Next Generation Cloud Computing: New Trends and Research Directions

The landscape of cloud computing has significantly changed over the last decade. Not only have more providers and service offerings crowded the space, but also cloud infrastructure that was traditionally limited to single provider data centers is now evolving. In this paper, we firstly discuss the changing cloud infrastructure and consider the use of infrastructure from multiple providers and the benefit of decentralising computing away from data centers. These trends have resulted in the need for a variety of new computing architectures that will be offered by future cloud infrastructure. These architectures are anticipated to impact areas, such as connecting people and devices, data-intensive computing, the service space and self-learning systems. Finally, we lay out a roadmap of challenges that will need to be addressed for realising the potential of next generation cloud systems.Comment: Accepted to Future Generation Computer Systems, 07 September 201

An eco-friendly hybrid urban computing network combining community-based wireless LAN access and wireless sensor networking

Computer-enhanced smart environments, distributed environmental monitoring, wireless communication, energy conservation and sustainable technologies, ubiquitous access to Internet-located data and services, user mobility and innovation as a tool for service differentiation are all significant contemporary research subjects and societal developments. This position paper presents the design of a hybrid municipal network infrastructure that, to a lesser or greater degree, incorporates aspects from each of these topics by integrating a community-based Wi-Fi access network with Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) functionality. The former component provides free wireless Internet connectivity by harvesting the Internet subscriptions of city inhabitants. To minimize session interruptions for mobile clients, this subsystem incorporates technology that achieves (near-)seamless handover between Wi-Fi access points. The WSN component on the other hand renders it feasible to sense physical properties and to realize the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. This in turn scaffolds the development of value-added end-user applications that are consumable through the community-powered access network. The WSN subsystem invests substantially in ecological considerations by means of a green distributed reasoning framework and sensor middleware that collaboratively aim to minimize the network's global energy consumption. Via the discussion of two illustrative applications that are currently being developed as part of a concrete smart city deployment, we offer a taste of the myriad of innovative digital services in an extensive spectrum of application domains that is unlocked by the proposed platform

Software-Defined Cloud Computing: Architectural Elements and Open Challenges

The variety of existing cloud services creates a challenge for service providers to enforce reasonable Software Level Agreements (SLA) stating the Quality of Service (QoS) and penalties in case QoS is not achieved. To avoid such penalties at the same time that the infrastructure operates with minimum energy and resource wastage, constant monitoring and adaptation of the infrastructure is needed. We refer to Software-Defined Cloud Computing, or simply Software-Defined Clouds (SDC), as an approach for automating the process of optimal cloud configuration by extending virtualization concept to all resources in a data center. An SDC enables easy reconfiguration and adaptation of physical resources in a cloud infrastructure, to better accommodate the demand on QoS through a software that can describe and manage various aspects comprising the cloud environment. In this paper, we present an architecture for SDCs on data centers with emphasis on mobile cloud applications. We present an evaluation, showcasing the potential of SDC in two use cases-QoS-aware bandwidth allocation and bandwidth-aware, energy-efficient VM placement-and discuss the research challenges and opportunities in this emerging area.Comment: Keynote Paper, 3rd International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI 2014), September 24-27, 2014, Delhi, Indi

Towards Distributed Mobile Computing

In the latest years, we observed an exponential growth of the market of the mobile devices. In this scenario, it assumes a particular relevance the rate at which mobile devices are replaced. According to the International Telecommunicaton Union in fact, smart-phone owners replace their device every 20 months, on average. The side effect of this trend is to deal with the disposal of an increasing amount of electronic devices which, in many cases, arestill working. We believe that it is feasible to recover such an unexploited computational power. Through a change of paradigm in fact, it is possible to achieve a two-fold objective: 1) extend the mobile devices lifetime, 2) enable a new opportunity to speed up mobile applications. In this paper we aim at providing a survey of state-of-art solutions aim at going in the direction of a Distributed Mobile Computing paradigm. We put in evidence the challenges to be addressed in order to implement this paradigm and we propose some possible future improvements

Secure Identification in Social Wireless Networks

The applications based on social networking have brought revolution towards social life and are continuously gaining popularity among the Internet users. Due to the advanced computational resources offered by the innovative hardware and nominal subscriber charges of network operators, most of the online social networks are transforming into the mobile domain by offering exciting applications and games exclusively designed for users on the go. Moreover, the mobile devices are considered more personal as compared to their desktop rivals, so there is a tendency among the mobile users to store sensitive data like contacts, passwords, bank account details, updated calendar entries with key dates and personal notes on their devices. The Project Social Wireless Network Secure Identification (SWIN) is carried out at Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS) to explore the practicality of providing the secure mobile social networking portal with advanced security features to tackle potential security threats by extending the existing methods with more innovative security technologies. In addition to the extensive background study and the determination of marketable use-cases with their corresponding security requirements, this thesis proposes a secure identification design to satisfy the security dimensions for both online and offline peers. We have implemented an initial prototype using PHP Socket and OpenSSL library to simulate the secure identification procedure based on the proposed design. The design is in compliance with 3GPP‟s Generic Authentication Architecture (GAA) and our implementation has demonstrated the flexibility of the solution to be applied independently for the applications requiring secure identification. Finally, the thesis provides strong foundation for the advanced implementation on mobile platform in future

Context Aware Service Oriented Computing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

These days we witness a major shift towards small, mobile devices, capable of wireless communication. Their communication capabilities enable them to form mobile ad hoc networks and share resources and capabilities. Service Oriented Computing (SOC) is a new emerging paradigm for distributed computing that has evolved from object-oriented and component-oriented computing to enable applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Services are autonomous computational elements that can be described, published, discovered, and orchestrated for the purpose of developing applications. The application of the SOC model to mobile devices provides a loosely coupled model for distributed processing in a resource-poor and highly dynamic environment. Cooperation in a mobile ad hoc environment depends on the fundamental capability of hosts to communicate with each other. Peer-to-peer interactions among hosts within communication range allow such interactions but limit the scope of interactions to a local region. Routing algorithms for mobile ad hoc networks extend the scope of interactions to cover all hosts transitively connected over multi-hop routes. Additional contextual information, e.g., knowledge about the movement of hosts in physical space, can help extend the boundaries of interactions beyond the limits of an island of connectivity. To help separate concerns specific to different layers, a coordination model between the routing layer and the SOC layer provides abstractions that mask the details characteristic to the network layer from the distributed computing semantics above. This thesis explores some of the opportunities and challenges raised by applying the SOC paradigm to mobile computing in ad hoc networks. It investigates the implications of disconnections on service advertising and discovery mechanisms. It addresses issues related to code migration in addition to physical host movement. It also investigates some of the security concerns in ad hoc networking service provision. It presents a novel routing algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks and a novel coordination model that addresses space and time explicitly

Are low cost accountability, communications, and management systems for emergency first responders using 3G and 4G cellular technologies feasible?

Reliable, easily deployed communication networks are a necessity for emergency responders as the coordination of their efforts and their safety depend on it. As a volunteer firefighter, this researcher is aware of the shortcomings of the current communication technologies presently deployed, and the risks it poses to firefighters. Some studies have proposed deployment of sophisticated hybrid, mesh networks and mobile ad hoc networks that allow for location tracking, environment and personnel vital signs monitoring, and data communications. Unfortunately the cost of these systems and required training in use of the equipment inhibits their adoption and wide scale deployment across the nation\u27s emergency responder agencies. We are surrounded by secure, reliable cellular network technologies that meet our voice and data communication needs, yet current studies focus on building network infrastructures from the ground up and discussing how to address the security and performance issues of their proposed networks. This study proposes the use of the existing cellular network architecture already in place across the nation as a foundation to explore the feasibility of a low cost communication, management and accountability system utilizing 3G and 4G technologies and architecture

An energy-aware scheduling approach for resource-intensive jobs using smart mobile devices as resource providers

The ever-growing adoption of smart mobile devices is a worldwide phenomenon that positions smart-phones and tablets as primary devices for communication and Internet access. In addition to this, the computing capabilities of such devices, often underutilized by their owners, are in continuous improvement. Today, smart mobile devices have multi-core CPUs, several gigabytes of RAM, and ability to communicate through several wireless networking technologies. These facts caught the attention of researchers who have proposed to leverage smart mobile devices aggregated computing capabilities for running resource intensive software. However, such idea is conditioned by key features, named singularities in the context of this thesis, that characterize resource provision with smart mobile devices.These are the ability of devices to change location (user mobility), the shared or non-dedicated nature of resources provided (lack of ownership) and the limited operation time given by the finite energy source (exhaustible resources).Existing proposals materializing this idea differ in the singularities combinations they target and the way they address each singularity, which make them suitable for distinct goals and resource exploitation opportunities. The latter are represented by real life situations where resources provided by groups of smart mobile devices can be exploited, which in turn are characterized by a social context and a networking support used to link and coordinate devices. The behavior of people in a given social context configure a special availability level of resources, while the underlying networking support imposes restrictionson how information flows, computational tasks are distributed and results are collected. The latter constitutes one fundamental difference of proposals mainly because each networking support ?i.e., ad-hoc and infrastructure based? has its own application scenarios. Aside from the singularities addressed and the networking support utilized, the weakest point of most of the proposals is their practical applicability. The performance achieved heavily relies on the accuracy with which task information, including execution time and/or energy required for execution, is provided to feed the resource allocator.The expanded usage of wireless communication infrastructure in public and private buildings, e.g., shoppings, work offices, university campuses and so on, constitutes a networking support that can be naturally re-utilized for leveraging smart mobile devices computational capabilities. In this context, this thesisproposal aims to contribute with an easy-to-implement  scheduling approach for running CPU-bound applications on a cluster of smart mobile devices. The approach is aware of the finite nature of smart mobile devices energy, and it does not depend on tasks information to operate. By contrast, it allocatescomputational resources to incoming tasks using a node ranking-based strategy. The ranking weights nodes combining static and dynamic parameters, including benchmark results, battery level, number of queued tasks, among others. This node ranking-based task assignment, or first allocation phase, is complemented with a re-balancing phase using job stealing techniques. The second allocation phase is an aid to the unbalanced load provoked as consequence of the non-dedicated nature of smart mobile devices CPU usage, i.e., the effect of the owner interaction, tasks heterogeneity, and lack of up-to-dateand accurate information of remaining energy estimations. The evaluation of the scheduling approach is through an in-vitro simulation. A novel simulator which exploits energy consumption profiles of real smart mobile devices, as well as, fluctuating CPU usage built upon empirical models, derived from real users interaction data, is another major contribution. Tests that validate the simulation tool are provided and the approach is evaluated in scenarios varying the composition of nodes, tasks and nodes characteristics including different tasks arrival rates, tasks requirements and different levels of nodes resource utilization.Fil: Hirsch Jofré, Matías Eberardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tandil. Instituto Superior de Ingeniería del Software. Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Instituto Superior de Ingeniería del Software; Argentin

Sharing news, making sense, saying thanks: patterns of talk on Twitter during the Queensland floods

Abstract: This paper examines the discursive aspects of Twitter communication during the floods in the summer of 2010–2011 in Queensland, Australia. Using a representative sample of communication associated with the #qldfloods hashtag on Twitter, we coded and analysed the patterns of communication. We focus on key phenomena in the use of social media in crisis communication: communal sense-making practices, the negotiation of participant roles, and digital convergence around shared events. Social media is used both as a crisis communication and emergency management tool, as well as a space for participants to engage in emotional exchanges and communication of distress.Authored by Frances Shaw, Jean Burgess, Kate Crawford and Axel Bruns

Do we all really know what a fog node is? Current trends towards an open definition

Fog computing has emerged as a promising technology that can bring cloud applications closer to the physical IoT devices at the network edge. While it is widely known what cloud computing is, how data centers can build the cloud infrastructure and how applications can make use of this infrastructure, there is no common picture on what fog computing and particularly a fog node, as its main building block, really is. One of the first attempts to define a fog node was made by Cisco, qualifying a fog computing system as a “mini-cloud” located at the edge of the network and implemented through a variety of edge devices, interconnected by a variety, mostly wireless, communication technologies. Thus, a fog node would be the infrastructure implementing the said mini-cloud. Other proposals have their own definition of what a fog node is, usually in relation to a specific edge device, a specific use case or an application. In this paper, we first survey the state of the art in technologies for fog computing nodes, paying special attention to the contributions that analyze the role edge devices play in the fog node definition. We summarize and compare the concepts, lessons learned from their implementation, and end up showing how a conceptual framework is emerging towards a unifying fog node definition. We focus on core functionalities of a fog node as well as in the accompanying opportunities and challenges towards their practical realization in the near future.Postprint (author's final draft