DIANA Scheduling Hierarchies for Optimizing Bulk Job Scheduling

The use of meta-schedulers for resource management in large-scale distributed systems often leads to a hierarchy of schedulers. In this paper, we discuss why existing meta-scheduling hierarchies are sometimes not sufficient for Grid systems due to their inability to re-organise jobs already scheduled locally. Such a job re-organisation is required to adapt to evolving loads which are common in heavily used Grid infrastructures. We propose a peer-to-peer scheduling model and evaluate it using case studies and mathematical modelling. We detail the DIANA (Data Intensive and Network Aware) scheduling algorithm and its queue management system for coping with the load distribution and for supporting bulk job scheduling. We demonstrate that such a system is beneficial for dynamic, distributed and self-organizing resource management and can assist in optimizing load or job distribution in complex Grid infrastructures.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures. Presented at the 2nd IEEE Int Conference on eScience & Grid Computing. Amsterdam Netherlands, December 200

Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost, WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process (MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs

On distributed virtual network embedding with guarantees

To provide wide-area network services, resources from different infrastructure providers are needed. Leveraging the consensus-based resource allocation literature, we propose a general distributed auction mechanism for the (NP-hard) virtual network (VNET) embedding problem. Under reasonable assumptions on the bidding scheme, the proposed mechanism is proven to converge, and it is shown that the solutions guarantee a worst case efficiency of (?????) relative to the optimal solution, and that this bound is optimal, that is, no better approximation exists. Using extensive simulations, we confirm superior convergence properties and resource utilization when compared with existing distributed VNET embedding solutions, and we show how byappropriate policy design, our mechanism can be instantiated to accommodate the embedding goals of different service and infrastructure providers, resulting in an attractive and flexible resource allocation solution.This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant CNS-0963974

On distributed virtual network embedding with guarantees

To provide wide-area network services, resources from different infrastructure providers are needed. Leveraging the consensus-based resource allocation literature, we propose a general distributed auction mechanism for the (NP-hard) virtual network (VNET) embedding problem. Under reasonable assumptions on the bidding scheme, the proposed mechanism is proven to converge, and it is shown that the solutions guarantee a worst case efficiency of (?????) relative to the optimal solution, and that this bound is optimal, that is, no better approximation exists. Using extensive simulations, we confirm superior convergence properties and resource utilization when compared with existing distributed VNET embedding solutions, and we show how byappropriate policy design, our mechanism can be instantiated to accommodate the embedding goals of different service and infrastructure providers, resulting in an attractive and flexible resource allocation solution.This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant CNS-0963974

On distributed virtual network embedding with guarantees

To provide wide-area network services, resources from different infrastructure providers are needed. Leveraging the consensus-based resource allocation literature, we propose a general distributed auction mechanism for the (NP-hard) virtual network (VNET) embedding problem. Under reasonable assumptions on the bidding scheme, the proposed mechanism is proven to converge, and it is shown that the solutions guarantee a worst-case efficiency of (1-(1/e)) relative to the optimal node embedding, or VNET embedding if virtual links are mapped to exactly one physical link. This bound is optimal, that is, no better polynomial-time approximation algorithm exists, unless P=NP. Using extensive simulations, we confirm superior convergence properties and resource utilization when compared to existing distributed VNET embedding solutions, and we show how by appropriate policy design, our mechanism can be instantiated to accommodate the embedding goals of different service and infrastructure providers, resulting in an attractive and flexible resource allocation solution.CNS-0963974 - National Science Foundationhttp://www.cs.bu.edu/fac/matta/Papers/ToN-CAD.pdfAccepted manuscrip

Security Aspects of Internet of Things aided Smart Grids: a Bibliometric Survey

The integration of sensors and communication technology in power systems, known as the smart grid, is an emerging topic in science and technology. One of the critical issues in the smart grid is its increased vulnerability to cyber threats. As such, various types of threats and defense mechanisms are proposed in literature. This paper offers a bibliometric survey of research papers focused on the security aspects of Internet of Things (IoT) aided smart grids. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the very first bibliometric survey paper in this specific field. A bibliometric analysis of all journal articles is performed and the findings are sorted by dates, authorship, and key concepts. Furthermore, this paper also summarizes the types of cyber threats facing the smart grid, the various security mechanisms proposed in literature, as well as the research gaps in the field of smart grid security.Comment: The paper is published in Elsevier's Internet of Things journal. 25 pages + 20 pages of reference

Peer-to-Peer Communication Trade-Offs for Smart Grid Applications

Virtual topologies in peer-to-peer networks can reduce the traffic consumed by altering the logical connectivity of peers without altering the underlying network. However, such sparsely connected virtual topologies do not focus on the needs for smart grid applications, which is information dissemination throughout the network, and in turn degrade the performance of distributed control algorithms running on peer-to-peer networks. This paper provides a flexible solution for application developers to prototype and deploy different virtual topologies that balances these trade-offs. First, it introduces a configurable virtual communication topology framework, TopLinkMgr, which enables users to specify any chosen connectivity configuration and deploy peer-to-peer applications using it. Second, it proposes a novel fault-tolerant self-adaptive virtual topology management algorithm, Bounded Path Dissemination, that can ensure the dissemination of information to all peers within a specified threshold. Experiments show that the algorithm improves on convergence speed and accuracy over state-of-the-art methods and is also robust against node failures while consuming significantly less communication bandwidth.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

DIANA Scheduling Hierarchies for Optimizing Bulk Job Scheduling

The use of meta-schedulers for resource management in large-scale distributed systems often leads to a hierarchy of schedulers. In this paper, we discuss why existing meta-scheduling hierarchies are sometimes not sufficient for Grid systems due to their inability to re-organise jobs already scheduled locally. Such a job re-organisation is required to adapt to evolving loads which are common in heavily used Grid infrastructures. We propose a peer-topeer scheduling model and evaluate it using case studies and mathematical modelling. We detail the DIANA (Data Intensive and Network Aware) scheduling algorithm and its queue management system for coping with the load distribution and for supporting bulk job scheduling. We demonstrate that such a system is beneficial for dynamic, distributed and self-organizing resource management and can assist in optimizing load or job distribution in complex Grid infrastructures