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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Multi-tenant provisioning over software defined networking enabled metropolitan area quantum key distribution networks

Yuan Cao, Yongli Zhao, Xiaosong Yu, Jie Zhang

Published Jan 14, 2019• 23 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum key distribution (QKD) has potential to provide long-term security for communications across the Internet. As security-hungry applications dramatically rise nowadays, a growing number of QKD networks are promising to be deployed in the immediate future. Nevertheless, a high-security-demand institution (e.g., a bank) needs to pay a high price to deploy its dedicated QKD network, while a cost-effective way of overcoming this challenge is to make multiple tenants share a QKD network. Each tenant represents a high-security-demand institution and can obtain secret keys on demand from the QKD network infrastructure for security purposes. Hence, how to achieve efficient and flexible multi-tenant provisioning over a QKD network becomes a crucial problem. This work introduces software defined networking (SDN) to address this problem. We experimentally demonstrate multi-tenant provisioning (including tenant establishment, adjustment, and deletion) over SDN-enabled metropolitan area QKD networks. A SDN-enabled metropolitan area QKD network architecture is introduced. We present a workflow, protocol extensions, and an on-demand secret-key resource allocation strategy for multi-tenant provisioning, which are all demonstrated by establishing an experimental testbed in the lab. Experimental results verify the effectiveness and flexibility of our SDN-based approaches for multi-tenant provisioning over metropolitan area QKD networks. Moreover, we conduct the simulation and discover the ways of improving the success probability of multi-tenant provisioning over metropolitan area QKD networks.

DOI
10.1364/josab.36.000b31

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Quantum key distribution (QKD) has potential to provide long-term security for communications across the Internet. As security-hungry applications dramatically rise nowadays, a growing number of QKD networks are promising to be deployed in the immediate future. Nevertheless, a high-security-demand institution (e.g., a bank) needs to pay a high price to deploy its dedicated QKD network, while a cost-effective way of overcoming this challenge is to make multiple tenants share a QKD network. Each tenant represents a high-security-demand institution and can obtain secret keys on demand from the QKD network infrastructure for security purposes. Hence, how to achieve efficient and flexible multi-tenant provisioning over a QKD network becomes a crucial problem. This work introduces software defined networking (SDN) to address this problem. We experimentally demonstrate multi-tenant provisioning (including tenant establishment, adjustment, and deletion) over SDN-enabled metropolitan area QKD networks. A SDN-enabled metropolitan area QKD network architecture is introduced. We present a workflow, protocol extensions, and an on-demand secret-key resource allocation strategy for multi-tenant provisioning, which are all demonstrated by establishing an experimental testbed in the lab. Experimental results verify the effectiveness and flexibility of our SDN-based approaches for multi-tenant provisioning over metropolitan area QKD networks. Moreover, we conduct the simulation and discover the ways of improving the success probability of multi-tenant provisioning over metropolitan area QKD networks.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) networks are promising to progress towards widespread practical deployment over existing fiber infrastructures in the near future. Given the high cost and difficulty of deploying QKD networks, multi-tenancy becomes promising to improve cost efficiency for future QKD networks. In a multi-tenant QKD network, multiple QKD tenants can share the same QKD network infrastructure to obtain secret keys for securing their data transfer. Since the secret-key resources are finite and precious in QKD networks, how to achieve efficient multi-tenant secret-key assignment (MTKA) to satisfy the secret-key demands of multiple QKD tenants over QKD networks becomes a significant problem. In this regard, this study addresses the MTKA problem over QKD networks. A new multi-tenant QKD network architecture is proposed based on software defined networking (SDN) and quantum key pool (QKP) techniques. A secret-key rate sharing scheme is presented and a heuristic algorithm is designed to implement efficient MTKA over QKD networks. A new performance metric, namely matching degree (MD) that reflects the balance between QKD network secret-key resources and QKD tenant requests, is defined and evaluated. Simulation studies indicate that high QKD tenant requests accommodation and efficient secret-key resource usage can be achieved via maximizing the value of MD.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) holds the potential of providing long-term integrity and confidentiality for data and communications. Currently, many fiber-based QKD systems have been commercialized and several QKD networks have been deployed. Given the high cost and complexity of QKD network deployment, QKD as a service (QaaS) becomes a promising pattern for future QKD networks. The QaaS concept is that multiple users can apply for QKD services to obtain their required secret-key rates (SKRs) from the same QKD network infrastructure instead of deploying their dedicated QKD networks. Accordingly, how to provide efficient and flexible QaaS for fulfilling the SKR requirements of multiple users over a QKD network infrastructure becomes a new challenge. This study introduces the software defined networking (SDN) technique to overcome this challenge, since SDN can add flexibility together with efficient QKD network management. A new framework of SDN for QaaS (SDQaaS) is proposed, where the QaaS functions are developed in the SDN controller. We present the protocol extension, intercommunication workflow, and routing and SKR assignment strategy for QaaS implementation in the SDQaaS framework. We also establish a SDQaaS experimental testbed and perform the numerical simulation to verify our presented approaches. Experimental results demonstrate that our presented approaches can achieve efficient and flexible QaaS over the QKD network. Moreover, simulation results indicate that the success probability of QKD service requests can be increased via lowering the flexibility of SKR requirements for QKD service creation, sacrificing more cost to produce higher SKR over the QKD network, or gradually reducing SKR requirements with the modification of QKD service.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) networks are potential to be widely deployed in the immediate future to provide long-term security for data communications. Given the high price and complexity, multi-tenancy has become a cost-effective pattern for QKD network operations. In this work, we concentrate on addressing the online multi-tenant provisioning (On-MTP) problem for QKD networks, where multiple tenant requests (TRs) arrive dynamically. On-MTP involves scheduling multiple TRs and assigning non-reusable secret keys derived from a QKD network to multiple TRs, where each TR can be regarded as a high-security-demand organization with the dedicated secret-key demand. The quantum key pools (QKPs) are constructed over QKD network infrastructure to improve management efficiency for secret keys. We model the secret-key resources for QKPs and the secret-key demands of TRs using distinct images. To realize efficient On-MTP, we perform a comparative study of heuristics and reinforcement learning (RL) based On-MTP solutions, where three heuristics (i.e., random, fit, and best-fit based On-MTP algorithms) are presented and a RL framework is introduced to realize automatic training of an On-MTP algorithm. The comparative results indicate that with sufficient training iterations the RL-based On-MTP algorithm significantly outperforms the presented heuristics in terms of tenant-request blocking probability and secret-key resource utilization.
The advent of cryptographically relevant quantum computers poses an existential threat to classical public-key infrastructure. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) addresses this challenge by providing information-theoretic security for key establishment, independently of any computational hardness assumption. In this work, the deployment and experimental validation of a metropolitan-scale quantum-secure network between data centers in Milan is reported. The network operates over installed fiber infrastructure and implements a layered architecture integrating QKD hardware, standards-compliant Key Management (KM), and centralized Software-Defined Networking (SDN) orchestration. Dynamic path reconfiguration via active optical switching and trusted-node routing allow automated fail-over solutions. Application-layer validation across diverse protocols and workloads confirms the seamless interoperability of all system components. These results establish the technical and operational readiness of metropolitan QKD networks for production deployment, and offer a replicable blueprint for building quantum-secure communication infrastructure at metropolitan scale.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is one of the major cryptographic solutions to tackle the security threats associated to future computational advances, in particular those coming from quantum computing. At the most simple level, QKD can be seen as a highly secure source of symmetric secret keys in two separated places. Nonetheless, the lack of standardization and the strong requirements from the physical layer makes this technology very difficult to integrate in existing infrastructure.However, the success of QKD networks radically depends on the degree in which they can be adopted in the existing infrastructure, and it is a must that it happens via standard protocols and interfaces. The flexibility of novel network paradigms, like Software-Defined Networking (SDN), allows for a faster adoption of new concepts, hardware and services in telecommunications networks. This paradigm can be used for quantum communications, allowing for a fast and scalable deployment of quantum technologies and services in the telecommunications network to a degree that was simply impossible in previous schemes, where the different network devices and their connections should be modified, one by one, to create a quantum communications channel.This tutorial provides an introduction to existing QKD technologies and networks, followed by a descriptive explanation on how SDN principles can be utilized to abstract and integrate QKD systems as part of the network management. This will help to reduce the time-to-market for quantum technologies, and also will make quantum cryptography available as a service to be capitalized by the network operators.