Conditional resource management for mobile devices

Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are becoming more popular everyday. This new devices class is constantly evolving on what concerns computing capabilities, allowing users to switch from larger computers to smaller mobile devices in several cases. Everyday new apps for these devices are developed and published in software repositories, enabling users to quickly install and benefit from new software. In order to deal with the multiple resource requests from different applications running in parallel, the operating system’s resource management design plays a key role. Most resource managers available to mobile phones are designed to maximize the performance of the system as a whole, not always taking into account the characteristics of the processes requiring resources in the application layer. This type of strategy can lead to cases where some applications experience longer latencies than desired while accessing resources, compromising the Quality of Service or system security. This work aims to offer a new resource management model for mobile devices, allowing the creation of rules that can prioritize the resource allocation for specific applications according to their needs. Also it implemented a proof of concept prototype version of this model, using the Android platform, confirming its viability.Dispositivos móveis, como os tablets e smartphones, ficam mais populares a cada dia. Esta nova classe de dispositivos está evoluindo constantemente em suas capacidades computacionais, permitindo os usuários trocarem computadores maiores por estes dispositivos móveis menores. Diariamente novas aplicações para estes dispositivos são desenvolvidas e publicadas em repositórios de software, possibilitando que os usuários instalem e se beneficiem de novos aplicativos rapidamente. Para gerenciar múltiplas requisições de recursos de diferentes aplicações rodando em paralelo, o design de gestão de recursos do sistema operacional desempenha um papel chave. A vasta maioria dos gerentes de recursos disponíveis nos dispositivos móveis são projetados para maximizar o desempenho do sistema como um todo, nem sempre levando em consideração as características dos processos solicitando recursos na camada de aplicação. Este tipo de estratégia pode levar a casos onde algumas aplicações experimentem tempos de latência mais longos que os desejados durante os acessos aos recursos, comprometendo a Qualidade de Serviço ou a segurança do sistema. Este trabalho tem por objetivo oferecer um novo modelo de gerência de recursos para dispositivos móveis, permitindo a criação de regras que priorizem a alocação de recursos para aplicações específicas de acordo com suas necessidades. Além disso foi implementado um prototótipo como prova de conceito deste modelo, usando a plataforma Android, para confirmando a viabilidade do mesmo

Secure Communication in Disaster Scenarios

Während Naturkatastrophen oder terroristischer Anschläge ist die bestehende Kommunikationsinfrastruktur häufig überlastet oder fällt komplett aus. In diesen Situationen können mobile Geräte mithilfe von drahtloser ad-hoc- und unterbrechungstoleranter Vernetzung miteinander verbunden werden, um ein Notfall-Kommunikationssystem für Zivilisten und Rettungsdienste einzurichten. Falls verfügbar, kann eine Verbindung zu Cloud-Diensten im Internet eine wertvolle Hilfe im Krisen- und Katastrophenmanagement sein. Solche Kommunikationssysteme bergen jedoch ernsthafte Sicherheitsrisiken, da Angreifer versuchen könnten, vertrauliche Daten zu stehlen, gefälschte Benachrichtigungen von Notfalldiensten einzuspeisen oder Denial-of-Service (DoS) Angriffe durchzuführen. Diese Dissertation schlägt neue Ansätze zur Kommunikation in Notfallnetzen von mobilen Geräten vor, die von der Kommunikation zwischen Mobilfunkgeräten bis zu Cloud-Diensten auf Servern im Internet reichen. Durch die Nutzung dieser Ansätze werden die Sicherheit der Geräte-zu-Geräte-Kommunikation, die Sicherheit von Notfall-Apps auf mobilen Geräten und die Sicherheit von Server-Systemen für Cloud-Dienste verbessert

Automated Testing and Bug Reproduction of Android Apps

The large demand of mobile devices creates significant concerns about the quality of mobile applications (apps). The corresponding increase in app complexity has made app testing and maintenance activities more challenging. During app development phase, developers need to test the app in order to guarantee its quality before releasing it to the market. During the deployment phase, developers heavily rely on bug reports to reproduce failures reported by users. Because of the rapid releasing cycle of apps and limited human resources, it is difficult for developers to manually construct test cases for testing the apps or diagnose failures from a large number of bug reports. However, existing automated test case generation techniques are ineffective in exploring most effective events that can quickly improve code coverage and fault detection capability. In addition, none of existing techniques can reproduce failures directly from bug reports. This dissertation provides a framework that employs artifact intelligence (AI) techniques to improve testing and debugging of mobile apps. Specifically, the testing approach employs a Q-network that learns a behavior model from a set of existing apps and the learned model can be used to explore and generate tests for new apps. The framework is able to capture the fine-grained details of GUI events (e.g., visiting times of events, text on the widgets) and use them as features that are fed into a deep neural network, which acts as the agent to guide the app exploration. The debugging approach focuses on automatically reproducing crashes from bug reports for mobile apps. The approach uses a combination of natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, and dynamic GUI exploration to synthesize event sequences with the goal of reproducing the reported crash

Provider-Controlled Bandwidth Management for HTTP-based Video Delivery

Over the past few years, a revolution in video delivery technology has taken place as mobile viewers and over-the-top (OTT) distribution paradigms have significantly changed the landscape of video delivery services. For decades, high quality video was only available in the home via linear television or physical media. Though Web-based services brought video to desktop and laptop computers, the dominance of proprietary delivery protocols and codecs inhibited research efforts. The recent emergence of HTTP adaptive streaming protocols has prompted a re-evaluation of legacy video delivery paradigms and introduced new questions as to the scalability and manageability of OTT video delivery. This dissertation addresses the question of how to enable for content and network service providers the ability to monitor and manage large numbers of HTTP adaptive streaming clients in an OTT environment. Our early work focused on demonstrating the viability of server-side pacing schemes to produce an HTTP-based streaming server. We also investigated the ability of client-side pacing schemes to work with both commodity HTTP servers and our HTTP streaming server. Continuing our client-side pacing research, we developed our own client-side data proxy architecture which was implemented on a variety of mobile devices and operating systems. We used the portable client architecture as a platform for investigating different rate adaptation schemes and algorithms. We then concentrated on evaluating the network impact of multiple adaptive bitrate clients competing for limited network resources, and developing schemes for enforcing fair access to network resources. The main contribution of this dissertation is the definition of segment-level client and network techniques for enforcing class of service (CoS) differentiation between OTT HTTP adaptive streaming clients. We developed a segment-level network proxy architecture which works transparently with adaptive bitrate clients through the use of segment replacement. We also defined a segment-level rate adaptation algorithm which uses download aborts to enforce CoS differentiation across distributed independent clients. The segment-level abstraction more accurately models application-network interactions and highlights the difference between segment-level and packet-level time scales. Our segment-level CoS enforcement techniques provide a foundation for creating scalable managed OTT video delivery services

Multisite adaptive computation offloading for mobile cloud applications

The sheer amount of mobile devices and their fast adaptability have contributed to the proliferation of modern advanced mobile applications. These applications have characteristics such as latency-critical and demand high availability. Also, these kinds of applications often require intensive computation resources and excessive energy consumption for processing, a mobile device has limited computation and energy capacity because of the physical size constraints. The heterogeneous mobile cloud environment consists of different computing resources such as remote cloud servers in faraway data centres, cloudlets whose goal is to bring the cloud closer to the users, and nearby mobile devices that can be utilised to offload mobile tasks. Heterogeneity in mobile devices and the different sites include software, hardware, and technology variations. Resource-constrained mobile devices can leverage the shared resource environment to offload their intensive tasks to conserve battery life and improve the overall application performance. However, with such a loosely coupled and mobile device dominating network, new challenges and problems such as how to seamlessly leverage mobile devices with all the offloading sites, how to simplify deploying runtime environment for serving offloading requests from mobile devices, how to identify which parts of the mobile application to offload and how to decide whether to offload them and how to select the most optimal candidate offloading site among others. To overcome the aforementioned challenges, this research work contributes the design and implementation of MAMoC, a loosely coupled end-to-end mobile computation offloading framework. Mobile applications can be adapted to the client library of the framework while the server components are deployed to the offloading sites for serving offloading requests. The evaluation of the offloading decision engine demonstrates the viability of the proposed solution for managing seamless and transparent offloading in distributed and dynamic mobile cloud environments. All the implemented components of this work are publicly available at the following URL: https://github.com/mamoc-repo

On the Rollout of Network Slicing in Carrier Networks: A Technology Radar

Network slicing is a powerful paradigm for network operators to support use cases with widely diverse requirements atop a common infrastructure. As 5G standards are completed, and commercial solutions mature, operators need to start thinking about how to integrate network slicing capabilities in their assets, so that customer-facing solutions can be made available in their portfolio. This integration is, however, not an easy task, due to the heterogeneity of assets that typically exist in carrier networks. In this regard, 5G commercial networks may consist of a number of domains, each with a different technological pace, and built out of products from multiple vendors, including legacy network devices and functions. These multi-technology, multi-vendor and brownfield features constitute a challenge for the operator, which is required to deploy and operate slices across all these domains in order to satisfy the end-to-end nature of the services hosted by these slices. In this context, the only realistic option for operators is to introduce slicing capabilities progressively, following a phased approach in their roll-out. The purpose of this paper is to precisely help designing this kind of plan, by means of a technology radar. The radar identifies a set of solutions enabling network slicing on the individual domains, and classifies these solutions into four rings, each corresponding to a different timeline: (i) as-is ring, covering today’s slicing solutions; (ii) deploy ring, corresponding to solutions available in the short term; (iii) test ring, considering medium-term solutions; and (iv) explore ring, with solutions expected in the long run. This classification is done based on the technical availability of the solutions, together with the foreseen market demands. The value of this radar lies in its ability to provide a complete view of the slicing landscape with one single snapshot, by linking solutions to information that operators may use for decision making in their individual go-to-market strategies.H2020 European Projects 5G-VINNI (grant agreement No. 815279) and 5G-CLARITY (grant agreement No. 871428)Spanish national project TRUE-5G (PID2019-108713RB-C53

FCC Regulation Versus Antitrust: How Net Neutrality is Defining the Boundaries

This Article challenges the various jurisdictional theories that underpin the FCC’s net neutrality regulation. The assertion of jurisdiction by the FCC over any aspect of the Internet ecosystem has raised populist, congressional, and even judicial rhetoric to a crescendo and resulted in a recent vote to defund the FCC’s efforts. This Article places the current crisis squarely in the context of the long-standing jurisdictional struggle between regulation and antitrust law. These two regimes are often at jurisdictional cross-purposes because, even though they both purport to maximize the social good, they do so by inapposite means. Indeed, there is a policy choice inherent in the very jurisdictional authority permitted each regime—a choice that the FCC’s jurisdictional bases for net neutrality may actually circumvent and obfuscate. Focusing on the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Verizon Communications, Inc. v. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko, LLP and the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Comcast Corp. v. FCC, this Article examines the jurisdictional boundaries between the regulatory and antitrust camps. In analyzing the jurisdictional limits of each through the lens of the net neutrality debate, this Article reveals opportunities for congressional reforms beyond mere rhetoric. To identify problematic uses of regulatory authority, this Article: (1) creates an innovative grouping of possible bases for regulatory authority labeled “satellite jurisdiction” and (2) proposes a new framework to classify possible jurisdictional overreach in what the author brands as either “procedural opportunism” or “substantive opportunism.” Finally, this Article recommends a new standard by which both procedural and substantive jurisdictional opportunism may be tempered and antitrust authority maximized where most salutary and appropriate

Introductory Computer Forensics

INTERPOL (International Police) built cybercrime programs to keep up with emerging cyber threats, and aims to coordinate and assist international operations for ?ghting crimes involving computers. Although signi?cant international efforts are being made in dealing with cybercrime and cyber-terrorism, ?nding effective, cooperative, and collaborative ways to deal with complicated cases that span multiple jurisdictions has proven dif?cult in practic

The business of broadband and the public interest : media policy for the network society

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves [133]-[150]).Media policy in the United States has, since its inception, been governed by the principle that infrastructure providers should serve "the public interest." The Federal Communications Commission has traditionally been charged with enforcing various obligations on businesses under this principle. Policymakers have developed different regimes for different media, but these distinctions no longer make sense in a technologically converged environment. This study draws upon the historical origins of the principle in order to inform contemporary debates in communication policy. It recovers some of the normative meaning behind "the public interest" phrase, and identifies the several dimensions in which it remains relevant today. The thesis argues that universal access, platform innovation, and general-purpose technologies should inform network-aware media policy.by Stephen James Schultze.S.M

The 'disembodied voice' in fin-de-siècle British literature : its genealogy and significances

A particular kind of voice recurs in fin-de-siècle British literature. It is a voice without a human body, a voice whose source is either invisible or non-human. This study explores the historical factors underlying the literary representation of such a voice. Chapter 1 examines Arthur Symons' phrase, 'the disembodied voice of a human soul,' and sets up the context for the subsequent discussion by teasing out the four major implications of the fin-de-siècle disembodied voice: the socio-political, the aesthetico-linguistic, the techno-scientific, and the sexual-somatic. Chapter 2 first outlines the modern origin of the disembodied voice in the Gothic-Romantic culture of the late eighteenth century, where the frequent description of the disembodied voice is linked to the rise of the nostalgia for premodernity; the chapter then analyzes the disembodied voice in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness both in terms of Gothic culture and of the fin-de-siècle situation. The Romantic aesthetico-linguistic prioritization of the aural-oral, which we call 'melocentricism,' the fin-de-siècle consumerism and colonialism, and the then influential scientific concept of ether receive scrutiny. Chapter 3 addresses Oscar Wilde's Salome. Apart from the factors that this play shares with Conrad's novella, the disembodied voice in Salome secretly expresses a longing for the homosexual-cum-communal. Chapter 4 explores the fin-de-siècle imperial and homosexual implications, and the 'melocentric' pre-history, of the phonographic voice in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Chapter 5 teases out the hidden political dimension of the technological voice, phonographic and wireless, in Kipling's Kim and '"Wireless".' Chapter 6 compares the fin-de-siècle voice with an instance of the early twentieth-century, the wireless voice in D. H. Lawrence's Ladv Chatterley's Lover, a voice now involved in the global network of broadcasting. It is concluded that the disembodied voice is inseparable from important aspects of fin-de-siècle British culture as well as the question of modernity