DOVE: Distributed Overlay Virtual nEtwork Architecture

Networking is currently a field of innovation and massive changes driven by several factors, the most prominent of which is the shift to cloud computing. It is already widely understood that networking requirements of cloud computing infrastructures differ from anything that the established networking technologies can offer. We present Distributed Overlay Virtual nEtwork (DOVE), an architecture based on a novel network abstraction allowing to define provider-tenant contracts at application level. DOVE network abstraction is decoupled from the particulars of the physical infrastructure design. Still, it captures the network functionality that matters: connectivity, security, performance, etc. DOVE architecture allows cloud providers to consolidate multiple abstractly defined networks on large scale commodity physical infrastructures, utilizing the advantages of specialized hardware appliances, and delegating full control to their tenants that now can manage and administer their virtual networks.