MAGDA: A Mobile Agent based Grid Architecture

Mobile agents mean both a technology and a programming paradigm. They allow for a flexible approach which can alleviate a number of issues present in distributed and Grid-based systems, by means of features such as migration, cloning, messaging and other provided mechanisms. In this paper we describe an architecture (MAGDA – Mobile Agent based Grid Architecture) we have designed and we are currently developing to support programming and execution of mobile agent based application upon Grid systems

Macro-routing: a new hierarchical routing protocol

In a continually evolving Internet, tools such as quality of service routing must be used in order to accommodate user demands. QoS routing raises scalability issues within very large networks, which can he avoided by using hierarchical routing strategies. However, such strategies can lead to inaccurate path selection due to the aggregation process. To avoid such problems, we propose a hierarchical routing protocol, called macro-routing, which can distribute the route computation more efficiently throughout the network using mobile agents. It processes more detailed information than conventional hierarchical routing protocols, so is more likely to find the best path between source and destination. Also, by using mobile agents, more than one available path can be found. This provides a fast recovery mechanism, where no protocol restart is needed in a failure situation

Optimizing memory management for optimistic simulation with reinforcement learning

Simulation is a powerful technique to explore complex scenarios and analyze systems related to a wide range of disciplines. To allow for an efficient exploitation of the available computing power, speculative Time Warp-based Parallel Discrete Event Simulation is universally recognized as a viable solution. In this context, the rollback operation is a fundamental building block to support a correct execution even when causality inconsistencies are a posteriori materialized. If this operation is supported via checkpoint/restore strategies, memory management plays a fundamental role to ensure high performance of the simulation run. With few exceptions, adaptive protocols targeting memory management for Time Warp-based simulations have been mostly based on a pre-defined analytic models of the system, expressed as a closed-form functions that map system's state to control parameters. The underlying assumption is that the model itself is optimal. In this paper, we present an approach that exploits reinforcement learning techniques. Rather than assuming an optimal control strategy, we seek to find the optimal strategy through parameter exploration. A value function that captures the history of system feedback is used, and no a-priori knowledge of the system is required. An experimental assessment of the viability of our proposal is also provided for a mobile cellular system simulation

DISCO: Distributed Multi-domain SDN Controllers

Modern multi-domain networks now span over datacenter networks, enterprise networks, customer sites and mobile entities. Such networks are critical and, thus, must be resilient, scalable and easily extensible. The emergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) protocols, which enables to decouple the data plane from the control plane and dynamically program the network, opens up new ways to architect such networks. In this paper, we propose DISCO, an open and extensible DIstributed SDN COntrol plane able to cope with the distributed and heterogeneous nature of modern overlay networks and wide area networks. DISCO controllers manage their own network domain and communicate with each others to provide end-to-end network services. This communication is based on a unique lightweight and highly manageable control channel used by agents to self-adaptively share aggregated network-wide information. We implemented DISCO on top of the Floodlight OpenFlow controller and the AMQP protocol. We demonstrated how DISCO's control plane dynamically adapts to heterogeneous network topologies while being resilient enough to survive to disruptions and attacks and providing classic functionalities such as end-point migration and network-wide traffic engineering. The experimentation results we present are organized around three use cases: inter-domain topology disruption, end-to-end priority service request and virtual machine migration

Federated Embedded Systems – a review of the literature in related fields

This report is concerned with the vision of smart interconnected objects, a vision that has attracted much attention lately. In this paper, embedded, interconnected, open, and heterogeneous control systems are in focus, formally referred to as Federated Embedded Systems. To place FES into a context, a review of some related research directions is presented. This review includes such concepts as systems of systems, cyber-physical systems, ubiquitous computing, internet of things, and multi-agent systems. Interestingly, the reviewed fields seem to overlap with each other in an increasing number of ways

Mobile Online Gaming via Resource Sharing

Mobile gaming presents a number of main issues which remain open. These are concerned mainly with connectivity, computational capacities, memory and battery constraints. In this paper, we discuss the design of a fully distributed approach for the support of mobile Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs). In mobile environments, several features might be exploited to enable resource sharing among multiple devices / game consoles owned by different mobile users. We show the advantages of trading computing / networking facilities among mobile players. This operation mode opens a wide number of interesting sharing scenarios, thus promoting the deployment of novel mobile online games. In particular, once mobile nodes make their resource available for the community, it becomes possible to distribute the software modules that compose the game engine. This allows to distribute the workload for the game advancement management. We claim that resource sharing is in unison with the idea of ludic activity that is behind MOGs. Hence, such schemes can be profitably employed in these contexts.Comment: Proceedings of 3nd ICST/CREATE-NET Workshop on DIstributed SImulation and Online gaming (DISIO 2012). In conjunction with SIMUTools 2012. Desenzano, Italy, March 2012. ISBN: 978-1-936968-47-