Backscatter from the Data Plane --- Threats to Stability and Security in Information-Centric Networking

Information-centric networking proposals attract much attention in the ongoing search for a future communication paradigm of the Internet. Replacing the host-to-host connectivity by a data-oriented publish/subscribe service eases content distribution and authentication by concept, while eliminating threats from unwanted traffic at an end host as are common in today's Internet. However, current approaches to content routing heavily rely on data-driven protocol events and thereby introduce a strong coupling of the control to the data plane in the underlying routing infrastructure. In this paper, threats to the stability and security of the content distribution system are analyzed in theory and practical experiments. We derive relations between state resources and the performance of routers and demonstrate how this coupling can be misused in practice. We discuss new attack vectors present in its current state of development, as well as possibilities and limitations to mitigate them.Comment: 15 page

Quality of Service over Specific Link Layers: state of the art report

The Integrated Services concept is proposed as an enhancement to the current Internet architecture, to provide a better Quality of Service (QoS) than that provided by the traditional Best-Effort service. The features of the Integrated Services are explained in this report. To support Integrated Services, certain requirements are posed on the underlying link layer. These requirements are studied by the Integrated Services over Specific Link Layers (ISSLL) IETF working group. The status of this ongoing research is reported in this document. To be more specific, the solutions to provide Integrated Services over ATM, IEEE 802 LAN technologies and low-bitrate links are evaluated in detail. The ISSLL working group has not yet studied the requirements, that are posed on the underlying link layer, when this link layer is wireless. Therefore, this state of the art report is extended with an identification of the requirements that are posed on the underlying wireless link, to provide differentiated Quality of Service

Design issues in quality of service routing

The range of applications and services which can be successfully deployed in packet-switched networks such as the Internet is limited when the network does nor provide Quality of Service (QoS). This is the typical situation in today's Internet. A key aspect in providing QoS support is the requirement for an optimised and intelligent mapping of customer traffic flows onto a physical network topology. The problem of selecting such paths is the task of QoS routing QoS routing algorithms are intrinsically complex and need careful study before being implemented in real networks. Our aim is to address some of the challenges present m the deployment of QoS routing methods. This thesis considers a number of practical limitations of existing QoS routing algorithms and presents solutions to the problems identified. Many QoS routing algorithms are inherently unstable and induce traffic fluctuations in the network. We describe two new routing algorithms which address this problem The first method - ALCFRA (Adaptive Link Cost Function Routing Algorithm) - can be used in networks with sparse connectivity, while the second algorithm - CAR (Connectivity Aware Routing) - is designed to work well in other network topologies. We also describe how to ensure co-operative interaction of the routing algorithms in multiple domains when hierarchial routing is used and also present a solution to the problems of how to provide QoS support m a network where not all nodes are QoS-aware. Our solutions are supported by extensive simulations over a wide range of network topologies and their performance is compared to existing algorithms. It is shown that our solutions advance the state of the art in QoS routing and facilitate the deployment of QoS support in tomorrow's Internet

Topology Control, Routing Protocols and Performance Evaluation for Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming a temporary network without the support of any established infrastructure or centralized administration. There are many potential applications based the techniques of MANETs, such as disaster rescue, personal area networking, wireless conference, military applications, etc. MANETs face a number of challenges for designing a scalable routing protocol due to their natural characteristics. Guaranteeing delivery and the capability to handle dynamic connectivity are the most important issues for routing protocols in MANETs. In this dissertation, we will propose four algorithms that address different aspects of routing problems in MANETs. Firstly, in position based routing protocols to design a scalable location management scheme is inherently difficult. Enhanced Scalable Location management Service (EnSLS) is proposed to improve the scalability of existing location management services, and a mathematical model is proposed to compare the performance of the classical location service, GLS, and our protocol, EnSLS. The analytical model shows that EnSLS has better scalability compared with that of GLS. Secondly, virtual backbone routing can reduce communication overhead and speedup the routing process compared with many existing on-demand routing protocols for routing detection. In many studies, Minimum Connected Dominating Set (MCDS) is used to approximate virtual backbones in a unit-disk graph. However finding a MCDS is an NP-hard problem. In the dissertation, we develop two new pure localized protocols for calculating the CDS. One emphasizes forming a small size initial near-optimal CDS via marking process, and the other uses an iterative synchronized method to avoid illegal simultaneously removal of dominating nodes. Our new protocols largely reduce the number of nodes in CDS compared with existing methods. We show the efficiency of our approach through both theoretical analysis and simulation experiments. Finally, using multiple redundant paths for routing is a promising solution. However, selecting an optimal path set is an NP hard problem. We propose the Genetic Fuzzy Multi-path Routing Protocol (GFMRP), which is a multi-path routing protocol based on fuzzy set theory and evolutionary computing

A Peer-to-Peer Network Framework Utilising the Public Mobile Telephone Network

P2P (Peer-to-Peer) technologies are well established and have now become accepted as a mainstream networking approach. However, the explosion of participating users has not been replicated within the mobile networking domain. Until recently the lack of suitable hardware and wireless network infrastructure to support P2P activities was perceived as contributing to the problem. This has changed with ready availability of handsets having ample processing resources utilising an almost ubiquitous mobile telephone network. Coupled with this has been a proliferation of software applications written for the more capable `smartphone' handsets. P2P systems have not naturally integrated and evolved into the mobile telephone ecosystem in a way that `client-server' operating techniques have. However as the number of clients for a particular mobile application increase, providing the `server side' data storage infrastructure becomes more onerous. P2P systems offer mobile telephone applications a way to circumvent this data storage issue by dispersing it across a network of the participating users handsets. The main goal of this work was to produce a P2P Application Framework that supports developers in creating mobile telephone applications that use distributed storage. Effort was assigned to determining appropriate design requirements for a mobile handset based P2P system. Some of these requirements are related to the limitations of the host hardware, such as power consumption. Others relate to the network upon which the handsets operate, such as connectivity. The thesis reviews current P2P technologies to assess which was viable to form the technology foundations for the framework. The aim was not to re-invent a P2P system design, rather to adopt an existing one for mobile operation. Built upon the foundations of a prototype application, the P2P framework resulting from modifications and enhancements grants access via a simple API (Applications Programmer Interface) to a subset of Nokia `smartphone' devices. Unhindered operation across all mobile telephone networks is possible through a proprietary application implementing NAT (Network Address Translation) traversal techniques. Recognising that handsets operate with limited resources, further optimisation of the P2P framework was also investigated. Energy consumption was a parameter chosen for further examination because of its impact on handset participation time. This work has proven that operating applications in conjunction with a P2P data storage framework, connected via the mobile telephone network, is technically feasible. It also shows that opportunity remains for further research to realise the full potential of this data storage technique

Integration of unidirectional technologies into wireless back-haul architecture

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Docter of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Back-haul infrastructures of today's wireless operators must support the triple-play services demanded by the market or regulatory bodies. To cope with increasing capacity demand, the EU FP7 project CARMEN has developed a cost-effective heterogeneous multi-radio wireless back-haul architecture, which may also leverage the native multicast capabilities of broadcast technologies such as DVB-T to off-load high-bandwidth broadcast content delivery. However, the integration of such unidirectional technologies into a packet-switched architecture requires careful considerations. The contribution of this thesis is the investigation, design and evaluation of protocols and mechanisms facilitating the integration of such unidirectional technologies into the wireless back-haul architecture so that they can be configured and utilized by the spectrum and capacity optimization modules. This integration mainly concerns the control plane and, in particular, the aspects related to resource and capability descriptions, neighborhood, link and Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Label-Switched Path (LSP) monitoring, unicast and multicast LSP signalling as well as topology forming and maintenance. During the course of this study we have analyzed the problem space, proposed solutions to the resulting research questions and evaluated our approach. Our results show that the now Unidirectional Technology (UDT)-aware architecture can readily consider Unidirectional Technologies (UDTs) to distribute, for example, broadcast content