Mobility management across converged IP-based heterogeneous access networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 8/2/2010.In order to satisfy customer demand for a high performance “global” mobility service, network operators (ISPs, carriers, mobile operators, etc.) are facing the need to evolve to a converged “all-IP” centric heterogeneous access infrastructure. However, the integration of such heterogeneous access networks (e.g. 802.11, 802.16e, UMTS etc) brings major mobility issues. This thesis tackles issues plaguing existing mobility management solutions in converged IP-based heterogeneous networks. In order to do so, the thesis firstly proposes a cross-layer mechanism using the upcoming IEEE802.21 MIH services to make intelligent and optimized handovers. In this respect, FMIPv6 is integrated with the IEEE802.21 mechanism to provide seamless mobility during the overall handover process. The proposed solution is then applied in a simulated vehicular environment to optimize the NEMO handover process. It is shown through analysis and simulations of the signalling process that the overall expected handover (both L2 and L3) latency in FMIPv6 can be reduced by the proposed mechanism by 69%. Secondly, it is expected that the operator of a Next Generation Network will provide mobility as a service that will generate significant revenues. As a result, dynamic service bootstrapping and authorization mechanisms must be in place to efficiently deploy a mobility service (without static provisioning), which will allow only legitimate users to access the service. A GNU Linux based test-bed has been implemented to demonstrate this. The experiments presented show the handover performance of the secured FMIPv6 over the implemented test-bed compared to plain FMIPv6 and MIPv6 by providing quantitative measurements and results on the quality of experience perceived by the users of IPv6 multimedia applications. The results show the inclusion of the additional signalling of the proposed architecture for the purpose of authorization and bootstrapping (i.e. key distribution using HOKEY) has no adverse effect on the overall handover process. Also, using a formal security analysis tool, it is shown that the proposed mechanism is safe/secure from the induced security threats. Lastly, a novel IEEE802.21 assisted EAP based re-authentication scheme over a service authorization and bootstrapping framework is presented. AAA based authentication mechanisms like EAP incur signalling overheads due to large RTTs. As a result, overall handover latency also increases. Therefore, a fast re-authentication scheme is presented which utilizes IEEE802.21 MIH services to minimize the EAP authentication process delays and as a result reduce the overall handover latency. Analysis of the signalling process based on analytical results shows that the overall handover latency for mobility protocols will be approximately reduced by 70% by the proposed scheme

Mecanismos de mobilidade rápida com suporte de QdS

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesA área das redes de comunicações está, neste momento, a deparar-se com um novo paradigma causado pela tendência de convergência de redes sem fios e celulares. Desta convergência resultará a existência de uma camada de rede integradora, para facilitar o suporte de mecanismos de Qualidade de Serviço e mobilidade. Aqui, o suporte de mobilidade rápida e transparente, sem ser perceptível pelo utilizador, tem sido alvo de muita atenção, apesar de ainda existirem algumas limitações no seu suporte. A mobilidade transparente entre redes celulares, sem fios e fixas, é ambicionada mas ainda não foi alcançada. O trabalho realizado nesta Dissertação consiste na descrição, especificação, implementação e teste de uma nova arquitectura de mobilidade sobre o protocolo IP. Esta arquitectura é baseada no protocolo de mobilidade Mobility Support for IPv6 e em extensões de Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6, sendo capaz de efectuar handovers iniciados pelo terminal e pela rede. A mobilidade é transparente entre tecnologias de acesso heterogéneas, através da integração de mecanismos de qualidade de serviço, tais como autorização de handovers, controlo de acesso, reserva e atribuição de recursos no novo ponto de ligação e também integrada com subsistemas de autenticação. São também propostos outros mecanismos de mobilidade rápida que fazem uso do protocolo multicast para distribuir os fluxos de tráfego direccionados ao terminal, pelos routers de acesso vizinhos, permitindo que os terminais móveis mudem para qualquer router de acesso na vizinhança sem interrupção dos serviços em curso. Estes mecanismos foram projectados para terminais móveis com grandes requisitos de mobilidade. No âmbito do projecto IST Daidalos foi efectuada a integração de uma rede de próxima geração (4G) de forma a permitir a realização de testes de desempenho e conformidade aos mecanismos propostos. A presente Dissertação efectua uma avaliação de desempenho de uma arquitectura de mobilidade, em cenários intra- e inter-tecnologia, numa rede de testes real. Nesta avaliação foram utilizadas as métricas de atraso, jitter e perdas de pacotes nas fases de preparação e execução do handover. O impacto deste processo em comunicações de dados sobre TCP e UDP é também analisado. A arquitectura e os resultados obtidos no demonstrador real são apresentados e discutidos. ABSTRACT: The field of network communications is, nowadays, facing a new paradigm caused by the forthcoming convergence of cellular and wireless data networks, which seems unavoidable. This convergence will result on an integration layer, to ease the support for Quality of Service and mobility mechanisms. Here, the support for fast and seamless mobility, not perceptible by the user, has been getting much attention, although several limitations still exist in this support. Seamless mobility between cellular, wireless and wired data networks is envisioned, but not yet achieved. The work performed in the scope of this thesis aims to describe, specify, implement and test a novel mobility architecture based on the IP protocol. This architecture is based on the mobility protocol Mobility Support for IPv6 and on extensions of Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6 RFCs, and is able to provide mobile terminal and network initiated handovers. The mobility is seamless across heterogeneous access technologies, by integrating Quality of Service mechanisms, such as handover authorization, access control, resources reservation and allocation at the new point of attachment, also integrated with an authentication sub-system. Other novel fast mobility mechanisms are also proposed, which make use of the multicast protocol to distribute the traffic flows directed to the terminal during the handover process among the neighbour access routers, allowing the terminal to handover to any access router in the vicinity without disruption of the ongoing services. These latter mechanisms were designed to mobile terminals with high mobility requirements. In the scope of the IST Daidalos framework an integration process of a next generation (4G) network was carried out in order to perform performance and compliance tests to the proposed mechanisms. Furthermore, this thesis also evaluates the performance of a mobility architecture, both in intra and intertechnology scenarios, in a real testbed. In this evaluation were considered metrics such as packet delay, jitter and loss of the handover in its preparation and execution phases. The impact of the handover on ongoing TCP and UDP data communications is also addressed. The architecture and results obtained from the real demonstrator are also presented and discussed

Fast and seamless mobility management in IPV6-based next-generation wireless networks

Introduction -- Access router tunnelling protocol (ARTP) -- Proposed integrated architecture for next generation wireless networks -- Proposed seamless handoff schemes in next generation wireless networks -- Proposed fast mac layer handoff scheme for MIPV6/WLANs

Mobility management across converged IP-based heterogeneous access networks

In order to satisfy customer demand for a high performance “global” mobility service, network operators (ISPs, carriers, mobile operators, etc.) are facing the need to evolve to a converged “all-IP” centric heterogeneous access infrastructure. However, the integration of such heterogeneous access networks (e.g. 802.11, 802.16e, UMTS etc) brings major mobility issues. This thesis tackles issues plaguing existing mobility management solutions in converged IP-based heterogeneous networks. In order to do so, the thesis firstly proposes a cross-layer mechanism using the upcoming IEEE802.21 MIH services to make intelligent and optimized handovers. In this respect, FMIPv6 is integrated with the IEEE802.21 mechanism to provide seamless mobility during the overall handover process. The proposed solution is then applied in a simulated vehicular environment to optimize the NEMO handover process. It is shown through analysis and simulations of the signalling process that the overall expected handover (both L2 and L3) latency in FMIPv6 can be reduced by the proposed mechanism by 69%. Secondly, it is expected that the operator of a Next Generation Network will provide mobility as a service that will generate significant revenues. As a result, dynamic service bootstrapping and authorization mechanisms must be in place to efficiently deploy a mobility service (without static provisioning), which will allow only legitimate users to access the service. A GNU Linux based test-bed has been implemented to demonstrate this. The experiments presented show the handover performance of the secured FMIPv6 over the implemented test-bed compared to plain FMIPv6 and MIPv6 by providing quantitative measurements and results on the quality of experience perceived by the users of IPv6 multimedia applications. The results show the inclusion of the additional signalling of the proposed architecture for the purpose of authorization and bootstrapping (i.e. key distribution using HOKEY) has no adverse effect on the overall handover process. Also, using a formal security analysis tool, it is shown that the proposed mechanism is safe/secure from the induced security threats. Lastly, a novel IEEE802.21 assisted EAP based re-authentication scheme over a service authorization and bootstrapping framework is presented. AAA based authentication mechanisms like EAP incur signalling overheads due to large RTTs. As a result, overall handover latency also increases. Therefore, a fast re-authentication scheme is presented which utilizes IEEE802.21 MIH services to minimize the EAP authentication process delays and as a result reduce the overall handover latency. Analysis of the signalling process based on analytical results shows that the overall handover latency for mobility protocols will be approximately reduced by 70% by the proposed scheme.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Mobility management across converged IP-based heterogeneous access networks

In order to satisfy customer demand for a high performance “global” mobility service, network operators (ISPs, carriers, mobile operators, etc.) are facing the need to evolve to a converged “all-IP” centric heterogeneous access infrastructure. However, the integration of such heterogeneous access networks (e.g. 802.11, 802.16e, UMTS etc) brings major mobility issues. This thesis tackles issues plaguing existing mobility management solutions in converged IP-based heterogeneous networks. In order to do so, the thesis firstly proposes a cross-layer mechanism using the upcoming IEEE802.21 MIH services to make intelligent and optimized handovers. In this respect, FMIPv6 is integrated with the IEEE802.21 mechanism to provide seamless mobility during the overall handover process. The proposed solution is then applied in a simulated vehicular environment to optimize the NEMO handover process. It is shown through analysis and simulations of the signalling process that the overall expected handover (both L2 and L3) latency in FMIPv6 can be reduced by the proposed mechanism by 69%. Secondly, it is expected that the operator of a Next Generation Network will provide mobility as a service that will generate significant revenues. As a result, dynamic service bootstrapping and authorization mechanisms must be in place to efficiently deploy a mobility service (without static provisioning), which will allow only legitimate users to access the service. A GNU Linux based test-bed has been implemented to demonstrate this. The experiments presented show the handover performance of the secured FMIPv6 over the implemented test-bed compared to plain FMIPv6 and MIPv6 by providing quantitative measurements and results on the quality of experience perceived by the users of IPv6 multimedia applications. The results show the inclusion of the additional signalling of the proposed architecture for the purpose of authorization and bootstrapping (i.e. key distribution using HOKEY) has no adverse effect on the overall handover process. Also, using a formal security analysis tool, it is shown that the proposed mechanism is safe/secure from the induced security threats. Lastly, a novel IEEE802.21 assisted EAP based re-authentication scheme over a service authorization and bootstrapping framework is presented. AAA based authentication mechanisms like EAP incur signalling overheads due to large RTTs. As a result, overall handover latency also increases. Therefore, a fast re-authentication scheme is presented which utilizes IEEE802.21 MIH services to minimize the EAP authentication process delays and as a result reduce the overall handover latency. Analysis of the signalling process based on analytical results shows that the overall handover latency for mobility protocols will be approximately reduced by 70% by the proposed scheme.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Security architecture for Fog-To-Cloud continuum system

Nowadays, by increasing the number of connected devices to Internet rapidly, cloud computing cannot handle the real-time processing. Therefore, fog computing was emerged for providing data processing, filtering, aggregating, storing, network, and computing closer to the users. Fog computing provides real-time processing with lower latency than cloud. However, fog computing did not come to compete with cloud, it comes to complete the cloud. Therefore, a hierarchical Fog-to-Cloud (F2C) continuum system was introduced. The F2C system brings the collaboration between distributed fogs and centralized cloud. In F2C systems, one of the main challenges is security. Traditional cloud as security provider is not suitable for the F2C system due to be a single-point-of-failure; and even the increasing number of devices at the edge of the network brings scalability issues. Furthermore, traditional cloud security cannot be applied to the fog devices due to their lower computational power than cloud. On the other hand, considering fog nodes as security providers for the edge of the network brings Quality of Service (QoS) issues due to huge fog device’s computational power consumption by security algorithms. There are some security solutions for fog computing but they are not considering the hierarchical fog to cloud characteristics that can cause a no-secure collaboration between fog and cloud. In this thesis, the security considerations, attacks, challenges, requirements, and existing solutions are deeply analyzed and reviewed. And finally, a decoupled security architecture is proposed to provide the demanded security in hierarchical and distributed fashion with less impact on the QoS.Hoy en día, al aumentar rápidamente el número de dispositivos conectados a Internet, el cloud computing no puede gestionar el procesamiento en tiempo real. Por lo tanto, la informática de niebla surgió para proporcionar procesamiento de datos, filtrado, agregación, almacenamiento, red y computación más cercana a los usuarios. La computación nebulizada proporciona procesamiento en tiempo real con menor latencia que la nube. Sin embargo, la informática de niebla no llegó a competir con la nube, sino que viene a completar la nube. Por lo tanto, se introdujo un sistema continuo jerárquico de niebla a nube (F2C). El sistema F2C aporta la colaboración entre las nieblas distribuidas y la nube centralizada. En los sistemas F2C, uno de los principales retos es la seguridad. La nube tradicional como proveedor de seguridad no es adecuada para el sistema F2C debido a que se trata de un único punto de fallo; e incluso el creciente número de dispositivos en el borde de la red trae consigo problemas de escalabilidad. Además, la seguridad tradicional de la nube no se puede aplicar a los dispositivos de niebla debido a su menor poder computacional que la nube. Por otro lado, considerar los nodos de niebla como proveedores de seguridad para el borde de la red trae problemas de Calidad de Servicio (QoS) debido al enorme consumo de energía computacional del dispositivo de niebla por parte de los algoritmos de seguridad. Existen algunas soluciones de seguridad para la informática de niebla, pero no están considerando las características de niebla a nube jerárquica que pueden causar una colaboración insegura entre niebla y nube. En esta tesis, las consideraciones de seguridad, los ataques, los desafíos, los requisitos y las soluciones existentes se analizan y revisan en profundidad. Y finalmente, se propone una arquitectura de seguridad desacoplada para proporcionar la seguridad exigida de forma jerárquica y distribuida con menor impacto en la QoS.Postprint (published version

Virtual Mobility Domains - A Mobility Architecture for the Future Internet

The advances in hardware and wireless technologies have made mobile communication devices affordable by a vast user community. With the advent of rich multimedia and social networking content, an influx of myriads of applications, and Internet supported services, there is an increasing user demand for the Internet connectivity anywhere and anytime. Mobility management is thus a crucial requirement for the Internet today. This work targets novel mobility management techniques, designed to work with the Floating Cloud Tiered (FCT) internetworking model, proposed for a future Internet. We derive the FCT internetworking model from the tiered structure existing among Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks, to define their business and peering relationships. In our novel mobility management scheme, we define Virtual Mobility Domains (VMDs) of various scopes, that can support both intra and inter-domain roaming using a single address for a mobile node. The scheme is network based and hence imposes no operational load on the mobile node. This scheme is the first of its kind, by leveraging the tiered structure and its hierarchical properties, the collaborative network-based mobility management mechanism, and the inheritance information in the tiered addresses to route packets. The contributions of this PhD thesis can be summarized as follows: · We contribute to the literature with a comprehensive analysis of the future Internet architectures and mobility protocols over the period of 2002-2012, in light of their identity and handoff management schemes. We present a qualitative evaluation of current and future schemes on a unified platform. · We design and implement a novel user-centric future Internet mobility architecture called Virtual Mobility Domain. VMD proposes a seamless, network-based, unique collaborative mobility management within/across ASes and ISPs in the FCT Internetworking model. The analytical and simulation-based handoff performance analysis of the VMD architecture in comparison with the IPv6-based mobility protocols presents the considerable performance improvements achieved by the VMD architecture. · We present a novel and user-centric handoff cost framework to analyze handoff performance of different mobility schemes. The framework helps to examine the impacts of registration costs, signaling overhead, and data loss for Internet connected mobile users employing a unified cost metric. We analyze the effect of each parameter in the handoff cost framework on the handoff cost components. We also compare the handoff performance of IPv6-based mobility protocols to the VMD. · We present a handoff cost optimization problem and analysis of its characteristics. We consider a mobility user as the primary focus of our study. We then identify the suitable mathematical methods that can be leveraged to solve the problem. We model the handoff cost problem in an optimization tool. We also conduct a mobility study - best of our knowledge, first of its kind - on providing a guide for finding the number of handoffs in a typical VMD for any given user\u27s mobility model. Plugging the output of mobility study, we then conduct a numerical analysis to find out optimum VMD for a given user mobility model and check if the theoretical inferences are in agreement with the output of the optimization tool

Content-Centric Networking in the Internet of Things

Advanced low-cost wireless technologies have enabled a huge variety of real life applications in the past years. Wireless sensor technologies have emerged in almost every application field imaginable. Smartphones equipped with Internet connectivity and home electronics with networking capability have made their way to everyday life. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a novel paradigm that has risen to frame the idea of a large scale sensing ecosystem, in which all possible devices could contribute. The definition of a thing in this context is very vague. It can be anything from passive RFID tags on retail packaging to intelligent transducers observing the surrounding world. The amount of connected devices in such a worldwide sensing network would be enormous. This is ultimately challenging for the current Internet architecture which is several decades old and is based on host-to-host connectivity. The current Internet addresses content by location. It is based on point-to-point connections, which eventually means that every connected device has to be uniquely addressable through a hostname or an IP address. This paradigm was originally designed for sharing resources rather than data. Today the majority of Internet usage consists of sharing data, which is not what it was originally designed for. Various patchy improvements have come and gone, but a thorough architectural redesign is required sooner or later. Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a new networking paradigm that addresses content by name instead of location. Its goal is to replace the current where with what, since the location of most content on the Internet is irrelevant to the end user. Several ICN architecture proposals have emerged from the research community, out of which Content-Centric Networking (CCN) is the most significant one in the context of this thesis. We have come up with the idea of combining CCN with the concept of IoT. In this thesis we look at different ways on how to make use of the hierarchical CCN content naming, in-network caching and other information-centric networking characteristics in a sensor environment. As a proof of concept we implemented a presentation bridge for a home automation system that provides services to the network through CCN

A Survey on the Security and the Evolution of Osmotic and Catalytic Computing for 5G Networks

The 5G networks have the capability to provide high compatibility for the new applications, industries, and business models. These networks can tremendously improve the quality of life by enabling various use cases that require high data-rate, low latency, and continuous connectivity for applications pertaining to eHealth, automatic vehicles, smart cities, smart grid, and the Internet of Things (IoT). However, these applications need secure servicing as well as resource policing for effective network formations. There have been a lot of studies, which emphasized the security aspects of 5G networks while focusing only on the adaptability features of these networks. However, there is a gap in the literature which particularly needs to follow recent computing paradigms as alternative mechanisms for the enhancement of security. To cover this, a detailed description of the security for the 5G networks is presented in this article along with the discussions on the evolution of osmotic and catalytic computing-based security modules. The taxonomy on the basis of security requirements is presented, which also includes the comparison of the existing state-of-the-art solutions. This article also provides a security model, "CATMOSIS", which idealizes the incorporation of security features on the basis of catalytic and osmotic computing in the 5G networks. Finally, various security challenges and open issues are discussed to emphasize the works to follow in this direction of research.Comment: 34 pages, 7 tables, 7 figures, Published In 5G Enabled Secure Wireless Networks, pp. 69-102. Springer, Cham, 201