A nearly zero-energy microgrid testbed laboratory: Centralized control strategy based on SCADA system

Currently, despite the use of renewable energy sources (RESs), distribution networks are facing problems, such as complexity and low productivity. Emerging microgrids (MGs) with RESs based on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) are an effective solution to control, manage, and finally deal with these challenges. The development and success of MGs is highly dependent on the use of power electronic interfaces. The use of these interfaces is directly related to the progress of SCADA systems and communication infrastructures. The use of SCADA systems for the control and operation of MGs and active distribution networks promotes productivity and efficiency. This paper presents a real MG case study called the LAMBDA MG testbed laboratory, which has been implemented in the electrical department of the Sapienza University of Rome with a centralized energy management system (CEMS). The real-time results of the SCADA system show that a CEMS can create proper energy balance in a LAMBDA MG testbed and, consequently, minimize the exchange power of the LAMBDA MG and main grid

Context-Awareness Enhances 5G Multi-Access Edge Computing Reliability

The fifth generation (5G) mobile telecommunication network is expected to support Multi- Access Edge Computing (MEC), which intends to distribute computation tasks and services from the central cloud to the edge clouds. Towards ultra-responsive, ultra-reliable and ultra-low-latency MEC services, the current mobile network security architecture should enable a more decentralized approach for authentication and authorization processes. This paper proposes a novel decentralized authentication architecture that supports flexible and low-cost local authentication with the awareness of context information of network elements such as user equipment and virtual network functions. Based on a Markov model for backhaul link quality, as well as a random walk mobility model with mixed mobility classes and traffic scenarios, numerical simulations have demonstrated that the proposed approach is able to achieve a flexible balance between the network operating cost and the MEC reliability.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Access on Feb. 02, 201

A Virtual Network PaaS for 3GPP 4G and Beyond Core Network Services

Cloud computing and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are emerging as key technologies to overcome the challenges facing 4G and beyond mobile systems. Over the last few years, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) has gained momentum and has become more widely adopted throughout IT enterprises. It simplifies the applications provisioning and accelerates time-to-market while lowering costs. Telco can leverage the same model to provision the 4G and beyond core network services using NFV technology. However, many challenges have to be addressed, mainly due to the specificities of network services. This paper proposes an architecture for a Virtual Network Platform-as-a-Service (VNPaaS) to provision 3GPP 4G and beyond core network services in a distributed environment. As an illustrative use case, the proposed architecture is employed to provision the 3GPP Home Subscriber Server (HSS) as-a-Service (HSSaaS). The HSSaaS is built from Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) resulting from a novel decomposition of HSS. A prototype is implemented and early measurements are made.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, 5th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Networking (IEEE CloudNet 2016

Software Defined Application Delivery Networking

In this thesis we present the architecture, design, and prototype implementation details of AppFabric. AppFabric is a next generation application delivery platform for easily creating, managing and controlling massively distributed and very dynamic application deployments that may span multiple datacenters. Over the last few years, the need for more flexibility, finer control, and automatic management of large (and messy) datacenters has stimulated technologies for virtualizing the infrastructure components and placing them under software-based management and control; generically called Software-defined Infrastructure (SDI). However, current applications are not designed to leverage this dynamism and flexibility offered by SDI and they mostly depend on a mix of different techniques including manual configuration, specialized appliances (middleboxes), and (mostly) proprietary middleware solutions together with a team of extremely conscientious and talented system engineers to get their applications deployed and running. AppFabric, 1) automates the whole control and management stack of application deployment and delivery, 2) allows application architects to define logical workflows consisting of application servers, message-level middleboxes, packet-level middleboxes and network services (both, local and wide-area) composed over application-level routing policies, and 3) provides the abstraction of an application cloud that allows the application to dynamically (and automatically) expand and shrink its distributed footprint across multiple geographically distributed datacenters operated by different cloud providers. The architecture consists of a hierarchical control plane system called Lighthouse and a fully distributed data plane design (with no special hardware components such as service orchestrators, load balancers, message brokers, etc.) called OpenADN . The current implementation (under active development) consists of ~10000 lines of python and C code. AppFabric will allow applications to fully leverage the opportunities provided by modern virtualized Software-Defined Infrastructures. It will serve as the platform for deploying massively distributed, and extremely dynamic next generation application use-cases, including: Internet-of-Things/Cyber-Physical Systems: Through support for managing distributed gather-aggregate topologies common to most Internet-of-Things(IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems(CPS) use-cases. By their very nature, IoT and CPS use cases are massively distributed and have different levels of computation and storage requirements at different locations. Also, they have variable latency requirements for their different distributed sites. Some services, such as device controllers, in an Iot/CPS application workflow may need to gather, process and forward data under near-real time constraints and hence need to be as close to the device as possible. Other services may need more computation to process aggregated data to drive long term business intelligence functions. AppFabric has been designed to provide support for such very dynamic, highly diversified and massively distributed application use-cases. Network Function Virtualization: Through support for heterogeneous workflows, application-aware networking, and network-aware application deployments, AppFabric will enable new partnerships between Application Service Providers (ASPs) and Network Service Providers (NSPs). An application workflow in AppFabric may comprise of application services, packet and message-level middleboxes, and network transport services chained together over an application-level routing substrate. The Application-level routing substrate allows policy-based service chaining where the application may specify policies for routing their application traffic over different services based on application-level content or context. Virtual worlds/multiplayer games: Through support for creating, managing and controlling dynamic and distributed application clouds needed by these applications. AppFabric allows the application to easily specify policies to dynamically grow and shrink the application\u27s footprint over different geographical sites, on-demand. Mobile Apps: Through support for extremely diversified and very dynamic application contexts typical of such applications. Also, AppFabric provides support for automatically managing massively distributed service deployment and controlling application traffic based on application-level policies. This allows mobile applications to provide the best Quality-of-Experience to its users without This thesis is the first to handle and provide a complete solution for such a complex and relevant architectural problem that is expected to touch each of our lives by enabling exciting new application use-cases that are not possible today. Also, AppFabric is a non-proprietary platform that is expected to spawn lots of innovations both in the design of the platform itself and the features it provides to applications. AppFabric still needs many iterations, both in terms of design and implementation maturity. This thesis is not the end of journey for AppFabric but rather just the beginning

Design and deployment of real scenarios of TCP/IP networking and it security for software defined networks with next generation tools

This thesis is about NSX, a Software Defined tool provided by VMware, to deploy and design virtual networks. The recent growth in the marked pushed companies to invest and use this kind of technology. This thesis explains three main NSX concepts and the basis to perform some deployments. Some use cases regarding networking and security are included in this document. The purpose of these use cases is to use them in real scenarios, which is the main purpose of the thesis. The budget to deploy these use cases is included as an estimation about how much a project like this would cost for the company. Finally, there are some conclusions and tips for best practices

Privacy Protection and Mobility Enhancement in Internet

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)The Internet has substantially embraced mobility since last decade. Cellular data network carries majority of Internet mobile access traffic and become the de facto solution of accessing Internet in mobile fashion, while many clean-slate Internet mobility solutions were proposed but none of them has been largely deployed. Internet mobile users increasingly concern more about their privacy as both researches and real-world incidents show leaking of communication and location privacy could lead to serious consequences. Just the communication itself between mobile user and their peer users or websites could leak considerable privacy of mobile user, such as location history, to other parties. Additionally, comparing to ordinary Internet access, connecting through cellular network yet provides equivalent connection stability or longevity. In this research we proposed a novelty paradigm that leverages concurrent far-side proxies to maximize network location privacy protection and minimize interruption and performance penalty brought by mobility.To avoid the deployment feasibility hurdle we also investigated the root causes impeding popularity of existing Internet mobility proposals and proposed guidelines on how to create an economical feasible solution for this goal. Based on these findings we designed a mobility support system offered as a value-added service by mobility service providers and built on elastic infrastructure that leverages various cloud aided designs, to satisfy economic feasibility and explore the architectural trade-offs among service QoS, economic viability, security and privacy