Sebastian Troia

• Ph.D. in Information Technology
• Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano

The increased demand for high-quality Internet connectivity resulting from the growing number of connected devices and advanced services has put significant strain on telecommunication networks. In response, cutting-edge technologies such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) have been introduced to transfor...

Optical spectrum as a service (OSaaS) spanning over multiple transparent optical network domains can significantly reduce the investment and operational costs of the end-to-end service. Based on the black-link approach, these services are empowered by reconfigurable transceivers and the emerging disaggregation trend in optical transport networks. T...

SNR margins between partially and fully loaded DWDM systems are estimated without detailed knowledge of the network. The ML model, trained on simulation data, achieves accurate predictions on experimental data with an RMSE of 0.16 dB.

SNR margins between partially and fully loaded DWDM systems are estimated without detailed knowledge of the network. The ML model, trained on simulation data, achieves accurate predictions on experimental data with an RMSE of 0.16 dB.

Continuous monitoring of key network elements is instrumental in intelligent control and predictive analysis. This demonstration illustrates implementation challenges that are encountered in cross-layer monitoring of optical transport networks in an open-source network operations platform.

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is being investigated as a competitive alternative to traditional techniques for solving network optimization problems. A promising research direction lies in enhancing traditional optimization algorithms by offloading low-level decisions to a DRL agent. In this study, we consider how to effectively employ DRL to i...

The 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) virtualization aims to improve network quality and lower the operator’s costs. One of its main features is the functional split, i.e. dividing the instantiation of RAN baseband functions into different units over metro-network nodes. However, its optimal placement is non-trivial: it depends on the application requi...

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) continue to demonstrate substantial capabilities in solving a wide range of optical-network-related tasks such as fault management, resource allocation, and lightpath quality of transmission (QoT) estimation. However, the focus of the research community has been centered on ML models’ predictiv...

Mobile operators face the challenge of deploying a flexible network to handle the requirements of emerging use cases. A new Radio Access Network (RAN) for 5G was proposed to provide more dynamic and energy-efficient network management, resource allocation, and service provisioning compared to 4G. The baseband functions, previously performed next to...

Today, more and more enterprises are embarking on a digital transformation where most of their applications are hosted in the Cloud. As a result, a reliable Wide Area Network (WAN) has become a primary need to interconnect their distributed branch offices and data centers that accommodate those applications. Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-W...

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is rising as a promising tool for solving optimization problems in optical networks. Though studies employing DRL for solving static optimization problems in optical networks are appearing, assessing strengths and weaknesses of DRL with respect to state-of-the-art solution methods is still an open research question...

In the last few years, some research papers have proposed usage of UAVs organized in Flying Ad-Hoc Network (FANET) in remote areas with a poor or completely non-existent structured network to support novel application scenarios in which data generated by the end users must be processed on site with ultra-low latency. This way, a FANET can be seen a...

Fifth-generation (5G) networks are already available in major urban areas and are expected to bring a major transformation to citizens’ lives. 5G services, such as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC), and massive machine-type communications (mMTC), require a network infrastructure capable of supportin...

We demonstrate the potentialities of explainable AI when applied to distill knowledge from a trained supervised machine learning model for lightpath quality of transmission estimation in optical networks, with synthetic datasets.

Wide Area Network (WAN) reliability has become an imperative for enterprises with Cloud-hosted applications and distributed branch offices. Many solutions and different network technologies have been proposed over the years, such as leased lines, frame relay, or Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). Those solutions offer Quality of Service (QoS) a...

A reliable Wide Area Network (WAN) has become an imperative business for enterprises with Cloud-hosted applications and distributed branch offices. Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) has been regarded as the promising technological solution for next generation enterprise networks capable of increasing network agility and reducing costs....

With the advent of 5G technology and an ever-increasing traffic demand, today Communication Service Providers (CSPs) experience a progressive congestion of their networks. The operational complexity, the use of manual configuration, the static nature of current technologies together with fast-changing traffic profiles lead to: inefficient network u...

The demand for reliable and efficient Wide Area Networks (WANs) from business customers is continuously increasing. Companies and enterprises use WANs to exchange critical data between headquarters, far-off business branches and cloud data centers. Many WANs solutions have been proposed over the years, such as: leased lines, Frame Relay, Multi-Prot...

Nowadays, companies strongly rely on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to deliver services between geographically distributed branch offices. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must therefore offer a reliable and cost-effective connectivity solution. VPNs are commonly based on static bandwidth allocation over MPLS tunnels, which cause over-provisionin...

A reliable Wide Area Network (WAN) has become a necessity for businesses enterprises to transmit critical data between multiple branches and to increase their revenues. Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) is an emerging paradigm that introduces the advantages of Software Defined Networking (SDN) into Enterprise Networking (EN). SD-WAN ca...

We demonstrate the recurrent reconfiguration of virtual network function placement and routing and wavelength assignment in optical metro networks supporting 5G services. Reconfiguration solutions are provided by a dedicated planning-tool module.

Nowadays networks are the basis of our communication providing a great number of services. As a consequence, the traffic is increasing and there is a growing demand for new services that require stringent constraints on capacity, latency and jitter to provide an appropriate Quality of Service (QoS) to end users. In order to cope with these requirem...

Data center in the fifth generation (5G) network will serve as a facilitator to move the wireless communication industry from a proprietary hardware based approach to a more software oriented environment. Techniques such as Software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) would be able to deploy network functionalities su...

With the advent of 5G technology, we are witnessing the development of increasingly bandwidth-hungry network applications, such as enhanced mobile broadband, massive machine-type communications and ultra-reliable low-latency communications. Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Network Slicing (NS) are gaining...

Recently, Machine Learning (ML) has attracted the attention of both researchers and practitioners to address several issues in the optical networking field. This trend has been mainly driven by the huge amount of available data (i.e., signal quality indicators, network alarms, etc.) and to the large number of optimization parameters which feature c...

We demonstrate how to dynamically place Virtual Network Functions over a software defined optical network integrating IT computing and real IP over WDM resources, thus allowing exchange of real traffic.

By predicting the traffic load on network links, a network operator can effectively pre-dispose resource-allocation strategies to early address, e.g., an incoming congestion event. Traffic loads on different links of a telecom is know to be subject to strong correlation, and this correlation, if properly represented, can be exploited to refine the...

The fifth generation telecommunication standard (5G) will make use of novel technologies, such as Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). New models are integrating SDN and NFV in a control plane entity responsible of the Management and Orchestration (MANO) of the whole system. This entity, acting as director of t...

We demonstrate a Machine-Learning-based routing module for software-defined networks. By training with the optimal routing solutions of historical traffic traces, the module can classify traffic matrices to provide real-time routing decisions.

In recent years, researchers realized that the analysis of traffic datasets can reveal valuable information for the management of mobile and metro-core networks. That is getting more and more true with the increase in the use of social media and Internet applications on mobile devices. In this work, we focus on deep learning methods to make predict...

We demonstrate how a hybrid and hierarchical transport-SDN control plane based on a network orchestrator and an SDN controller can provide dynamic network slicing for enterprise-networking services and mobile metro-core networks.

In general, humans follow a routine with highly predictable daily movements. For instance, we commute from home to work on a daily basis and visit a selected set of places for commercial and recreational purposes during the nights and weekends. The use of mobile phones increases when commuting via public transportation, during lunch breaks, and at...

Enterprise Networking (EN) services are source of high revenues for carriers. However, the traditional way of providing and selling those to enterprise and business customers is ossified and unsatisfactory for users. High prices, static connections and slow time to provision, make enterprise users doubtful about whether guaranteed connectivity is w...

Due to the highly predictable daily movements of citizens in urban areas, mobile traffic shows repetitive patterns with spatio-temporal variations. This phenomenon is known as Tidal Effect analogy to the rise and fall of the sea levels. Recognizing and defining traffic load patterns at the base station thus plays a vital role in traffic engineering...