149 research outputs found

    Resilient and Scalable Forwarding for Software-Defined Networks with P4-Programmable Switches

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    Traditional networking devices support only fixed features and limited configurability. Network softwarization leverages programmable software and hardware platforms to remove those limitations. In this context the concept of programmable data planes allows directly to program the packet processing pipeline of networking devices and create custom control plane algorithms. This flexibility enables the design of novel networking mechanisms where the status quo struggles to meet high demands of next-generation networks like 5G, Internet of Things, cloud computing, and industry 4.0. P4 is the most popular technology to implement programmable data planes. However, programmable data planes, and in particular, the P4 technology, emerged only recently. Thus, P4 support for some well-established networking concepts is still lacking and several issues remain unsolved due to the different characteristics of programmable data planes in comparison to traditional networking. The research of this thesis focuses on two open issues of programmable data planes. First, it develops resilient and efficient forwarding mechanisms for the P4 data plane as there are no satisfying state of the art best practices yet. Second, it enables BIER in high-performance P4 data planes. BIER is a novel, scalable, and efficient transport mechanism for IP multicast traffic which has only very limited support of high-performance forwarding platforms yet. The main results of this thesis are published as 8 peer-reviewed and one post-publication peer-reviewed publication. The results cover the development of suitable resilience mechanisms for P4 data planes, the development and implementation of resilient BIER forwarding in P4, and the extensive evaluations of all developed and implemented mechanisms. Furthermore, the results contain a comprehensive P4 literature study. Two more peer-reviewed papers contain additional content that is not directly related to the main results. They implement congestion avoidance mechanisms in P4 and develop a scheduling concept to find cost-optimized load schedules based on day-ahead forecasts

    Telecommunications Networks

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    This book guides readers through the basics of rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations of Telecommunications Networks. It identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Telecommunications and it contains chapters written by leading researchers, academics and industry professionals. Telecommunications Networks - Current Status and Future Trends covers surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as: IMS, eTOM, 3G/4G, optimization problems, modeling, simulation, quality of service, etc. This book, that is suitable for both PhD and master students, is organized into six sections: New Generation Networks, Quality of Services, Sensor Networks, Telecommunications, Traffic Engineering and Routing

    Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

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    Guiding readers through the basics of these rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations, Mobile Ad hoc Networks: Current Status and Future Trends identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). Containing the contributions of leading researchers, industry professionals, and academics, this forward-looking reference provides an authoritative perspective of the state of the art in MANETs. The book includes surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as limited resources and the mobility of mobile nodes. It considers routing, multicast, energy, security, channel assignment, and ensuring quality of service. Also suitable as a text for graduate students, the book is organized into three sections: Fundamentals of MANET Modeling and Simulation—Describes how MANETs operate and perform through simulations and models Communication Protocols of MANETs—Presents cutting-edge research on key issues, including MAC layer issues and routing in high mobility Future Networks Inspired By MANETs—Tackles open research issues and emerging trends Illustrating the role MANETs are likely to play in future networks, this book supplies the foundation and insight you will need to make your own contributions to the field. It includes coverage of routing protocols, modeling and simulations tools, intelligent optimization techniques to multicriteria routing, security issues in FHAMIPv6, connecting moving smart objects to the Internet, underwater sensor networks, wireless mesh network architecture and protocols, adaptive routing provision using Bayesian inference, and adaptive flow control in transport layer using genetic algorithms

    AS Domain Tunnelling for User-Selectable Loose Source Routing

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    The use of the Internet as a ubiquitous means of e-commerce, social interaction and entertainment is well established. However, despite service diversity, all traffic is treated the same. Although this clearly “works” and is considered “fair” in terms of net neutrality, there are times when it would be particularly beneficial, if the end-user could have some control over the path his or her traffic takes, either avoiding geographic regions or exploiting lower latency options, should they exist. In this research work, we propose to design and evaluate a scheme that allows end-users to selectively exploit a sequence of tunnels along a path from the source to a chosen destination. The availability of such tunnels is advertised centrally through a broker, with the cooperation of the Autonomous System (AS) domains, allowing end-users to use them if so desired. The closest analogy this scheme is that of a driver choosing to use one or more toll roads along a route to avoid potential congestion or less desirable geographic locations. It thus takes the form of a type of loose source routing. Furthermore, the approach avoids the need for inter-operator cooperation, although such cooperation provides a means of extending tunnels across AS peers. In particular, we aim to ascertain the benefit in terms of delay and reliability for a given degree of tunnel presence within a portion of the Internet. The expectation is that a relatively small number of tunnels may be sufficient to provide worthwhile improvements in performance, at least for some users. Based on this premise, we first design and implement a simulation tool that uses Dijkstra’s Algorithm to calculate the least cost path(s) for differing percentages of randomly placed intra- AS tunnels. We consider end-to-end delay as the cost metric associated with each route and a number of experiments have been performed to confirm the improvement in delays using the tunnels. We then consider the inclusion of a small financial cost that the user would be expected to pay in order to use selected tunnels. Details of the payment mechanism is outside the scope of this thesis, however, the financial burden is taken into account when choosing a route. There is thus a trade-off between delay reduction and a financial penalty. First we explore a heuristic approach using a Genetic Algorithm (GA) we create whereby these conflicting goals are combined into a weighted fitness score associated with the alternative routes, allow a near-optimal compromise to be found, based on the weighting. The downside of this approach is that there is typically a single solution for a given selected weighting. It may be that the user wishes to see the spectrum of alternatives and decide a suitable “sweet spot” based on their current preferences. As such, we then design, implement and evaluate an end-user path selection tool using Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA). Unlike the GA, this approach presents a set of optimal solutions for different compromises between the performance objectives, which form a Pareto front. This scheme currently takes into account cost and delay but provides an extensible mechanism for other fitness factors to be considered

    Auto-bandwidth control in dynamically reconfigured hybrid-SDN MPLS networks

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    The proposition of this work is based on the steady evolution of bandwidth demanding technology, which currently and more so in future, requires operators to use expensive infrastructure capability smartly to maximise its use in a very competitive environment. In this thesis, a traffic engineering control loop is proposed that dynamically adjusts the bandwidth and route of flows of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) tunnels in response to changes in traffic demand. Available bandwidth is shifted to where the demand is, and where the demand requirement has dropped, unused allocated bandwidth is returned to the network. An MPLS network enhanced with Software-defined Networking (SDN) features is implemented. The technology known as hybrid SDN combines the programmability features of SDN with the robust MPLS label switched path features along with traffic engineering enhancements introduced by routing protocols such as Border Gateway Patrol-Traffic Engineering (BGP-TE) and Open Shortest Path First-Traffic Engineering (OSPF-TE). The implemented mixed-integer linear programming formulation using the minimisation of maximum link utilisation and minimum link cost objective functions, combined with the programmability of the hybrid SDN network allows for source to destination demand fluctuations. A key driver to this research is the programmability of the MPLS network, enhanced by the contributions that the SDN controller technology introduced. The centralised view of the network provides the network state information needed to drive the mathematical modelling of the network. The path computation element further enables control of the label switched path's bandwidths, which is adjusted based on current demand and optimisation method used. The hose model is used to specify a range of traffic conditions. The most important benefit of the hose model is the flexibility that is allowed in how the traffic matrix can change if the aggregate traffic demand does not exceed the hose maximum bandwidth specification. To this end, reserved hose bandwidth can now be released to the core network to service demands from other sites

    On the Edge of Secure Connectivity via Software-Defined Networking

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    Securing communication in computer networks has been an essential feature ever since the Internet, as we know it today, was started. One of the best known and most common methods for secure communication is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution, mainly operating with an IP security (IPsec) protocol suite originally published in 1995 (RFC1825). It is clear that the Internet, and networks in general, have changed dramatically since then. In particular, the onset of the Cloud and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) have placed new demands on secure networking. Even though the IPsec suite has been updated over the years, it is starting to reach the limits of its capabilities in its present form. Recent advances in networking have thrown up Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which decouples the control and data planes, and thus centralizes the network control. SDN provides arbitrary network topologies and elastic packet forwarding that have enabled useful innovations at the network level. This thesis studies SDN-powered VPN networking and explains the benefits of this combination. Even though the main context is the Cloud, the approaches described here are also valid for non-Cloud operation and are thus suitable for a variety of other use cases for both SMEs and large corporations. In addition to IPsec, open source TLS-based VPN (e.g. OpenVPN) solutions are often used to establish secure tunnels. Research shows that a full-mesh VPN network between multiple sites can be provided using OpenVPN and it can be utilized by SDN to create a seamless, resilient layer-2 overlay for multiple purposes, including the Cloud. However, such a VPN tunnel suffers from resiliency problems and cannot meet the increasing availability requirements. The network setup proposed here is similar to Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) solutions and is extremely useful for applications with strict requirements for resiliency and security, even if best-effort ISP is used. IPsec is still preferred over OpenVPN for some use cases, especially by smaller enterprises. Therefore, this research also examines the possibilities for high availability, load balancing, and faster operational speeds for IPsec. We present a novel approach involving the separation of the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) and the Encapsulation Security Payload (ESP) in SDN fashion to operate from separate devices. This allows central management for the IKE while several separate ESP devices can concentrate on the heavy processing. Initially, our research relied on software solutions for ESP processing. Despite the ingenuity of the architectural concept, and although it provided high availability and good load balancing, there was no anti-replay protection. Since anti-replay protection is vital for secure communication, another approach was required. It thus became clear that the ideal solution for such large IPsec tunneling would be to have a pool of fast ESP devices, but to confine the IKE operation to a single centralized device. This would obviate the need for load balancing but still allow high availability via the device pool. The focus of this research thus turned to the study of pure hardware solutions on an FPGA, and their feasibility and production readiness for application in the Cloud context. Our research shows that FPGA works fluently in an SDN network as a standalone IPsec accelerator for ESP packets. The proposed architecture has 10 Gbps throughput, yet the latency is less than 10 µs, meaning that this architecture is especially efficient for data center use and offers increased performance and latency requirements. The high demands of the network packet processing can be met using several different approaches, so this approach is not just limited to the topics presented in this thesis. Global network traffic is growing all the time, so the development of more efficient methods and devices is inevitable. The increasing number of IoT devices will result in a lot of network traffic utilising the Cloud infrastructures in the near future. Based on the latest research, once SDN and hardware acceleration have become fully integrated into the Cloud, the future for secure networking looks promising. SDN technology will open up a wide range of new possibilities for data forwarding, while hardware acceleration will satisfy the increased performance requirements. Although it still remains to be seen whether SDN can answer all the requirements for performance, high availability and resiliency, this thesis shows that it is a very competent technology, even though we have explored only a minor fraction of its capabilities

    Quantum key distribution: A networking perspective

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    The convergence of quantum cryptography with applications used in everyday life is a topic drawing attention from the industrial and academic worlds. The development of quantum electronics has led to the practical achievement of quantum devices that are already available on the market and waiting for their first application on a broader scale. A major aspect of quantum cryptography is the methodology of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), which is used to generate and distribute symmetric cryptographic keys between two geographically separate users using the principles of quantum physics. In previous years, several successful QKD networks have been created to test the implementation and interoperability of different practical solutions. This article surveys previously applied methods, showing techniques for deploying QKD networks and current challenges of QKD networking. Unlike studies focusing on optical channels and optical equipment, this survey focuses on the network aspect by considering network organization, routing and signaling protocols, simulation techniques, and a software-defined QKD networking approach.Web of Science535art. no. 9

    Розробка та реалізація мережних протоколів. Навчальний посібник

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    Розробка та реалізація мережних протоколів важлива частина сучасної галузі знань, що необхідна для актуального забезпечення взаємозв’язку рівнів та різних технологій будь-якої локальної і глобальної мереж. Мережеві протоколи базуються на міжнародних стандартах, що забезпечують якісну взаємодію різних інноваційних технологій та різних елементів мережі. Вони складають семирівневу структуру, яка здійснює забезпечення вирішення інженерно-технічних питань та потребує постійно оновлювати, вдосконалювати та розробки нових протоколів, як правила взаємодії всіх складових глобальної мережі. Розробка та реалізація мережних протоколів потребує постійного розвитку та вдосконалення для надання абонентам високонадійних видів послуг з високошвидкісною передачею даних.The development and implementation of network protocols is an important part of the modern field of knowledge that is necessary for the actual interconnection of levels and different technologies of any local and global networks. Network protocols are based on international standards that ensure high-quality interaction of various innovative technologies and various network elements. They form a seven-tier structure that provides solutions to engineering and technical issues and requires constant updating, improvement and development of new protocols, as rules of interaction of all components of the global network. The development and implementation of network protocols requires constant development and improvement to provide subscribers with highly reliable types of services with high-speed data transmission.Разработка и реализация сетевых протоколов важная часть современной отрасли знаний, которая необходима для актуального обеспечения взаимосвязи уровней и различных технологий любой локальной и глобальной сетей. Сетевые протоколы базируются на международных стандартах, обеспечивающих качественное взаимодействие различных инновационных технологий и различных элементов сети. Они составляют семиступенчатая структуру, которая осуществляет обеспечение решения инженерно-технических вопросов и требует постоянно обновлять, совершенствовать и разрабатывать новые протоколы, как правила взаимодействия всех составляющих глобальной сети. Разработка и реализация сетевых протоколов требует постоянного развития и совершенствования для предоставления абонентам высоконадежных видов услуг по высокоскоростной передачей данных
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