NetPA

1st Joint International Workshop on Network Programmability & Automation (NetPA 2021)
Monday 25 October 2021

With the same spirit of CNSM as a whole, the workshop on “Network Programmability and Automation” (NetPA) aims at providing an international forum for researchers and practitioners from academia and industry at large, including network operators, service providers, equipment manufacturers and IT companies, to discuss and address the challenges deriving from network programmability and network zero-touch automation for the delivery and operation of networks and services. On the one hand, the workshop will discuss the use of analytics and AI-based models to perform decision making at abstracted levels of the network to bring flexible and adaptive network service provisioning while ensuring smooth service continuity, SLA-compliance and service assurance. On the other hand, the workshop captures the evolutions of networking protocols towards more performance and security. This includes the design of high-level languages and associated tool chains for specifying network and nodes behaviors, automated methods and tools for validating both control and data plane operation; protocols for network programmability like Segment Routing; programmable data plane architectures, hardware platforms, software execution environments; network applications addressing open problems in traffic engineering, measurement, and problem diagnosis.

Workshop Co-chairs:

Amina Boubendir, Orange Labs, France
Stefano Salsano, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
Carlos Guimarães, UC3M, Spain
Josep Mangues-Bafalluy, CTTC, Spain
Xi Li, NEC Laboratories, Germany
Lisandro Zambenedetti Granville, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil
Marco Bonola, CNIT, Italy
Gabor Retvari, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Ahmed Abdelsalam, CISCO, USA
Diego R. López, Telefonica I+D, Spain

Workshop sponsors:

NetPA workshop is sponsored by the following 4 European projects:

Workshop Program

The NetPA workshop will be held on Monday October 25th. The program can be found here.

08:30Opening and Welcome message
08:45 - 10:15TS1 - Zero-touch Network and Service Management
Session chair: Fabrice Guillemin, Orange Labs, France
HolistIX: a zero-touch approach for IXPs
Christoff Visser (IIJ Innovation Institute, Japan); Marc Bruyere (IIJ Innovation Institute & The University of Tokyo, Japan); Yuji Sekiya and Seiichi Yamamoto (The University of Tokyo, Japan); Takashi Tomine (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan)
Delay-Sensitive Wireless Content Delivery: An Interpretable Artificial Intelligence Approach
Estefania Coronado (Fundació i2CAT, Internet i Innovació Digital a Catalunya, Spain); Blas Gómez (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain); José Villalón (UCLM, Spain); Antonio Garrido (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain); Muhammad Shuaib Siddiqui (Fundació i2CAT, Internet i Innovació Digital a Catalunya, Spain); Roberto Riggio (Università Politecnica Delle Marche, Italy)
Network Assurance in Intent-Based Networking Data Centers with Machine Learning Techniques
Xiaoang Zheng (Ecole de Technologie Superieure, Canada); Aris Leivadeas (École de Technologie Supérieure, Canada)
10:15 - 10:30Coffee Break
10:30 - 11:15Keynote Session
Session chair: Amina Boubendir, Orange Labs, France
Why is E2E automation important and which role can ZSM play?
Klaus Martiny, Senior Consultant, ORBIT at Deutsche Telekom AG - Chair of the ETSI ISG ZSM

The operations of a Telco Network are more complex than years ago. Virtualization, slicing, 5G, cloudification are impacting the network architecture and the OAM strategy. The current fragmentation of network management solutions makes the problem more challenging. A common, harmonized approach is needed in order to mitigate the complexity and makes the networks manageable. ZSM can help to deliver at least a framework regarding management solutions.

11:15 - 12:45TS2 -Network Programmability with P4
Session chair: TBD
Charon: Load-Aware Load-Balancing in P4
Carmine Rizzi (Ecole Polytechnique, France); Zhiyuan Yao (Ecole Polytechnique & Cisco Systems France, France); Yoann Desmouceaux (Cisco Systems, France); Mark Townsley (Cisco, France); Thomas Heide Clausen (Ecole Polytechnique, France)
P4 language extensions for stateful packet processing
Angelo Tulumello (University of Rome Tor Vergata & CNIT, Italy)
Dynamic Service Programming with Path Preprocessing
Julian Klaiber, Severin Dellsperger and Laurent Metzger (Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland); Ahmed Abdelsalam (Cisco Systems, Italy); Francois Clad (Cisco System, France)
12:45 - 13:45Lunch
13:45 - 15:15TS3 - Beyond Network Programmability
Session chair: Xi Li, NEC Laboratories, Germany
An In-Kernel Solution Based on XDP for 5G UPF: Design, Prototype and Performance Evaluation
Thiago Arruda Navarro do Amaral (University of Campinas, Brazil); Raphael Vicente Rosa (Unicamp & Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Brazil); David Moura (CTEx & INTRIG - Information & Networking Technologies Research & Innovation Group, Brazil); Christian Esteve Rothenberg (University of Campinas - UNICAMP, Brazil)
Token Cell Routing: A New Sub-IP Layer Protocol
Stewart Bryant ( & University of Surrey, United Kingdom (Great Britain)); Alexander Clemm (Futurewei Technologies, USA)
Programmable Data Planes as the Next Frontier for Networked Robotics Security: A ROS Use Case
Diego Rossi Mafioletti (Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil); Ricardo Mello (Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil); Marco Ruffini (CONNECT, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland); Valerio Frascolla (Intel Deutschland Gmbh, Germany); Magnos Martinello (Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil); Moises R. N. Ribeiro (Federal Universty of Espirito Santo, Brazil)
15:15 - 15:30Coffee Break
15:30 - 17:15Expert Panel
Moderator: Amina Boubendir, Orange Labs, France
On the challenges of network programmability and automation under resilience and sustainability stakes
Invited Speakers:
  • Klaus Martiny, Senior Consultant, ORBIT at Deutsche Telekom AG
  • Hannu Flinck, Nokia Bell Labs, Finland
  • Carla F. Chiasserini, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
  • Hatim Chergui CTTC, Spain
  • Luis M. Contreras Telefonica, Spain
17:15 - 17:30Workshop closing

Expert Panel

Title: On the challenges of network programmability and automation under resilience and sustainability stakes

Overview: As we are heading towards nascent 6G networks, this is the appropriate time to do a hindsight exercise to gather the lessons learned to start shaping the networks to come in a coherent and converged manner towards service-oriented, programmable and automatically managed networks.

In this direction, network programmability and automation _with the extreme form known as “zero-touch”_ have drawn the attention of many actors from the IT, Telecom and Cloud sectors. A plethora of initiatives dealing with all related aspects from a global or specialized point of view for 5G and beyond networks can be cited here: TMF ZOOM, ETSI ZSM, ETSI ENI, RAN-related management initiatives (O-RAN, ONF SD-RAN), different EU and non-EU research projects like MON-B5G, 5G-DIVE, 5Growth, 5GZORRO, INSPIRE5Gplus, and last but not least the Hexa-X project recently launched as a flagship 6G European initiative.

With the ever-growing connectivity demand and continually more stringent performance requirements along with operational and environmental costs are pushing the boundaries of network solutions to maximize the efficiency of every deployment and operation action. In parallel to that, the security, resilience, and sustainability stakes are getting a societal and economical importance.

We propose this panel to gather views from research and standards experts focusing on ETSI ZSM ISG, Hexa-X project on 6G, MON-B5G, 5Growth, and 5GDive European projects to discuss how programmability and automation can foster reliability and optimality of networks for applications and services that leverage societies and business.

We are happy to host the following invited speakers:

  • Klaus Martiny, Senior Consultant, ORBIT at Deutsche Telekom AG
  • Hannu Flinck, Nokia Bell Labs, Finland
  • Carla F. Chiasserini, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
  • Hatim Chergui CTTC, Spain
  • Luis M. Contreras Telefonica, Spain

Klaus Martiny, Senior Consultant, ORBIT at Deutsche Telekom AG.
Chair of the ETSI ISG ZSM since 2018; Zero Touch Service and Network Management. Vice Chair of the NOC in ETSI ISG NFV since 2014. Project Lead of the NWMO (MANO Requirements for 5G) project in NGMN. Focus on the definition of MANO requirements in the 5G Project. Project Leads of the NGCOR I and II in NGMN (Definition of Operations Requirements for Converged networks). Coordinator of the new Industry Initiative Network and Service Management (NSM). ORBIT at Deutsche Telekom Senior Consultant since June 2021. Senior Program Manager at Deutsche Telekom 2010 – 2021. VP Vice President Continuous Improvement for Operations of T-Mobile International 2001 – 2010. Head of Operations (SVP) in E-PLUS 1992 – 2001. GSM Radio Validation and Specification in DETECON. Publication: articles concerning outsourcing, international project management (Merger and Optimization of international Organization); organizational change management; Disaster and Business Continuity; Network Management of future Networks.

Hannu Flinck, Senior Research Project Manager with Nokia Standards, Espoo, Finland.
He holds an M.Sc. and License of Technology degrees in Computer Science and Communication Systems from the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK, current Aalto Uni). Before this he has served in multiple research and management roles in Nokia Bell Labs, NSN Technology and Innovation Office, and Nokia Research Center all related to new networking architectures and communication protocols. His current focus is on 6G enabler technologies.

Carla Fabiana Chiasserini is Full Professor with Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and a Research Associate with the Italian National Research Council (CNR). She was a Visiting Researcher at UC San Diego from 1998 to 2003, and a Visiting Professor at Monash University, Australia, in 2012 and 2016. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, as well as an AAIA Fellow. Her research interests include 5G-and-beyond Networks, NFV, Mobile Edge Computing, Connected Vehicles, and Distributed Machine Learning at the network Edge. She has published over 320 journal articles and referred conference papers, and has received several awards for her scientific work. Currently, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Computer Communications journal and as an Associate Editor of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. Carla is also a member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering and of the ACM MobiHoc conference. She has served for several years on the Editorial Board of journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Networks and the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and she has been Co-Guest Editor of a number of journals special issues. Carla is/has been involved in may national and International research projects, either as a coordinator or a PI, including the EU H2020 5G-Crosshaul, 5G-TRANSFORMER, I-REACT, 5GROWTH, RAINBOW, and Hexa-X projects. For more information, please refer to: http://www.telematica.polito.it/public/faculty/carla-fabiana-chiasserini/.

Hatim Chergui received the bachelor’s degree in telecommunications engineering from the Institut National des Postes et Télécommunications (INPT), Rabat, Morocco, in 2007, and the Ph.D. degree (summa cum laude) in electrical engineering and telecommunications from IMT Atlantique (Télécom Bretagne), Brest, France, in 2015. Since 2008, he has been a Radio Network Planning and Optimization Engineer with extensive industry experience in providing 3G/4G consulting at Huawei Technologies, Morocco. He has worked as a Radio Technologies Expert at Moroccan Operator INWI, Casablanca, Morocco. He is currently the Project Manager of the H2020 MonB5G European Project and a Researcher at the Catalan Telecommunications Technology Center (CTTC), Barcelona, Spain. He was a recipient of the IEEE ICC 2020 Best Paper Award. He is an Associate Editor at IEEE NETWORKING LETTERS. His research interests lie in the area of performance analysis and artificial intelligence for wireless communications.

Dr. Luis M. Contreras is Telecom Engineer (M.Sc.) by the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid, and holds a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. on Telematics from the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid. Since August 2011 he has been part of Telefónica I+D / Telefónica CTO unit, working on 5G, SDN, virtualization, transport networks and their interaction with cloud and distributed services, as well as on interconnection topics. Before the position in Telefónica he worked in Alcatel and Orange. He is actively involved in research and innovation activities, with 80+ papers published in relevant journals, magazines and conferences. He has participated in projects funded by the EU and the ESA. Currently he is working on the projects EU H2020 5GROWTH, EU-TW 5G-DIVE, and EU GNSS ROOT. In the standardization arena, he is an active contributor to IETF, ETSI, ITU-T and ORAN.