Tighter application-network interfacing to drive innovation in networked systems

Abstract

Applications and their underlying network largely operate in isolation, passing data back and forth. For several use cases, such isolation is no longer desirable. Tighter application-network (APP-NET) interactions can lead to a better allocation of network resources for meeting application performance guarantees. Vice versa, applications can become more adaptive to the underlying network context. In this paper, we present the design of an APP-NET interface where applications become able to pass traffic and monitoring requirements to the network and where networks are empowered to share monitoring and feedback information to the applications. The presented design is evaluated for two different use cases, illustrating the potential gains in functionality or performance compared to situations where such application-network interaction is absent.