Call for papers: "Software Defined Networks and Infrastructures, Network Function Virtualisation, Autonomous Systems and Network Management"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems.

For last few years, there has been a tremendous growth in data traffic due to high adoption rate of mobile devices and cloud computing. Internet of things (IoT) will stimulate even further growth. This is increasing scale and complexity of telecoms/internet service providers’ (SP) and enterprise data centres’ (DC) computer and network infrastructures. As a result, managing these large network-computer converged infrastructures is becoming complex and cumbersome. To cope, network and data centre operators are trying to automate network operations and system management functions.

By getting the human operator out of the management loop, improved operational and economic efficiencies and operational scalability is being achieved. Automation is reducing capital and operation expenditures; this in turn is driving down cost, stimulating service demand, increasing revenues and maintaining profitability. New paradigms such as software defined networks (SDN), software defined infrastructures (SDI), network function virtualisation (NFV) and automation of network and system management operations are helping in achieving these business objectives.

Centralisation of the control plane in a SDN controller avoids the need to have human operators to manage a large number of network devices individually. By virtue of centralisation, SDN can implement automated network management and control plane logic. Similarly, many large internet application providers have implemented home grown non-traditional automated network and system management systems at their DCs.

On the other hand, telecom SPs are proposing to address manageability-at-scale problems with virtual network devices running on generic hardware. This will replace a large variety of specialised network device hardware, simplify and bring in operational efficiencies. For all these paradigms, the key success factors are intelligent software, its programmability to implement complex logic at low cost and scaling opportunities through elasticity at different time scales.

This special issue aims to showcase and disseminate new ideas and high quality research for enabling automation, optimisation and/or improving economics of network and system management and operations. We solicit original research articles, review papers, theoretical studies, practical software systems incorporating new paradigms, experimental prototypes and insightful industry analysis with the above theme. Articles from industry authors will be given special consideration. Only new ideas and unpublished work will be considered. Submitted papers will be peer reviewed and selected for publication on the based on quality, unique contribution and relevance to the theme of this special issue.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• New ideas that improve network, computer and storage infrastructure economics, programmability and security
• New paradigms in network operations and management, converged network-computer and data centre management
• Software defined network (SDN), abstraction, programmability, application Interface, south and northbound API
• Software defined infrastructure (storage, etc.)
• Network function virtualisation (NFV), distributed control, virtual switches, routing virtualisation
• Network and system management, orchestration, resource management and optimisation, integration, interoperability
• Network operations and management related automation, troubleshooting and management tools
• Cloud based network and system management application paradigms
• Application of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), analytics and big data in network and system management
• Performance analysis and evaluation, simulation, QoS/QoE, benchmarking
• Security, privacy, authentication, trust, verification
• Insights about SDN, SDI, NFV, NMS architectural requirements and analysis
• Application and use cases: wireless and mobile networks, carrier ethernet, optical transport, converged optical and packet, data centre networks, transitioning existing networks to SDN
• User experience, user interface design issues and challenges in NMS, ethnographic studies on network operations centres, usability studies of management applications
• Insights about telco (SP), enterprise DC business and industry trends related to SDN, SDI, NFV and NMS

Important Dates

Full paper regular submission due: 30 June, 2015