System Support for Bandwidth Management and Content Adaptation in Internet Applications

This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of an operating system module, the Congestion Manager (CM), which provides integrated network flow management and exports a convenient programming interface that allows applications to be notified of, and adapt to, changing network conditions. We describe the API by which applications interface with the CM, and the architectural considerations that factored into the design. To evaluate the architecture and API, we describe our implementations of TCP; a streaming layered audio/video application; and an interactive audio application using the CM, and show that they achieve adaptive behavior without incurring much end-system overhead. All flows including TCP benefit from the sharing of congestion information, and applications are able to incorporate new functionality such as congestion control and adaptive behavior.Comment: 14 pages, appeared in OSDI 200

Proceedings of Seminar on Network Protocols in Operating Systems

The Linux networking stack tends to evolve rapidly, and while there are some excellent documentation written in the past, most of the past documentation gotten (at least partially) outdated over time. The seminar on Network Protocols in Operating Systems was arranged in Aalto University, fall 2012, Department of Communications and Networking to gain a better understanding of the current status of the networking implementation in the Linux kernel. The seminar had 10 participants and each participant was assigned a module from the Linux networking implementation, on which a short paper was to be written. This publications contain the final output of this work. The papers included in the publication are: Kurnikov, Arseny: Linux kernel application interface. Jaakkola, Antti: Implementation of transmission control protocol in Linux. Arianfar, Somaya: TCP’s congestion control implementation in Linux kernel. Budigere, Karthik: Linux implementation study of stream control transmission protocol. Khattak, Fida Ullah: The IPv4 implementation of Linux kernel stack. Boye, Magnus: Netfilter connection tracking and NAT implementation. Korhonen, Jouni: Mobile IPv6 Linux kernel and user space. Soininen, Jonne: Device agnostic network interface. Kalliola, Aapo: Network device drivers in Linux. Varis, Nuutti: Anatomy of a Linux bridge

Active congestion control using ABCD (available bandwidth-based congestion detection).

With the growth of the Internet, the problem of congestion has attained the distinction of being a perennial problem. The Internet community has been trying several approaches for improved congestion control techniques. The end-to-end approach is considered to be the most robust one and it has served quite well until recently, when researchers started to explore the information available at the intermediate node level. This approach triggered a new field called Active Networks where intermediate nodes have a much larger role to play than that of the naive nodes. This thesis proposes an active congestion control (ACC) scheme based on Available Bandwidth-based Congestion Detection (ABCD), which regulates the traffic according to network conditions. Dynamic changes in the available bandwidth can trigger re-negotiation of flow rate. We have introduced packet size adjustment at the intermediate router in addition to rate control at sender node, scaled according to the available bandwidth, which is estimated using three packet probes. To verify the improved scheme, we have extended Ted Faber\u27s ACC work in NS-2 simulator. With this simulator we verify ACC-ABCD\u27s gains such as a marginal improvement in average TCP throughput at each endpoint, fewer packet drops and improved fairness index. Our tests on NS-2 prove that the ACC-ABCD technique yields better results as compared to TCP congestion control with or without the cross traffic. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-03, page: 0870. Adviser: A. K. Aggarwal. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004

Exploring a new transport protocol for vehicular networks

The Future Internet will be very different from the current Internet. In particular, support for new networks such as vehicular networks, will be a key part of the new environment. Applications running on these networks will require low latency and high bandwidth, which must be provided in a highly mobile environment. The goal of this paper is to look at these issues as they have been addressed in the design and development of the Simple Lightweight Transport Protocol (SLTP) to support vehicular networking. The functions and workings of the protocol are examined in this paper as well as the ecosystem that is needed to provide low latency. A detailed set of preliminary results are presented and compared with a standard TCP implementation. SLTP was also ported to the Roadside Units of a Vehicle Ad-Hoc Network and results are presented for moving data to and from the Roadside Units. This work highlights the need for the Future Internet to place more resources at the edge of the core network to provide support for low latency in vehicular environments

Supporting Low-Latency TCP-Based Media Streams

The dominance of the TCP protocol on the Internet and its success in maintaining Internet stability has led to several TCP-based stored media-streaming approaches. The success of these approaches raises the question whether TCP can be used for low-latency streaming. Low latency streaming allows responsive control operations for media streaming and can make interactive applications feasible. We examined adapting the TCP send buffer size based on TCP\u27s congestion window to reduce application perceived network latency. Our results show that this simple idea significantly improves the number of packets that can be delivered within 200 ms and 500 ms thresholds

Exploring a new transport protocol for vehicular networks

The Future Internet will be very different from the current Internet. In particular, support for new networks such as vehicular networks, will be a key part of the new environment. Applications running on these networks will require low latency and high bandwidth, which must be provided in a highly mobile environment. The goal of this paper is to look at these issues as they have been addressed in the design and development of the Simple Lightweight Transport Protocol (SLTP) to support vehicular networking. The functions and workings of the protocol are examined in this paper as well as the ecosystem that is needed to provide low latency. A detailed set of preliminary results are presented and compared with a standard TCP implementation. SLTP was also ported to the Roadside Units of a Vehicle Ad-Hoc Network and results are presented for moving data to and from the Roadside Units. This work highlights the need for the Future Internet to place more resources at the edge of the core network to provide support for low latency in vehicular environments

Quality of service and resource management in IP and wireless networks

A common theme in the publications included in this thesis is the quality of service and resource management in IP and wireless networks. This thesis presents novel algorithms and implementations for admission control in IP and IEEE 802.16e networks, active queue management in EGPRS, WCDMA, and IEEE 802.16e networks, and scheduling in IEEE 802.16e networks. The performance of different algorithms and mechanisms is compared with the prior art through extensive ns-2 simulations. We show that similar active queue management mechanisms, such as TTLRED, can be successfully used to reduce the downlink delay (and in some cases even improve the TCP goodput) in different bottlenecks of IP, EGPRS, WCDMA, and IEEE 802.16e access networks. Moreover, almost identical connection admission control algorithms can be applied both in IP access networks and at IEEE 802.16e base stations. In the former case, one just has to first gather the link load information from the IP routers. We also note that DiffServ can be used to avoid costly overprovisioning of the backhaul in IEEE 802.16e networks. We present a simple mapping between IEEE 802.16e data delivery services and DiffServ traffic classes, and we propose that IEEE 802.16e base stations should take the backhaul traffic load into account in their admission control decisions. Moreover, different IEEE 802.16e base station scheduling algorithms and uplink channel access mechanisms are studied. In the former study, we show that proportional fair scheduling offers superior spectral efficiency when compared to deficit round-robin, though in some cases at the cost of increased delay. Additionally, we introduce a variant of deficit round-robin (WDRR), where the quantum value depends on the modulation and coding scheme. We also show that there are several ways to implement ertPS in an efficient manner, so that during the silence periods of a VoIP call no uplink slots are granted. The problem here, however, is how to implement the resumption after the silence period while introducing as little delay as possible

Scalable Bandwidth Management in Software-Defined Networks

There has been a growing demand to manage bandwidth as the network traffic increases. Network applications such as real time video streaming, voice over IP and video conferencing in IP networks has risen rapidly over the recently and is projected to continue in the future. These applications consume a lot of bandwidth resulting in increasing pressure on the networks. In dealing with such challenges, modern networks must be designed to be application sensitive and be able to offer Quality of Service (QoS) based on application requirements. Network paradigms such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) allows for direct network programmability to change the network behavior to suit the application needs in order to provide solutions to the challenge. In this dissertation, the objective is to research if SDN can provide scalable QoS requirements to a set of dynamic traffic flows. Methods are implemented to attain scalable bandwidth management to provide high QoS with SDN. Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) values and DSCP remarking with Meters are used to implement high QoS requirements such that bandwidth guarantee is provided to a selected set of traffic flows. The theoretical methodology is implemented for achieving QoS, experiments are conducted to validate and illustrate that QoS can be implemented in SDN, but it is unable to implement High QoS due to the lack of implementation for Meters with DSCP remarking. The research work presented in this dissertation aims at the identification and addressing the critical aspects related to the SDN based QoS provisioning using flow aggregation techniques. Several tests and demonstrations will be conducted by utilizing virtualization methods. The tests are aimed at supporting the proposed ideas and aims at creating an improved understanding of the practical SDN use cases and the challenges that emerge in virtualized environments. DiffServ Assured Forwarding is chosen as a QoS architecture for implementation. The bandwidth management scalability in SDN is proved based on throughput analysis by considering two conditions i.e 1) Per-flow QoS operation and 2) QoS by using DiffServ operation in the SDN environment with Ryu controller. The result shows that better performance QoS and bandwidth management is achieved using the QoS by DiffServ operation in SDN rather than the per-flow QoS operation

Adaptive multimedia streaming control algorithm in wireless LANs and 4G networks

E-learning has become an important service offered over the Internet. Lately many users are accessing learning content via wireless networks and using mobile devices. Most content is rich media-based and often puts significant pressure on the existing wireless networks in order to support high quality of delivery. In this context, offering a solution for improving user quality of experience when multimedia content is delivered over wireless networks is already a challenging task. Additionally, to support this for mobile e-learning over wireless LANs becomes even more difficult. If we want to increase the end-used perceived quality, we have to take into account the users’ individual set of characteristics. The fact that users have subjective opinions on the quality of a multimedia application can be used to increase their QoE by setting a minimum quality threshold below which the connection is considered to be undesired. Like this, the use of precious radio resources can be optimized in order to simultaneously satisfy an increased number of users. In this thesis a new user-oriented adaptive algorithm based on QOAS was designed and developed in order to address the user satisfaction problem. Simulations have been carried out with different adaptation schemes to compare the performances and benefits of the DQOAS mechanism. The simulation results are showing that using a dynamic stream granularity with a minimum threshold for the transmission rate, improves the overall quality of the multimedia delivery process, increasing the total number of satisfied users and the link utilization The good results obtained by the algorithm in IEEE 802.11 wireless environment, motivated the research about the utility of the newly proposed algorithm in another wireless environment, LTE. The study shows that DQOAS algorithm can obtain good results in terms of application perceived quality, when the considered application generates multiple streams. These results can be improved by using a new QoS parameters mapping scheme able to modify the streams’ priority and thus allowing the algorithms decisions to not be overridden by the systems’ scheduler