The project is structured along three well-differentiated technical work packages, dealing with the design of RINA operator networks, the adaptation of the RINA toolset to ARCFIRE experimentation needs and the large-scale experimentation activities leveraging FIRE+ infrastructures. A work package focused on project management and another one on dissemination, standardisation and exploitation activities complements these technical work packages. The following paragraphs provide a more detailed summary of the work that will be carried out in each of the seven work packages of the project.
ARCFIRE WP relationship
WP1 Project Management is responsible for the overall strategic and day-to-day management of the project. It will ensure that all work packages operate in a co-ordinated and coherent manner. It involves various administrative tasks, including time and resource management, progress reporting, quality control, organisation of plenary meetings, technical coordination and innovation management. This WP is also the official point of contact between the project and the European Commission.
WP2 Converged operator networks: requirements analysis and design will define the scenario of the project, focusing on the design of converged service provider networks using RINA. T2.1 will analyse the operational environment of a converged operator network, studying the characteristics of the different media the network will rely on and analysing the requirements of the users and applications that need to be supported. The operational environment requirements analysis will be fed into T2.2, who will use the RINA architecture to design operator networks that comply with the requirements identified in T2.1. The RINA network designs will be compared with current operator network designs, analysing a number of KPIs such as cost (capital and operational), manageability, security, efficiency or application support.
WP3 Software adaptation, integration and verification will take as starting point the open IRATI [9] RINA stack (in T3.1), the RINA Network Manager developed by FP7 PRISTINE (in T3.2) and the RINA traffic generation utilities (in T3.3). WP3 will adapt the RINA stack and the Network Manager to the requirements of the ARCFIRE converged network operator use case and to large-scale experimentation scenarios: instrumentation for monitoring key variables in the IPC Process state, automation, development of policies and network management strategies are in the scope of this work. T3.3 will build on the current traffic generation utilities to turn them into a fully distributed RINA measurement and analysis platform. T3.4 will integrate the inputs of T3.1, T3.2 and T3.3 into a coherent, verified system ready for experimentation, and continuously fix bugs based on the input of WP4 during the project lifetime.
WP4 Experiment design, execution and results analysis is the key WP of ARCFIRE. WP4 – fed by WP2 (converged operator network architecture and requirements analysis) and WP3 (integrated RINA software) – will setup the experimental infrastructure required for experimentation, design the ARCFIRE experiments, carry them out and analyse their results. T4.1 will coordinate the four experiments that will be carried out by ARCFIRE, provide a catalogue of infrastructure available for experimentation and interact with the FIRE+ facility providers. Each one of the four experimentation tasks – focused on Network Management (T4.2), providing resilient, virtualised services (T4.3), end to end service provisioning across multiple operators (T4.4) and analysis of the effects of DDoS attacks (T4.5) – will design the experimental scenarios based on the FIRE+ infrastructure made available by T4.1, carry out the experiments and analyse their results according to a set of well-defined KPIs.
WP5. Dissemination, Standardisation, Exploitation aims to promote the project results outside the consortium and represents a core activity. A dissemination plan will be developed to ensure that project results are distributed to a wide audience, maximising the impact of the project. Contribution to standardisation activities is also an important aspect of the project, and ARCFIRE will be consistent with the strategy adopted by running RINA research projects such as IRATI or PRISTINE. WP6 will also provide a roadmap for the academic and commercial exploitation of the project results.