PacketCloud: a Cloudlet-based Open Platform for In-network Services

• The Internet was designed with the end-to-end principle where the network layer offered merely a best-effort forwarding service.
• However, as the Internet connectivity becomes a commodity, more and more users and applications increasingly demand new functions and services to be added to the network, such as host mobility support, efficient delivery for frequently accessed content, on-path storage, or malicious traffic blocking.

• We propose an architectural solution that integrates "cloudlets" into the Internet's routing infrastructure.
• Our solution, PacketCloud, accommodates a distributed and elastic resource pool for in-network service providers.
• The cloudlets are incrementally deployable. We do not require every router to have a co-located cloudlet. ISPs can choose suitable Point of Presences (PoPs) to deploy cloudlets, according to the user distribution and traffic patterns.
• PacketCloud is compatible with different underlying network architectures, including clean-slate architectures like MobilityFirst, and conventional IP.
• As an open platform, PacketCloud benefits both ISPs and third-party application/content providers.

• Yang Chen, Yu Chen, Qiang Cao, Xiaowei Yang. PacketCloud: a Cloudlet-based Open Platform for In-network Services. To appear in IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS). (DOI: 10.1109/TPDS.2015.2424222) [PDF]

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