Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Middleboxes and Network Function Virtualization

Abstract

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 2015 ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Middleboxes and Network Function Virtualization -- HotMiddlebox'15. This year's event is the second workshop on this topic, and it comes at a time when middleboxes are truly a hot topic of interest in both industry and academia. On the one hand, there is a concerted industry shift towards network functions virtualization that means middleboxes are now becoming software appliances that are easier to install, scale and upgrade than their hardware counterparts. On the other hand, widespread privacy concerns raised by online surveillance have led to more traffic running over HTTPS and work towards opportunistically securing TCP in the IETF. The long-lasting tussle between middleboxes and the endpoints has now reached a critical turning point that may deny middleboxes access to the payload, preventing most to do their jobs. HotMiddlebox'15 accepted 12 papers out of 32 submissions. The paper review process included an offline evaluation phase by PC members, followed by a teleconference discussion of the top 20 ranked papers, out of which 12 were accepted to appear in the program. The resulting program is a surprisingly accurate snapshot of the current state in the field. It features papers focusing on experiences of deploying middleboxes and scaling them to commercial speeds as well as measuring network behavior in the wild. A subset of the workshop's papers also asks the question of how to enable middleboxes to do their work while preserving privacy. Finally, there are papers examining migration algorithms, the interplay between NFV and SDN and ways to enable middlebox development. HotMiddlebox features two exciting keynotes that will bring the industry perspective on middlebox problems that appear in deployment. The first keynote will be given by Juho Snellman, the lead engineer on TCP optimization solutions at Teclo Networks in Zurich. Juho will discuss the practical lessons learnt while developing and deploying systems in mobile operator networks. The second keynote will be given by Marc Wooldward, CTO at Datacenter security company vArmour. Marc will discuss how recent innovations in virtualisation and computing technologies provide us with the opportunity to refashion the classic DMZ security model in the age of datacenters, by evolving it to an asset-centric 'Security as a Service' model.