Optical Multicast Routing Under Light Splitter Constraints

During the past few years, we have observed the emergence of new applications that use multicast transmission. For a multicast routing algorithm to be applicable in optical networks, it must route data only to group members, optimize and maintain loop-free routes, and concentrate the routes on a subset of network links. For an all-optical switch to play the role of a branching router, it must be equipped with a light splitter. Light splitters are expensive equipments and therefore it will be very expensive to implement splitters on all optical switches. Optical light splitters are only implemented on some optical switches. That limited availability of light splitters raises a new problem when we want to implement multicast protocols in optical network (because usual multicast protocols make the assumption that all nodes have branching capabilities). Another issue is the knowledge of the locations of light splitters in the optical network. Nodes in the network should be able to identify the locations of light splitters scattered in the optical network so it can construct multicast trees. These problems must be resolved by implementing a multicast routing protocol that must take into consideration that not all nodes can be branching node. As a result, a new signaling process must be implemented so that light paths can be created, spanning from source to the group members

The STRESS Method for Boundary-point Performance Analysis of End-to-end Multicast Timer-Suppression Mechanisms

Evaluation of Internet protocols usually uses random scenarios or scenarios based on designers' intuition. Such approach may be useful for average-case analysis but does not cover boundary-point (worst or best-case) scenarios. To synthesize boundary-point scenarios a more systematic approach is needed.In this paper, we present a method for automatic synthesis of worst and best case scenarios for protocol boundary-point evaluation. Our method uses a fault-oriented test generation (FOTG) algorithm for searching the protocol and system state space to synthesize these scenarios. The algorithm is based on a global finite state machine (FSM) model. We extend the algorithm with timing semantics to handle end-to-end delays and address performance criteria. We introduce the notion of a virtual LAN to represent delays of the underlying multicast distribution tree. The algorithms used in our method utilize implicit backward search using branch and bound techniques and start from given target events. This aims to reduce the search complexity drastically. As a case study, we use our method to evaluate variants of the timer suppression mechanism, used in various multicast protocols, with respect to two performance criteria: overhead of response messages and response time. Simulation results for reliable multicast protocols show that our method provides a scalable way for synthesizing worst-case scenarios automatically. Results obtained using stress scenarios differ dramatically from those obtained through average-case analyses. We hope for our method to serve as a model for applying systematic scenario generation to other multicast protocols.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN) [To appear

A Model-based Scalable Reliable Multicast Transport Protocol for Satellite Networks

In this paper, we design a new scalable reliable multicast transport protocol for satellite networks (RMT). This paper is the extensions of paper in [18]. The proposed protocol does not require inspection and/or interception of packets at intermediate nodes. The protocol would not require any modification of satellites, which could be bent pipe satellites or onboard processing satellites. The proposed protocol is divided in 2 parts: error control part and congestion control part. In error control part, we intend to solve feedback implosion and improve scalability by using a new hybrid of ARQ (Auto Repeat Request) and adaptive forward error correction (AFEC). The AFEC algorithm adapts proactive redundancy levels following the number of receivers and average packet loss rate. This leads to a number of transmissions and the number of feedback signals are virtually independent of the number of receivers. Therefore, wireless link utilization used by the proposed protocol is virtually independent of the number of multicast receivers. In congestion control part, the proposed protocol employs a new window-based congestion control scheme, which is optimized for satellite networks. To be fair to the other traffics, the congestion control mimics congestion control in the wellknown Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which relies on “packet conservation” principle. To reduce feedback implosion, only a few receivers, ACKers, are selected to report the receiving status. In addition, in order to avoid “drop-to-zero” problem, we use a new simple wireless loss filter algorithm. This loss filter algorithm significantly reduces the probability of the congestion window size to be unnecessarily reduced because of common wireless losses. Furthermore, to improve achievable throughput, we employ slow start threshold adaptation based on estimated bandwidth. The congestion control also deals with variations in network conditions by dynamically electing ACKers

Study of architecture and protocols for reliable multicasting in packet switching networks

Group multicast protocols have been challenged to provide scalable solutions that meet the following requirements: (i) reliable delivery from different sources to all destinations within a multicast group; (ii) congestion control among multiple asynchronous sources. Although it is mainly a transport layer task, reliable group multicasting depends on routing architectures as well. This dissertation covers issues of both network and transport layers. Two routing architectures, tree and ring, are surveyed with a comparative study of their routing costs and impact to upper layer performances. Correspondingly, two generic transport protocol models are established for performance study. The tree-based protocol is rate-based and uses negative acknowledgment mechanisms for reliability control, while the ring-based protocol uses window-based flow control and positive acknowledgment schemes. The major performance measures observed in the study are network cost, multicast delay, throughput and efficiency. The results suggest that the tree architecture costs less at network layer than the ring, and helps to minimize latency under light network load. Meanwhile, heavy load reliable group multicasting can benefit from ring architecture, which facilitates window-based flow and congestion control. Based on the comparative study, a new two-hierarchy hybrid architecture, Rings Interconnected with Tree Architecture (RITA), is presented. Here, a multicast group is partitioned into multiple clusters with the ring as the intra-cluster architecture, and the tree as backbone architecture that implements inter-cluster multicasting. To compromise between performance measures such as delay and through put, reliability and congestion controls are accomplished at the transport layer with a hybrid use of rate and window-based protocols, which are based on either negative or positive feedback mechanisms respectively. Performances are compared with simulations against tree- and ring-based approaches. Results are encouraging because RITA achieves similar throughput performance as the ring-based protocol, but with significantly lowered delay. Finally, the multicast tree packing problem is discussed. In a network accommodating multiple concurrent multicast sessions, routing for an individual session can be optimized to minimize the competition with other sessions, rather than to minimize cost or delay. Packing lower bound and a heuristic are investigated. Simulation show that congestion can be reduced effectively with limited cost increase of routings

Understanding the characteristics of Internet traffic and designing an efficient RaptorQ-based data transport protocol for modern data centres

This thesis is the amalgamation of research on efficient data transport protocols for data centres and a comprehensive and systematic study of Internet traffic, which came as a result of the need to understand traffic patterns and workloads in modern computer networks. The first part of the thesis is on the development of efficient data transport pro- tocols for data centres. We study modern data transport protocols for data centres through large scale simulations using the OMNeT++ simulator. We developed and experimented with an OMNeT++ model of NDP. This has led to the identification of limitations of the state of the art and the formulation of research questions with respect to data transport protocols for modern data centres. The developed model includes an implementation of a Fat-tree topology and per-packet ECMP load bal- ancing. We discuss how we integrated the model with the INET Framework and validated it by running various experiments that test different model parameters and components. This work revealed limitations of NDP with respect to efficient one-to-many and many-to-one communication in data centres, which led to the de- velopment of SCDP, a novel and general-purpose data transport protocol for data centres that, in contrast to all other protocols proposed to date, natively supports one-to-many and many-to-one data communication, which is extremely common in modern data centres. SCDP does so without compromising on efficiency for short and long unicast flows. SCDP achieves this by integrating RaptorQ codes with receiver-driven data transport, in-network packet trimming and Multi-Level Feed- back Queuing (MLFQ); (1) RaptorQ codes enable efficient one-to-many and many- to-one data transport; (2) on top of RaptorQ codes, receiver- driven flow control, in combination with in-network packet trimming, enable efficient usage of network re- sources as well as multi-path transport and packet spraying for all transport modes. Incast and Outcast are eliminated; (3) the systematic nature of RaptorQ codes, in combination with MLFQ, enable fast, decoding-free completion of short flows. We extensively evaluated SCDP in a wide range of simulated scenarios with realistic data centre workloads. For one-to-many and many-to-one transport sessions, SCDP performs significantly better than NDP. For short and long unicast flows, SCDP performs equally well or better compared to NDP. In the second part of the thesis, we extensively study Internet traffic. Getting good statistical models of traffic on network links is a well-known, often-studied problem. A lot of attention has been given to correlation patterns and flow duration. The distribution of the amount of traffic per unit time is an equally important but less studied problem. We study a large number of traffic traces from many different networks including academic, commercial and residential networks using state-of-the-art statistical techniques. We show that the log-normal distribution is a better fit than the Gaussian distribution. We also investigate a second, heavy- tailed distribution and show that its performance is better than Gaussian but worse than log-normal. We examine anomalous traces which are a poor fit for all tested distributions and show that this is often due to traffic outages or links that hit maximum capacity. Stationarity tests showed that the traffic is stationary at some range of aggregation times. We demonstrate the utility of the log-normal distribution in two contexts: predicting the proportion of time traffic will exceed a given level (for link capacity estimation) and predicting 95th percentile pricing. We also show the log-normal distribution is a better predictor than Gaussian orWeibull distributions

Pervasive service discovery in low-power and lossy networks

Pervasive Service Discovery (SD) in Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) is expected to play a major role in realising the Internet of Things (IoT) vision. Such a vision aims to expand the current Internet to interconnect billions of miniature smart objects that sense and act on our surroundings in a way that will revolutionise the future. The pervasiveness and heterogeneity of such low-power devices requires robust, automatic, interoperable and scalable deployment and operability solutions. At the same time, the limitations of such constrained devices impose strict challenges regarding complexity, energy consumption, time-efficiency and mobility. This research contributes new lightweight solutions to facilitate automatic deployment and operability of LLNs. It mainly tackles the aforementioned challenges through the proposition of novel component-based, automatic and efficient SD solutions that ensure extensibility and adaptability to various LLN environments. Building upon such architecture, a first fully-distributed, hybrid pushpull SD solution dubbed EADP (Extensible Adaptable Discovery Protocol) is proposed based on the well-known Trickle algorithm. Motivated by EADPs’ achievements, new methods to optimise Trickle are introduced. Such methods allow Trickle to encompass a wide range of algorithms and extend its usage to new application domains. One of the new applications is concretized in the TrickleSD protocol aiming to build automatic, reliable, scalable, and time-efficient SD. To optimise the energy efficiency of TrickleSD, two mechanisms improving broadcast communication in LLNs are proposed. Finally, interoperable standards-based SD in the IoT is demonstrated, and methods combining zero-configuration operations with infrastructure-based solutions are proposed. Experimental evaluations of the above contributions reveal that it is possible to achieve automatic, cost-effective, time-efficient, lightweight, and interoperable SD in LLNs. These achievements open novel perspectives for zero-configuration capabilities in the IoT and promise to bring the ‘things’ to all people everywhere