This is my presentation at IFIP Networking 2018 in Zurich. In this paper, we propose a cloud-assisted network as an alternative connectivity provider. More details: https://kkpradeeban.blogspot.com/2018/05/moving-bits-with-fleet-of-shared.html

1. Pradeeban Kathiravelu∗†
Marco Chiesa‡
Pedro Marcos§
Marco Canini¶
Luís Veiga∗
∗
INESC-ID Lisboa / Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa
†
Université catholique de Louvain ‡
KTH §
UFRGS/FURG ¶
KAUST
IFIP Networking 2018.
Zurich, Switzerland. 15th
May, 2018.
1
Moving Bits with a Fleet of
Shared Virtual Routers

2. Introduction
2/20
● Increasing demand for bandwidth.
● Decreasing bandwidth prices.
● Pricing Disparity. E.g. IP Transit Price, 2014 (per Mbps)
○ USA: 0.94 $
○ Kazakhstan: 15 $
○ Uzbekistan: 347 $
● What about latency?
○ Online gaming.
○ High-frequency trading.
○ Remote surgery.

3. Motivation
● Cloud providers have a dedicated connectivity.
○ Well-provisioned and maintained network.
○ Increasing number of regions and points of presence.
● Can a network overlay over cloud instances be used as an
alternative connectivity provider?
○ Cost-effectiveness.
○ High-performance.
○ Optional network services.
3/20

4. Cloud-Assisted Networks
Virtual/overlay networks over cloud environments
4/20

5. Our Proposal: NetUber
● A third-party virtual connectivity provider with no fixed
infrastructure.
○ An overlay network, leveraging multi-cloud infrastructures.
5/20

6. NetUber Application Scenarios
1. Cheaper transfers between two endpoints.
2. Higher throughput or reduced latency.
3. Better alternative to SaaS replication.
4. Network services (compression, encryption, ..).
6/20

7. ● Feasibility Study: Platform Cost of NetUber
7/20
A. Cost of Cloud Instances.
○ Charged per second.
○ Very high.
B. Cost of Bandwidth.
○ Charged per data transferred.
○ Also very high.
C. Cost to connect to
the cloud provider.
Scenario (1 of 4): Cheaper Transfers

8. A) Cost of Cloud Instances: Observations
● 10 Gbps R4 instance (r4.8xlarge) pairs offered only
maximum of 1.2 Gbps of data transfer inter-region.
○ 10 Gbps only inside a placement group.
● We need more pairs
of instances!
8/20
Scenario (1 of 4): Cheaper Transfers

9. Spot Instances!
● Cheaper (up to 90% savings), but volatile, instances.
● Price Fluctuations - Future price unpredictable (for EC2).
● Differing prices among availability zones of a region.
○ Buy from the cheapest availability zones at the moment.
○ Maintain instances in the cheap availability zones.
9/22
Scenario (1 of 4): Cheaper Transfers

10. B) Cost of Bandwidth: Price disparity is real!
10/20
● Regions 1 - 9 (US, Canada, and EU) remain much cheaper
than the others.
Scenario (1 of 4): Cheaper Transfers

11. C) Cost to connect to the cloud provider
11/20
● Connect the end-user to the cloud servers.
● Often provided by the cloud provider.
○ Example: Amazon Direct Connect.
○ Charged per port-hour (e.g. how many hours a 10 GbE port is used).
Scenario (1 of 4): Cheaper Transfers

12. Cloud-Assisted Point-to-Point Connectivity
12/20
● Also cheaper than MPLS networks or transit providers.
○ Thanks to spot instances.
Scenario (2 of 4): Higher throughput or reduced latency
● Better control over the path, compared to the Internet paths.

13. 13/20
Scenario (3 of 4): Better Alternative to SaaS Replication
● Deploy Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications in just one region.
○ Use NetUber to access them from another region.
■ Instead of replicating them across multiple cloud regions.
● Access to more regions by leveraging multiple cloud providers.

14. 14/20
Scenario (4 of 4): Network Services
● NetUber uses memory-optimized R4 spot instances.
○ Each instance with 244 GB memory, 32 vCPU, and 10 GbE interface.
● Possibility to deploy network services at the instances.
● Network services.
○ Value-added services for the customer.
■ Encryption, WAN-Optimizer, load balancer, ..
○ Services for cost-efficiency.
■ Compression.

15. Evaluation
● Cheaper point-to-point connectivity.
○ AWS as the overlay cloud provider.
○ Compared against a transit provider and another connectivity provider
with a large global backbone network.
● Improve latency with cloud routes.
○ Compared to ISPs.
○ Traffic sent from: RIPE Atlas Probes and distributed servers.
○ Destination: AWS distributed servers from the AWS regions.
○ ISPs vs. ISP to the nearest AWS region and then NetUber overlay.
15/20

16. 1) Cheaper point-to-point connectivity
16/20
● Expense for 10 Gbps flat connectivity
○ Measured for transfers from EU and USA.
○ Cheaper for data transfers <50 TB.

17. 2) Improve latency with cloud routes
17/20
● Instead of sending traffic A -> Z, can we send A -> B -> Z?
○ B is closer to A. B and Z are servers in cloud regions.
○ B and Z are connected by NetUber overlay.

18. Ping times: ISP vs. NetUber (via region, % improvement)
18/20
● NetUber cuts Internet latencies up to a factor of 30%.
● The use of Direct Connect would make this even better.

19. Related Work
● Industrial efforts on infrastructure to offer connectivity.
○ Teridion - Internet fast lanes for SaaS providers.
○ Voxility - Large scale globally distributed infrastructure as an alternative
to transit providers.
● Previous research focus on technical side.
○ Not economical aspects - More expensive.
○ NetUber as a cheaper alternative, with spot instances.
19/20

20. Conclusion
● A connectivity provider that does not own the infrastructure.
● “Internet Fast-routes” through cloud-assisted networks.
○ Better than ISPs (~50 - 75 Mbps, often with a cap) for end-users.
● Cheaper point-to-point connectivity.
○ Cheaper than transit providers and similar offerings (for < 50 TB/month).
● Future work:
○ Evaluate NetUber for more parameters (loss rate, jitter, ..)
○ Evaluate the cost with more cloud providers and pairs of regions.
20/20

21. Conclusion
21/21
Thank you!
● A connectivity provider that does not own the infrastructure.
● “Internet Fast-routes” through cloud-assisted networks.
○ Better than ISPs (~50 - 75 Mbps, often with a cap) for end-users.
● Cheaper point-to-point connectivity.
○ Cheaper than transit providers and similar offerings (for < 50 TB/month).
● Future work:
○ Evaluate NetUber for more parameters (loss rate, jitter, ..)
○ Evaluate the cost with more cloud providers and pairs of regions.