A book edited by M. Boucadair and C. Jacquenet
Contact: mohamed.boucadair@orange.com; christian.jacquenet@orange.com
Orange

To be published by IGI Global: [https://tinyurl.com/y7xh743p]

INTRODUCTION

Service portfolios proposed by service and network operators have
dramatically expanded over the past ten years, at the cost of extra
complexity. The diversity and the complexity of these services have
been raising technical challenges for many years, not only during the
service design phase but also during the service operation phase.

The emergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) techniques such as
dynamic resource allocation schemes, as well as network function
virtualization techniques has often been the opportunity for some
vendors to make debatable promises about their so-called flexibility
or their intrinsic ability to facilitate the automation of the
service delivery procedures.

Reality is much different. As a matter of fact, process automation
is often restricted to dynamic configuration tasks, whose steering
relies upon decision-making procedures that remain "manually
declarative": the data that are used to feed the computation logic
that will drive the execution of configuration tasks are statically
declared. In addition, this rather embryonic automation only deals
with tasks that remain local to a device to the detriment of a
global, systemic view that would be able to guarantee the overall
consistency of the actions taken by the said computation logic to
deliver a service.

Automation is actually far more protean: from the dynamic exposure
and negotiation of service parameters to feedback mechanisms that are
meant to assess that what has been allocated complies with what has
been negotiated, the automation of service delivery and operational
procedures relies upon a set of functional meta-blocks (dynamic
discovery of the network, its topology, its components, dynamic
negotiation techniques, dynamic resource allocation and policy
enforcement schemes, autonomous back-up mechanisms, etc.) coupled
with control loops that interact in a deterministic and sometimes
autonomic fashion.

The need for such automation is even more critical in the so-called
5G networking era where (high bandwidth) services are supposed to be
delivered on-the-fly, at the granularity of the requirements
expressed by a single customer. In addition, the ability of an end-
user to dynamically customize the service he/she has subscribed to as
a function of the evolution of the service usage over time is very
likely to distort legacy, statically-conceived, service design
schemes: automation techniques can help addressing such new
challenges, while facilitating dynamic service and resource
adjustments for the sake of optimized network usage.

Of course, automation does not come for free: besides the human
implications that will inevitably question the role of network
designers and administrators because of the progressive blurring of
IT/network borders, automation is likely to dramatically impact the
way network, CPU and storage resources are allocated and managed. In
particular, determinism is critical for the proper operation of
automated networking infrastructures to minimize the risk of the mad
robot syndrome and other possible collateral effects, such as
security and robustness implications.

OBJECTIVE OF THE BOOK

The book is meant to provide a detailed and comprehensive landscape
of the automation techniques that are meant to facilitate the
delivery of flexible, agile, customized connectivity services
regardless of the nature of the networking environment (5G, IoT,
legacy IP networking infrastructures).

The book will focus on means for delivering and operating services
over robust, new Internet architectures that combine advanced
forwarding and routing schemes, mobility features and customer-
adapted resource facilities (bandwidth, security, etc.).

The book is meant to provide a detailed state-of-the-art as well as
evolution perspectives of the set of techniques that can be used for
automated networking purposes. In particular, the book will discuss:

o Automated service delivery and invocation procedures by end user
equipment (CPE, User Equipment), including automated procedures to
undertake Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and
Security (FCAPS) functions.

o Network bootstrapping procedures:

Including (but not limited to) the ability to dynamically discover
the network nodes, CPU and storage resources, the network
topology, the network functions and their status, as well as the
appropriate security mechanisms that are meant to provide some
guarantees about the robustness of exchanges between network
components and the computation logic that is at the core of
automated service delivery and operational procedures.

o Dynamic service parameter exposure and negotiation capabilities:

A customer (including, but not limited to, a network API, a
service subscriber, a 3rd party) may have the ability to
dynamically express service requirements (from various, possibly
combined, standpoints: quality of service, security, service
scope, etc.) and thus negotiate with the service provider so that
the latter can best accommodate the said requirements given a
variety of inputs that include (but are not limited to) the amount
of available resources, their location, the network planning
policy, network-originated notifications, etc. The outcomes of
such negotiation are then used by the aforementioned computation
logic to make decisions accordingly (about resource allocation and
policy enforcement, in particular).

o Dynamic resource allocation and policy enforcement schemes:

Based upon (standard, service-inferred) data models, the
computation logic that resides at the core of the automated
networking infrastructure dynamically derives negotiation outcomes
into configuration tasks and policy provisioning information that
are processed by participating components to automatically deliver
the connectivity service subscribed by the customer.

o Service fulfillment and assurance:

The need for feedback mechanisms and control loops along the
service delivery process is crucial to make sure that what has
been delivered complies with what has been negotiated.
o Security:

Automated networking infrastructures raise new security challenges
besides the aforementioned mad robot syndrome. The ability to
provide guarantees about the clearance of a customer to design,
negotiate, allocate, or access network resources or to make sure
that a third party provider is entitled to modify the amount of
resources required to deliver a service are among the numerous
examples of security issues raised by the introduction of a high
level of automation. A particular focus will be on automated
detection and mitigation of denial of service attacks.

RECOMMENDED TOPICS INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO, THE FOLLOWING:

o Automated network discovery and setup
o Dynamic service parameter exposure
o Dynamic service subscription and delivery
o Data and Information models
o Dynamic resource allocation
o Dynamic policy enforcement
o Dynamic DDoS detect and automatic mitigation
o Service discovery and dynamic negotiation
o Security challenges for Automation
o Service Function Chaining
o Automation within home LANs and enterprise networks
o Advanced network service production schemes by means of automated
tasks and procedures
o Automated and dynamic Interconnect design schemes
o Automation for Internet of Things
o Internet measurement, modeling, and visualization at large
o CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) serviceability
o Automated power-aware networking
o Automatic Service Assurance and Fulfillment
o Software-Defined Networking (SDN) & Automation
o Network Function Virtualization (NFV) & Automation
o Novel zero-touch Data Center architectures
o Operation & Maintenance
o Assessment of how Self-* (self-configuring, self-healing)
architectures can be deployed at the Internet scale
o Tech-eco analysis
o Assessing performance of automation: metrics, metrology,
benchmarking techniques
o Regulatory aspects and human implications

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

You are invited to submit to the editors a 2-page extended abstract
of the chapter you propose. Full manuscripts will be solicited upon
the acceptance decision based on the initial proposals. A second
round of review of the full manuscripts will be organized before
their final versions are produced for publication.

The initial extended abstract must contain the following information:

- Title
- Full list of authors with affiliations and contact information
- 2-page description of the chapter contents: problem statement,
technical options, evolution perspectives, etc., along with
the foreseen chapter organization.

IMPORTANT DATES

- Submission of initial extended abstract: October 31, 2017
- Notification of acceptance: November 30, 2017
- Submission of full manuscript: March 16, 2018
- Return of final review: April 30, 2018
- Submission of final version with revisions: May 18, 2018
- Target date for publication: Q4 2018