Virtual Network Services For Federated Cloud Computing

Creating a seemingly infinite cloud computing infrastructure where services can be deployed, extended, and migrated on demand and across different administrative domains, IT platforms and geographies sets new challenges for virtual networking. This work highlights a set of basic principles and requirements from cloud virtual networking services. In view of such requirements, a novel overlay network is suggested to enable virtual network services across federated clouds. The design of such a virtual network service is described and compared with alternative technologies, and its traffic performance validated. The work described here enables the establishment of large scale virtual networks, free of any location dependency, that result in completely ’migratable’ virtual networks. Network scalability concerns are mitigated by taking specific advantage of cloud computing. The service can be offered using different underlying network technologies and includes a hierarchical design to ensure the privacy, security, and independence of the federated infrastructure providers.