1st International Workshop on Software-Driven Flexible and Agile Networking (SWFAN 2016), 10-15 April, San Francisco, CA, USA
(in conjunction with IEEE INFOCOM 2016)

Scope and Topics of Interest

The NFV/SDN paradigms promote the deployment of Network Functions (NF) as software components into cloud infrastructures, and the identification of relevant abstractions for their configuration, control and management. Such NFs can comprise processing elements in the data plane (e.g., packet inspection, filtering, flow-level monitoring, or access control) as well as control-plane components (e.g., signaling, routing, dynamic load balancing). This paradigm shift essentially enables new cloud service models, i.e., NF-as-a-service (NFaaS), which can lead to significant operational and technology investment cost savings for service providers. Beyond that, telecom operators can greatly benefit from NFV/SDN, considering the increasing trend to implement mobile communication network functions in software.
NFV/SDN orchestration can satisfy the evolving requirements of service and infrastructure providers with respect to the resource constraints, dynamic network conditions and service environments. Virtualized NFs should be deployed, located, scaled, and orchestrated in a holistic manner to realize novel services, through exposing their configurations using standardized interfaces, whereas SDN can provide a flexible network plane along these lines. Furthermore, the integration of protocol and application/service processing creates opportunities for enhancing the performance of cloud applications and services when accessed by mobile users.
In this respect, SWFAN aims at bringing together researchers, engineers, and practitioners to discuss challenging aspects of NFV/SDN orchestration, such as the elastic provisioning of computing, storage, and network resources for NF deployment and scaling in the cloud, the development of new models, protocols, algorithms, and abstractions for more flexible and agile network control, management and operation, as well as NFaaS negotiation, contracting, billing, and SLA management.
We solicit submissions of previously unpublished work on the following topics of interest (but not limited to):

- Resource allocation for NF consolidation in clouds
- Algorithms and methods for network service embedding
- Interoperability among cloud providers for network service embedding
- Abstractions and techniques for network service reconfiguration and scaling
- Service chaining for policy enforcement
- Architectures and interfaces for NF configuration and control
- NF verification, systematic testing, fault management, protection
- NF migration and state management
- SDN for network service deployment
- New models, protocols, and abstractions for flexible and agile network operations
- Design and implementation of NF stores
- NFaaS negotiation and contracting
- Resource pricing and billing for NFaaS
- SLAs for NFaaS
- Mobile Edge Computing
- Applications of NFV in cellular and mobile networks
- Experiences from NFV/SDN deployments in production networks

Submission Instructions

Submitted papers should not exceed 6 pages in IEEE format (double-column, 10pt font). Papers should be submitted via EDAS. All accepted and presented papers will be published in the conference proceedings and on IEEE Xplore.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: December 6, 2015
Acceptance notification: January 18, 2016
Camera ready paper submission: February 2, 2016

Workshop Organizing Team

Giuseppe Bianchi, University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy
Nicola Blefari Melazzi, University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy
Torsten Braun, University of Bern, Switzerland
Lefteris Mamatas, University of Macedonia, Greece
Panagiotis Papadimitriou, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany
Danny Raz, Technion / Bell Labs, Israel

TPC Co-Chairs
Erez Biton, Alcatel Lucent, Israel
Panagiotis Papadimitriou, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany

Publicity Chair
Lefteris Mamatas, University of Macedonia, Greece