Peer-to-Peer Secure Updates for Heterogeneous Edge Devices

We consider the problem of securely distributing software updates to large scale clusters of heterogeneous edge compute nodes. Such nodes are needed to support the Internet of Things and low-latency edge compute scenarios, but are difficult to manage and update because they exist at the edge of the network behind NATs and firewalls that limit connectivity, or because they are mobile and have intermittent network access. We present a prototype secure update architecture for these devices that uses the combination of peer-to-peer protocols and automated NAT traversal techniques. This demonstrates that edge devices can be managed in an environment subject to partial or intermittent network connectivity, where there is not necessarily direct access from a management node to the devices being updated

Modeling and Control of Rare Segments in BitTorrent with Epidemic Dynamics

Despite its existing incentives for leecher cooperation, BitTorrent file sharing fundamentally relies on the presence of seeder peers. Seeder peers essentially operate outside the BitTorrent incentives, with two caveats: slow downlinks lead to increased numbers of "temporary" seeders (who left their console, but will terminate their seeder role when they return), and the copyright liability boon that file segmentation offers for permanent seeders. Using a simple epidemic model for a two-segment BitTorrent swarm, we focus on the BitTorrent rule to disseminate the (locally) rarest segments first. With our model, we show that the rarest-segment first rule minimizes transition time to seeder (complete file acquisition) and equalizes the segment populations in steady-state. We discuss how alternative dissemination rules may {\em beneficially increase} file acquisition times causing leechers to remain in the system longer (particularly as temporary seeders). The result is that leechers are further enticed to cooperate. This eliminates the threat of extinction of rare segments which is prevented by the needed presence of permanent seeders. Our model allows us to study the corresponding trade-offs between performance improvement, load on permanent seeders, and content availability, which we leave for future work. Finally, interpreting the two-segment model as one involving a rare segment and a "lumped" segment representing the rest, we study a model that jointly considers control of rare segments and different uplinks causing "choking," where high-uplink peers will not engage in certain transactions with low-uplink peers.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, A shorter version of this paper that did not include the N-segment lumped model was presented in May 2011 at IEEE ICC, Kyot

WUW (What Users Want): A Service to Enhance Users' Satisfaction in Content-Based Peer-to-Peer Networks

20 pagesPeer-to-Peer (P2P) architectures are more and more used in Content Delivery Net- works (CDN), because the traditional client-server architectures are burdened by high distribution and maintenance cost, whereas in P2P systems those costs are almost negli- gible. In general, such applications do not take into account user preferences, other than QoS-related parameters. As users resources are the richness of P2P systems, we think it is important to satisfy their preferences concerning the usage of their resources. In this work we propose WUW (What Users Want), a service to improve users' satisfaction in a personal way. WUW runs on top of unstructured P2P systems, and its main goal is to allow users to strategically impact their local neighborhoods according to their own personal preferences. We present first results of experiments, deployed in a cluster, obtained with the prototype implementation of our service, which runs on top of Bit- Torrent, the most used file sharing protocol. We show that BitTorrent performances are not affected by the users strategic choices introduced by WUW. The advantage of our approach is that, without loosing performance, users can chose the peers they want to collaborate with according to their personal preferences

Joining BitTorrent and swift to improve P2P transfers

In the last decade, Internet became a new mean to disseminate information, changing the initial paradigms of the network. At the same time, P2P networks became successful to share data between final users. One of the most successful P2P systems is BitTorrent, responsible of more than the 50% of current Internet traffic. Despite this success, BitTorrent lacks some features to become the silver bullet for massive content distribution. With the aim to solve some of this problem, a new protocol called swift was designed. swift is described to be a multiparty transport protocol, with the mission to efficiently disseminate content among a swarm of peers. Novel structures, advanced requesting/acknowledging techniques and bandwidth-efficient congestion control algorithms were used in the design of the protocol. The goal of this project is to build a first prototype of integration of the new transport protocol into an already existing BitTorrent client. The only current implementation of swift, libswift, will be used as the transport layer. A new module for Tribler must be built in order to join the BitTorrent and the libswift operation

SDDV: scalable data dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks

An important challenge in the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) is the scalability of data dissemination. Under dense traffic conditions, the large number of communicating vehicles can easily result in a congested wireless channel. In that situation, delays and packet losses increase to a level where the VANET cannot be applied for road safety applications anymore. This paper introduces scalable data dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks (SDDV), a holistic solution to this problem. It is composed of several techniques spread across the different layers of the protocol stack. Simulation results are presented that illustrate the severity of the scalability problem when applying common state-of-the-art techniques and parameters. Starting from such a baseline solution, optimization techniques are gradually added to SDDV until the scalability problem is entirely solved. Besides the performance evaluation based on simulations, the paper ends with an evaluation of the final SDDV configuration on real hardware. Experiments including 110 nodes are performed on the iMinds w-iLab.t wireless lab. The results of these experiments confirm the results obtained in the corresponding simulations

Metaphoric Diagnosis and Aesculapian Comorbidity of Nigeria in Iwu Jeff’s Verdict of The Gods

There have been brief reviews of Jeff’s Verdict of the Gods online, since its publication in 2020, but there is a vast dearth of critical exegesis of the text. Among the four blurbs on the back page of the dramatic text, only one makes cursory remark about it as a reflection of the Nigerian problems. Beyond such casual reference, this study foregrounds metaphoric diagnosis and aesculapian comorbidity of the plagues threatening the wellbeing of Nigeria and her unity in the text. This gives the play dual interpretative mode – literal and metaphoric – just like Albert Camus’ The Plague and Tony Marinho’s The Epidemic. Like the precursory novels, Verdict of the Gods presents the scenario of a community gone awkward, one in which the gods of healing are irked, when the community is plagued by disease and death, because of the blood of innocent citizens shed by the venal and rapacious leaders. The use of Igbo setting, proverbial witticism and lexes provide a profound proof that the play caricatures, in a satiric form, the contemporary Nigerian sociopolitical scene, using the Greco-Roman medical practice. Jeff cautions Nigeria, that the blood of innocent people killed, or those who die, as a result of the actions or inactions of the leaders is the reason the society may not “see progress” (p.73). The solution to the problems is patriotism and atonement of sins by the rulers and their accomplices.

Mobile Social Networking aided content dissemination in heterogeneous networks

Since more and more mobile applications are based on the proliferation of social information, the study of Mobile Social Net-works (MSNs) combines social sciences and wireless communications. Operating wireless networks more efficiently by exploiting social relationships between MSN users is an appealing but challenging option for network operators. An MSN-aided content dissemination technique is presented as a potential ex-tension of conventional cellular wireless net-works in order to satisfy growing data traffic. By allowing the MSN users to create a self-organized ad hoc network for spontaneously disseminating contents, the network operator may be able to reduce the operational costs and simultaneously achieve an improved network performance. In this paper, we first summarize the basic features of the MSN architecture, followed by a survey of the factors which may affect MSN-aided content dissemination. Using a case study, we demonstrate that one can save resources of the Base Station (BS) while substantially lowering content dissemination delay. Finally, other potential applications of MSN-aided content dissemination are introduced, and a range of future challenges are summarized