Testing for Traffic Differentiation with ChkDiff: The Downstream Case

International audienceIn the past decade it has been found that some Internet operators offer degraded service to selected user traffic by applying various differentiation techniques. If from a legal point of view many countries have discussed and approved laws in favor of Internet neutrality, confirmation with measuring tools for even an experienced user remains hard in practice. In this paper we extend and complete our tool ChkDiff, previously presented for the upstream case, by checking for shaping also on the user’s downstream traffic. After attempting to localize shapers at the access ISP on upstream traffic, we replay downstream traffic from a measurement server and analyze per-flow one-way delays and losses, while taking into account the possibility of multiple paths between the two endpoints. As opposed to other proposals in the literature, our methodology does not depend on any specific Internet application a user might want to test and it is robust to evolving differentiation techniques that alter delays or induce losses. We provide here a detailed description of the downstream tool and a validation in the wild for wired, wireless and 3G connections

Enabling the orchestration of IoT slices through edge and cloud microservice platforms

This article addresses one of the main challenges related to the practical deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions: the coordinated operation of entities at different infrastructures to support the automated orchestration of end-to-end Internet of Things services. This idea is referred to as "Internet of Things slicing" and is based on the network slicing concept already defined for the Fifth Generation (5G) of mobile networks. In this context, we present the architectural design of a slice orchestrator addressing the aforementioned challenge, based on well-known standard technologies and protocols. The proposed solution is able to integrate existing technologies, like cloud computing, with other more recent technologies like edge computing and network slicing. In addition, a functional prototype of the proposed orchestrator has been implemented, using open-source software and microservice platforms. As a first step to prove the practical feasibility of our solution, the implementation of the orchestrator considers cloud and edge domains. The validation results obtained from the prototype prove the feasibility of the solution from a functional perspective, verifying its capacity to deploy Internet of Things related functions even on resource constrained platforms. This approach enables new application models where these Internet of Things related functions can be onboarded on small unmanned aerial vehicles, offering a flexible and cost-effective solution to deploy these functions at the network edge. In addition, this proposal can also be used on commercial cloud platforms, like the Google Compute Engine, showing that it can take advantage of the benefits of edge and cloud computing respectivelyThe work of Ivan Vidal and Francisco Valera was partially supported by the European H2020 5GinFIRE project (grant agreement 732497), and by the 5GCity project (TEC2016-76795-C6-3-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Traffic Engineering Approach to Virtual-link Provisioning in Software-defined ISP Networks

In this paper, we propose a new approach to virtual-link provisioning in ISP (Internet Service Provider) networks. The approach relies on Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture based on OpenFlow that allows highly granular traffic splitting across multiple paths. The traffic control logic of SDN controller is divided into offline and online component. The online component handles dynamic arrivals of virtual-link requests in accordance with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) requirements. The offline component is responsible for periodic optimization of traffic distribution in the network. In this way, we tend to increase acceptance ratio for virtual-link requests and minimize degradation of best-effort traffic in a scalable manner. Our simulation results show that the proposed method for virtual-link provisioning outperforms solutions that rely on Constrained Shortest Path First (CSPF) and Equal Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) routing

Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Ecological Informatics: translating ecological data into knowledge and decisions in a rapidly changing world: ICEI 2018

The Conference Proceedings are an impressive display of the current scope of Ecological Informatics. Whilst Data Management, Analysis, Synthesis and Forecasting have been lasting popular themes over the past nine biannual ICEI conferences, ICEI 2018 addresses distinctively novel developments in Data Acquisition enabled by cutting edge in situ and remote sensing technology. The here presented ICEI 2018 abstracts captures well current trends and challenges of Ecological Informatics towards: • regional, continental and global sharing of ecological data, • thorough integration of complementing monitoring technologies including DNA-barcoding, • sophisticated pattern recognition by deep learning, • advanced exploration of valuable information in ‘big data’ by means of machine learning and process modelling, • decision-informing solutions for biodiversity conservation and sustainable ecosystem management in light of global changes

The Bronze Door Panels within the Façade of San Zeno Maggiore, Verona: A Chronological and Liturgical Assessment.

This thesis presents an analysis of the bronze door panels of San Zeno Maggiore, Verona, with reference to the surrounding low relief stone sculptures, textual material relating to Bishop Zeno, the patron saint of the church, and the wider religious and political developments of the late tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. In identifying those panels the thesis recognises the way in which the door panels and stone sculptures form a traditional narrative identifying Creation and the Fall on the right juxtaposed with Redemption and Salvation on the left. The core of the thesis focuses on two facets of the bronze door panels: the dating of the panels’ production, and the composition of the doors prior to the earthquake of 1117. The doors are complex and include in their current state panels manufactured by at least two workshops operating in different periods. These are discussed with reference to the works themselves and to recent historical scholarship. The thesis concludes that the panels were manufactured in two periods: the first period may have been either in the Ottonian era (c.960-c.1040) or later in the eleventh century (c.1080); the second period was the later twelfth century (c.1175). The thesis also discusses the stone relief sculptures, carved in 1135-1138, that provide a framework and context for the doors. The second aspect is the baptismal and Paschal lectionary, which incorporates San Zeno’s preferred readings, as the basis for the choice of subjects of the first set of bronze door panels. The massive earthquake of 1117 severely damaged the basilica and some original panels were damaged and discarded. It has not been possible to demonstrate definitively that the sermons and lectionary were known to those who commissioned the panels, but the thesis seeks to show their importance in describing the panel composition. The door panels and stone reliefs assert a symbolic distancing from both Papacy and Empire after the Investiture Controversy. The two lowest stone reliefs, on the left and right of the doorway, represent accounts of Otto and Berengar fighting over Adelaide, and of Theodoric and the wild hunt, respectively. The significance of these narratives is discussed

Aptamer-based optical biosensors

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