The ACTION project: Application coordinating with Transport, IP and optical networks

Internet traffic volume continues to increase at a high rate every year. To handle unexpected traffic surges, link failures and growth in traffic volume, network link capacities are typically over-provisioned. To reduce the extent of over-provisioning, we proposed an application and network coordinated multi-layer architecture called ACTION. Application QoE (Quality of Experience) are translated into network QoS requirements, and the multi-layer architecture is leveraged to meet these QoS requirements. To determine the quality experienced by application flows, Hadoop logs are communicated to the network controller, and edge devices are programmed to detect elephant flows automatically. Virtual networks that offer applications flows their required QoS are realized by configuring physical network switches to achieve the required QoT (Quality of Transport). ACTION is a multi-QoE, application-centric, energy-efficient network architecture that leverages flexible elastic optical network technologies. This project is supported by both NSF, USA, and NICT, Japan, under the JUNO (joint collaboration between Japan and US) program. This paper provides a brief overview of the project.