A Study of User Interface of On-Demand Overlay Network for Clouds

Overlay network technologies for cloud service provide users with flexibility and on-demand controllability to the network. In cases where overlay network technology is provided as a service, the authority of network operation should be delegated to users. It is required that users manipulate virtual nodes by themselves in order to configure their desired network. That is, users recognize the network service as a type of conceptual model, and manipulate it so that they conduct their desired business. Hence, it is necessary to provide an interface function that helps users to configure the network service model. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on overlay network service for clouds and propose network service model, which is developed by not only physical network equipment but also virtualized network resources, actors involved in the service, and work flow of them. Then, we propose the method of functional design of user interface based on the service model. Finally, we show the example of interface system implementation and confirm that the system enables on-demand network operation by users.