Stochastic user behaviour modelling and network simulation for resource management in cooperation with mobile telecommunications and broadcast networks

The latest generations of telecommunications networks have been designed to deliver higher data rates than widely used second generation telecommunications networks, providing flexible communication capabilities that can deliver high quality video images. However, these new generations of telecommunications networks are interference limited, impairing their performance in cases of heavy traffic and high usage. This limits the services offered by a telecommunications network operator to those that the operator is confident their network can meet the demand for. One way to lift this constraint would be for the mobile telecommunications network operator to obtain the cooperation of a broadcast network operator so that during periods when the demand for the service is too high for the telecommunications network to meet, the service can be transferred to the broadcast network. In the United Kingdom the most recent telecommunications networks on the market are third generation UMTS networks while the terrestrial digital broadcast networks are DVB-T networks. This paper proposes a way for UMTS network operators to forecast the traffic associated with high demand services intended to be deployed on the UMTS network and when demand requires to transfer it to a cooperating DVB-T network. The paper aims to justify to UMTS network operators the use of a DVB-T network as a support for a UMTS network by clearly showing how using a DVB-T network to support it can increase the revenue generated by their network

Sex differences in intimate relationships

Social networks have turned out to be of fundamental importance both for our understanding human sociality and for the design of digital communication technology. However, social networks are themselves based on dyadic relationships and we have little understanding of the dynamics of close relationships and how these change over time. Evolutionary theory suggests that, even in monogamous mating systems, the pattern of investment in close relationships should vary across the lifespan when post-weaning investment plays an important role in maximising fitness. Mobile phone data sets provide us with a unique window into the structure of relationships and the way these change across the lifespan. We here use data from a large national mobile phone dataset to demonstrate striking sex differences in the pattern in the gender-bias of preferred relationships that reflect the way the reproductive investment strategies of the two sexes change across the lifespan: these differences mainly reflect women's shifting patterns of investment in reproduction and parental care. These results suggest that human social strategies may have more complex dynamics than we have tended to assume and a life-history perspective may be crucial for understanding them.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, contains electronic supplementary materia

Analyzing the patterns of ICT utilization for online public participatory planning in Queensland, Australia

Public participation in urban planning includes involving, informing, and consulting the public in planning, management, and other decision-making activities. It is an important part of the planning process, providing opportunity and encouragement for members of the public to express their views. Despite the usefulness of new technologies, however, the majority of Internet and GIS applications have not been very successful in encouraging significant public participation. One reason for this is the lack of readiness in accepting ICTs, both on the part of planning agencies, such as local councils, and members of the public. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the readiness of local councils in Queensland, Australia, to implement online urban planning. Local government authorities (LGAs) comprise the third tier of government in Australia. In Queensland, the local councils have statutory powers over land use zoning and the development approval processes. LGAs develop and implement strategic and local plans, including those for land use. This article considers the extent to which local councils are willing to embrace ICTs as a public participation tool and the extent to which households might be ready to access new computer technologies

Assessing the UK policies for broadband adoption

Broadband technology has been introduced to the business community and the public as a rapid way of exploiting the Internet. The benefits of its use (fast reliable connections, and always on) have been widely realised and broadband diffusion is one of the items at the top of the agenda for technology related polices of governments worldwide. In this paper an examination of the impact of the UK government’s polices upon broadband adoption is undertaken. Based on institutional theory a consideration of the manipulation of supply push and demand pull forces in the diffusion of broadband is offered. Using primary and secondary data sources, an analysis of the specific institutional actions related to IT diffusion as pursued by the UK government in the case of broadband is provided. Bringing the time dimension into consideration it is revealed that the UK government has shifted its attention from supply push-only strategies to more interventional ones where the demand pull forces are also mobilised. It is believed that this research will assist in the extraction of the “success factors” in government intervention that support the diffusion of technology with a view to render favourable results if applied to other national settings

Close relationships: A study of mobile communication records

Mobile phone communication as digital service generates ever-increasing datasets of human communication actions, which in turn allow us to investigate the structure and evolution of social interactions and their networks. These datasets can be used to study the structuring of such egocentric networks with respect to the strength of the relationships by assuming direct dependence of the communication intensity on the strength of the social tie. Recently we have discovered that there are significant differences between the first and further "best friends" from the point of view of age and gender preferences. Here we introduce a control parameter $p_{\rm max}$ based on the statistics of communication with the first and second "best friend" and use it to filter the data. We find that when $p_{\rm max}$ is decreased the identification of the "best friend" becomes less ambiguous and the earlier observed effects get stronger, thus corroborating them.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

A Multi-perspective Analysis of Carrier-Grade NAT Deployment

As ISPs face IPv4 address scarcity they increasingly turn to network address translation (NAT) to accommodate the address needs of their customers. Recently, ISPs have moved beyond employing NATs only directly at individual customers and instead begun deploying Carrier-Grade NATs (CGNs) to apply address translation to many independent and disparate endpoints spanning physical locations, a phenomenon that so far has received little in the way of empirical assessment. In this work we present a broad and systematic study of the deployment and behavior of these middleboxes. We develop a methodology to detect the existence of hosts behind CGNs by extracting non-routable IP addresses from peer lists we obtain by crawling the BitTorrent DHT. We complement this approach with improvements to our Netalyzr troubleshooting service, enabling us to determine a range of indicators of CGN presence as well as detailed insights into key properties of CGNs. Combining the two data sources we illustrate the scope of CGN deployment on today's Internet, and report on characteristics of commonly deployed CGNs and their effect on end users