A software-defined network solution for managing fog computing resources in sensor networks

The fast growth of Internet-connected embedded devices raises new challenges for the traditional network design, such as scalability, diversity, and complexity. To endorse these challenges, this thesis suggests the aggregation of several emerging technologies: software-defined networking (SDN), fog computing, containerization and sensor virtualization. This thesis proposes, designs, implements and evaluates a new solution based on the emergent paradigm of SDN to efficiently manage virtualized resources located at the network edge in scenarios involving embedded sensor devices. The sensor virtualization through the containers provides agility, flexibility and abstraction for the data processing, being possible to summarize the huge amount of data produced by sensor devices. The proposed architecture uses a software-defined system, managed by a Ryu SDN controller, and a websocket broker written from scratch that analyses the messages sent to the controller and activates containers when required. Performance and functional tests were performed to assess the time required from activating the sensor containers to being able to communicate with them. The results were obtained by sending four ICMP packets. The best time response results were obtained by the proactive controller behavior mode, when compared to the hybrid and reactive modes. This thesis contributed to fill the gaps in the area of IoT or sensor networks, concerning the design and implementation of an architecture that performed on-demand activation of offline IoT fog computing resources by using an SDN controller and sensor virtualization through containers.O rápido crescimento de dispositivos embebidos conectados à Internet gera novos desafios para a arquitetura de rede tradicional, tais como escalabilidade, diversidade e complexidade. Para resolver estes desafios, esta tese sugere a agregação de diversas tecnologias emergentes: rede definida por software (SDN), contentores, computação na periferia e virtualização de sensores. Esta tese propõe, projeta, implementa e avalia uma nova solução baseada no paradigma emergente do SDN para gerir, de forma eficiente, recursos virtualizados que se localizam na periferia da rede, em cenários com sensores embebidos. A virtualização de sensores, através do uso de contentores, fornece agilidade, flexibilidade e abstração para processamento de dados, sendo possível a sumarização do grande volume de dados produzido pelos sensores. A arquitetura proposta usa um sistema definido por software, gerido por um controlador SDN Ryu, e um websocket broker escrito desde o zero, que analisa as mensagens enviadas ao controlador e ativa contentores quando necessário. Foram realizados testes funcionais e de desempenho de forma a ser possível avaliar o tempo necessário desde a ativação de um contentor de sensores até ser possível a comunicação com este. Os resultados foram obtidos através do envio de quatro pacotes ICMP. O melhor resultado foi obtido pelo modo de comportamento proativo do controlador, quando comparado aos modos híbrido e reativo. Esta tese contribuiu para preencher as lacunas na área de IoT ou redes de sensores, no que diz respeito ao desenho e implementação de uma arquitetura que executa a ativação sob pedido de recursos computacionais e periféricos de IoT quando estes se encontram desligados, através do uso de um controlador SDN e virtualização de sensores através de contentores

A Software-Defined Solution for Managing Fog Computing Resources in Sensor Networks

The fast growth of Internet-connected embedded devices demands for new capabilities at the network edge. These new capabilities are local processing, fast communications, and resource virtualization. The current work aims to address the previous capabilities by designing and deploying a new proposal, which offers on-demand activation of offline IoT fog computing assets via a Software Defined Networking (SDN) based solution combined with containerization and sensor virtualization. We present and discuss performance and functional outcomes from emulated tests made on our proposal. Analysing the performance results, the system latency has two parts. The first part is about the delay induced by limitations on the networking resources. The second part of the system latency is due to the on-demand activation of the required processing resources, which are initially powered off towards a more sustainable system operation. In addition, analysing the functional results, when a real IoT protocol is used, we evidence our proposal viability to be deployed with the necessary orchestration in distributed scenarios involving embedded devices, actuators, controllers, and brokers at the network edge.Comment: 8 pages, 14 figures, 2 tables, 16 reference

Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte

Smart Flow Steering Agent for End-to-End Delay Improvement in Software-Defined Networks

لضمان الإستجابة للخطأ والإدارة الموزعة، يتم استخدام البروتوكولات الموزعة كأحد المفاهيم المعمارية الرئيسية التي تتضمنها شبكة الإنترنت. ومع ذلك، يمكن التغلب على عدم الكفاءة وعدم الاستقرار والقصور بمساعدة بنية الشبكات الجديدة التي تسمى الشبكات المعرفة بالبرمجيات SDN. الخاصية الرئيسية لهذه المعمارية هي فصل مستوى التحكم عن مستوى البيانات. إن تقليل التصادم سيؤدي إلى تحسين سرعة الإستجابة وزيادة البيانات المرسلة بصورة صحيحة، لهذا السبب يجب أن يكون هناك توزيع متجانس للحمل المروري عبر مسارات الشبكة المختلفة. تقدم هذه الورقة البحثية أداة توجيه ذكية SFSA لتوجيه تدفق البيانات بناءاً على ظروف الشبكة الحالية. لتحسين الإنتاجية وتقليل زمن الوصول، فإن الخوارزمية المقترحة SFSA تقوم بتوزيع حركة مرور البيانات داخل الشبكة على مسارات مناسبة ، بالإضافة إلى الإشراف على الإرتباطات التشعبية وحمل مسارات نقل البيانات. تم استخدام سيناريو خوارزمية توجيه شجرة الامتداد الدنياMST وأخرى مع خوارزمية التوجيه المعروفة بفتح أقصر مسار أولاً OSPF لتقييم جودة الخوارمية المقترحة SFSA . على سبيل المقارنة ، بالنسبة لخوارزميات التوجيه المذكروة آنفاً ، فقد حققت استراتيجيةSFSA المقترحة انخفاضاً بنسبة 2٪ في معدل ضياع حزم البيانات PDR ، وبنسبة تتراوح بين 15-45٪ في سرعة إستلام البيانات من المصدر إلى الالوجهة النهائية لحزمة البيانات وكذلك انخفاض بنسبة 23 ٪ في زمن رحلة ذهاب وعودة RTT . تم استخدام محاكي Mininet ووحدة التحكم POX لإجراء المحاكاة. ميزة أخرى من SFSA على MST و OSPF هي أن وقت التنفيذ والاسترداد لا يحمل تقلبات. يتقوم أداة التوجيه الذكية المقترحة في هذه الورقة البحثية من فتح أفقاً جديداً لنشر أدوات ذكية جديدة في شبكة SDN تعزز قابلية برمجة الشبكات وإدارتها .To ensure fault tolerance and distributed management, distributed protocols are employed as one of the major architectural concepts underlying the Internet. However, inefficiency, instability and fragility could be potentially overcome with the help of the novel networking architecture called software-defined networking (SDN). The main property of this architecture is the separation of the control and data planes. To reduce congestion and thus improve latency and throughput, there must be homogeneous distribution of the traffic load over the different network paths. This paper presents a smart flow steering agent (SFSA) for data flow routing based on current network conditions. To enhance throughput and minimize latency, the SFSA distributes network traffic to suitable paths, in addition to supervising link and path loads. A scenario with a minimum spanning tree (MST) routing algorithm and another with open shortest path first (OSPF) routing algorithms were employed to assess the SFSA. By comparison, to these two routing algorithms, the suggested SFSA strategy determined a reduction of 2% in packets dropped ratio (PDR), a reduction of 15-45% in end-to-end delay according to the traffic produced, as well as a reduction of 23% in round trip time (RTT). The Mininet emulator and POX controller were employed to conduct the simulation. Another advantage of the SFSA over the MST and OSPF is that its implementation and recovery time do not exhibit fluctuations. The smart flow steering agent will open a new horizon for deploying new smart agents in SDN that enhance network programmability and management