Cloud-enabled NGN architecture with discovery of end-to-end QoS resources

Cloud computing offers remote resources on top of which users can deploy their own services, as well as ready to use services. Computing resources located in different sites and belonging to multiple providers can be used for a service. One requirement for the user to get access to cloud services is being connected with the remote computing resources. Similarly, interworking between computing resources located in different sites requires network resources connecting them. Therefore, cloud services can be thought as composed of computing and network resources. Quality of service (QoS) constraints can be posed on both of them. This is motivating a request for cloud architectures able to discover remote computing and QoS network resources. Design of such architecture is still an open issue. In this paper, we provide a proposal for it. We leverage on the existing Next Generation Network architecture, which was designed for IP services, and propose extensions to address the cloud provisioning requirements. The proposed extensions are about control and transport layer functions for automatic discovery of computing and QoS networking resources, respectively. Simulation results show the scalability of the discovery model in networks with increasing size and number of cloud providers.