ICIN 2013 Pre-Conference Tutorials

Monday 14 October 13:00-18:30

Monday 14 October 13:00 - 15:00

Network Functions Virtualization Demystified

Igor Faynberg (Alcatel-Lucent & Stevens Institute of Technology, USA), Hui-Lan Lu (Alcatel-Lucent, USA)

Network functions virtualization is both a concept and a broad initiative to use CPU virtualization and other Cloud Computing technologies to "cloudify" the functions and allow them to run on general-purpose hardware. The concept, as introduced by a group of network service providers in October 2012, is applicable to a range of network functions in mobile and fixed networks from the data plane to control plane to applications. Examples of such network functions are routers, Evolved Packet Core (EPC), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), load balancers, and firewalls.

This tutorial is geared to telecom professionals skilled in networking technologies, but it assumes no prior knowledge of computing virtualization technologies. The latter will be explained so as to demystify the "virtualization" part. After that, the tutorial will briefly describe the ETSI Industry Specification Group for Network Functions Virtualization effort. Key economic and technological issues will be outlined – security among them. With that the benefits of NFV in developing new services will be demonstrated.

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Igor Faynberg is a Bell Labs Fellow and Senior Architect in charge of NFV security in the CTO organizations of CloudBand Product Unit of Alcatel-Lucent. With a long history of leading standards in the IETF, ITU-T, and ISO, Dr. Faynberg has been recently elected to the position of Security Convener of ETSI NFV ISG. He is also adjunct professor in the Computer Science Department of Stevens Institute of Technology, where he teaches a graduate course on Cloud Computing among other courses. He holds several U.S. and international patents for inventions relevant to security and converged services, and he has many publications in the area of application of computer science to communications and network security. He has co-authored two books, entitled, respectively, Intelligent Network Standards, Their Applications to Services (McGraw-Hill, 1997) and Converged Networks and Services: Internetworking IP with PSTN (John Wiley & Sons, 2000). Dr. Faynberg chaired the ICIN TPC in 2011.

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Hui-Lan Lu is a Bell Labs Fellow and consulting member of technical staff in the Alcatel-Lucent IP Platforms Chief Technology Office in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Dr. Lu conducts research on security and identity management and actively contributes to the related standards efforts in the ETSI NFV, IETF, and ITU-T. She also serves as vice chairman of ITU-T Study Group 13 (the lead study group on Cloud Computing). Dr. Lu has coauthored a book, Converged Networks and Services: Internetworking IP with PSTN (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), and she has been granted a number of U.S. and international patents related to Cloud Computing security, QoS, and NGN. A contributor to ICIN since its inception, Dr. Lu has been serving for the second year as Vice Chair of the ICIN Technical Programme Committee.

Monday 14 October 15:30 - 18:30

WebRTC & Carrier Network: a Technical Overview & Market Context

Dean Bubley (Disruptive Analysis, UK), Tim Panton (Tropo, UK)

WebRTC brings real-time voice, video and data communications into the browser, providing web programmers with the tools to build communications into their apps. It also gives communications providers/telcos easy access to a new web platform for their services. WebRTC is already “live” in various web and enterprise scenarios, and several of the more forward-looking telcos are already exploring commercialisation options. By early 2014 there will be a billion devices supporting it – rising to almost 4bn by end-2016.

This tutorial will describe the technical underpinnings of WebRTC and its future roles in telco networks, services and business models. The technical part of the session focuses on key differences from more conventional VoIP deployments.

The rest of the session discusses the key contextual changes in the telecoms business, user behaviour, and wider technology ecosystem that are driving WebRTC to become a pivotal enabler. It will analyse the trend away from traditional “per-minute” telephony towards other new forms of voice or video. For operators, it will make the opportunities bigger; the threats worse; and everything much faster-evolving.

The tutorial will briefly cover the key protocols and codecs used (ICE, STUN, TURN, DTLS, SRTP, RTCP defined by the IETF) and their behaviour on the network. It will also provide an introduction to the API ('JSEP' defined by the W3C) used to access WebRTC and associated options for signalling. We will discuss how well various signalling options (SIP, websockets, XMPP etc) and protocols fit into carrier networks (both IMS and conventional) and what sorts of additional features can be built with WebRTC. Further, it will consider how identity will form a part of WebRTC, whether using e164, oAuth or other techniques.

Smartphone and tablet apps will also form a part of the WebRTC ecosystem, either via WebRTC capable browsers (like chrome) or apps that use 3rd party APIs that are compatible with WebRTC on the wire. We'll describe the continuum from dedicated single purpose softphone, through applications with real-time audio and video functionality (eg dating apps), to voice enabled web pages (eg customer services) and their respective value propositions.

This session is geared towards telecoms professionals with basic understanding of VoIP and network technology, but who may have had limited exposure to WebRTC itself, Javascript or mobile phone architecture. The business and market contexts should be of relevance to all.

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Dean Bubley is one of the most high-profile and influential analysts in the telecoms industry. He is the founder of Disruptive Analysis, an independent technology industry analyst firm. Dean has over 20 years’ experience, including previous roles as a telecom equity analyst, and Chief Analyst & Consulting Director at research house Datamonitor. He primarily specialises in voice & messaging, mobile technology & service provider business models.

Dean has published several reports on this topic area: WebRTC Market Status & Forecasts: The hype is justified: it will change telecoms (2013); Telco-OTT Strategies & Case Studies: The overlooked rise of telecom operators' own access-independent Internet services, for communications, content, cloud & connectivity (2012), 10 Reasons why the "toll-free" 1-800 Apps Concept Won't Work (2012) and Rich Communications Suite: Why IMS RCS will fail as a mass market service – and how to salvage it (2010)

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Tim Panton is a senior engineer at Tropo inc. where he works on the Phono project. He has spent the last five years championing the addition of voice and video to web sites. Tim has worked on a wide range of web based projects and startups, including managing observation time on a space telescope, providing vulnerability scans of web sites and a federated database for tourism websites. He's a keen open source contributor and something of a protocol droid.