In Vivo Evaluation of the Secure Opportunistic Schemes Middleware using a Delay Tolerant Social Network

Over the past decade, online social networks (OSNs) such as Twitter and Facebook have thrived and experienced rapid growth to over 1 billion users. A major evolution would be to leverage the characteristics of OSNs to evaluate the effectiveness of the many routing schemes developed by the research community in real-world scenarios. In this paper, we showcase the Secure Opportunistic Schemes (SOS) middleware which allows different routing schemes to be easily implemented relieving the burden of security and connection establishment. The feasibility of creating a delay tolerant social network is demonstrated by using SOS to power AlleyOop Social, a secure delay tolerant networking research platform that serves as a real-life mobile social networking application for iOS devices. SOS and AlleyOop Social allow users to interact, publish messages, and discover others that share common interests in an intermittent network using Bluetooth, peer-to-peer WiFi, and infrastructure WiFi.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted in ICDCS 2017. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1702.0565

Using Delay Tolerant Networks as a Backbone for Low-cost Smart Cities

Rapid urbanization burdens city infrastructure and creates the need for local governments to maximize the usage of resources to serve its citizens. Smart city projects aim to alleviate the urbanization problem by deploying a vast amount of Internet-of-things (IoT) devices to monitor and manage environmental conditions and infrastructure. However, smart city projects can be extremely expensive to deploy and manage. A significant portion of the expense is a result of providing Internet connectivity via 5G or WiFi to IoT devices. This paper proposes the use of delay tolerant networks (DTNs) as a backbone for smart city communication; enabling developing communities to become smart cities at a fraction of the cost. A model is introduced to aid policy makers in designing and evaluating the expected performance of such networks. Preliminary results are presented based on a public transit network data-set from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Finally, innovative ways of improving network performance in a low-cost smart city is discussed.Comment: 3 pages, accepted to IEEE SmartComp 201

Optimal Gateway Placement in Low-cost Smart Cities

Rapid urbanization burdens city infrastructure and creates the need for local governments to maximize the usage of resources to serve its citizens. Smart city projects aim to alleviate the urbanization problem by deploying a vast amount of Internet-of-things (IoT) devices to monitor and manage environmental conditions and infrastructure. However, smart city projects can be extremely expensive to deploy and manage partly due to the cost of providing Internet connectivity via 5G or WiFi to IoT devices. This thesis proposes the use of delay tolerant networks (DTNs) as a backbone for smart city communication; enabling developing communities to become smart cities at a fraction of the cost. A model is introduced to aid policy makers in designing and evaluating the expected performance of such networks and results are presented based on a public transit network data-set from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Louisville, Kentucky. We also demonstrate that the performance of our network can be optimized using algorithms associated on set-cover and Influence maximization problems. Several optimization algorithms are then developed to facilitate the effective placement of gateways within the network model and these algorithms are shown to outperform traditional centrality-based algorithms in terms of cost-efficiency and network performance. Finally, other innovative ways of improving network performance in a low-cost smart city is discussed

Actas da 10ª Conferência sobre Redes de Computadores

Universidade do MinhoCCTCCentro AlgoritmiCisco SystemsIEEE Portugal Sectio

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

3rd EGEE User Forum

We have organized this book in a sequence of chapters, each chapter associated with an application or technical theme introduced by an overview of the contents, and a summary of the main conclusions coming from the Forum for the chapter topic. The first chapter gathers all the plenary session keynote addresses, and following this there is a sequence of chapters covering the application flavoured sessions. These are followed by chapters with the flavour of Computer Science and Grid Technology. The final chapter covers the important number of practical demonstrations and posters exhibited at the Forum. Much of the work presented has a direct link to specific areas of Science, and so we have created a Science Index, presented below. In addition, at the end of this book, we provide a complete list of the institutes and countries involved in the User Forum

A Generic Connectivity Service for peer-to-peer applications

Με τον ερχομό των νεφών υπολογιστικών συστημάτων, όλες οι ροές δεδομένων ανάμεσα σε χρήστες διαφόρων εφαρμογών ακολουθούν μια διαδρομή διαμέσου τρίτων υπηρεσιών. Τα δεδομένα, πριν φθάσουν στον παραλήπτη τους, αποθηκεύκονται σε αποθηκευτικό χώρο υπολογιστικού νέφους, χωρίς αυτό να είναι πάντα απαραίτητο. Σε αυτήν την δι- πλωματική εργασία παρουσιάζουμε τον σχεδιασμό, την υλοποίηση και την αξιολόγηση του Συστήματος Γενικής Διασύνδεσης (ΣΓΔ), μια κατανεμημένη πλατφόρμα που συντε- λεί στην δημιουργία καναλιών επικοινωνίας ομοτίμων μεταξύ εφαρμογών που τρέχουν σε συσκευές των χρηστών. Ταυτόχρονα, το ΣΓΔ στοχεύει να επιστρέψει στους χρήστες τον έλεγχο και τη διαχείριση της λίστας των επαφών τους. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο απεμπλέκει τις εφαρμογές από τη διαχείριση της λίστας φίλων του εκάστοτε χρήστη. Το σύστημά μας αποτελείται από ένα δίκτυο από κόμβους του ΣΓΔ καθώς και μια εφαρ- μογή τύπου δαίμονα (που τρέχει στο παρασκήνιο), η οποία τρέχει σε κάθε συσκευή των χρηστών. Οι εφαρμογές που τρέχουν στην συσκευή ενός χρήστη, αιτούνται τη δημιουρ- γία καναλιού επικοινωνίας με έναν από τους φίλους του χρήστη διαμέσου της εφαρμογής δαίμονα. Στη συνέχεια, ο δαίμονας προωθεί ένα αίτημα σύνδεσης στο ΣΓΔ κι αν ο πα- ραλήπτης το δεχθεί, τότε θα ανταλαχθούν κάποια ακόμη μηνύματα ελέγχου, απαραίτητα για την δημιουργία του καναλιού. Μόλις το κανάλι επικοινωνίας έχει εγκαθιδρυθεί, οι δύο εφαρμογές επικοινωνούν χωρίς τα δεδομένα τους να διέρχονται διαμέσου του ΣΓΔ καθώς και τρίτων υπηρεσιών υπολογιστικού νέφους. Παρέχουμε δύο εκδόσεις του συστήματός μας, την κεντρικοποιημένη και την κατανεμη- μένη. Η κατανεμημένη έκδοση, αποφεύγει το πρόβλημα του μοναδικού σημείου απο- τυχίας, παρέχοντας έτσι, βελτιωμένη διαθεσιμότητα του συστήματος αλλά και ανοχή σε σφάλματα. Στην κατανεμημένη έκδοση του συστήματος μας, οι κόμβοι του ΣΓΔ σχηματί- ζουν έναν Κατανεμημένο Πίνακα Κατακερματισμού, ο οποίος χρησιμοποιείται ως επίπεδο δρομολόγησης μηνυμάτων ελέγχου. Τέλος, ένα ακόμη θετικό χαρακτηριστικό του συστή- ματός μας είναι πως επιτρέπει δημιουργία καναλιών ομοτίμων μεταξύ χρηστών που βρί- σκονται σε δίκτυο με μεταφραστή διεύθυνσης δικτίου αλλά και τοίχος προστασίας.With the advent of cloud computing, all data flows among users of applications follows a de facto route, through third party services. In fact, data, before reaching their recipient, are stored in cloud storage, even though not always needed. Additionally, services on the internet always try to lock-in their users and their friends. In this thesis we present the design, implementation and evaluation of Generic Connectivity Service (GCS), a middle- ware service facilitating peer-to-peer connection establishment among applications run- ning on users’ devices. Simultaneously, GCS aims to give back to users the management of their contacts list. Thus, decoupling applications from handling each users’ friends-list. Our system comprises a network of GCS nodes and a daemon running on each user’s device. Users connect to GCS network, thus rendering their devices available for con- nection requests. Applications running on a user’s device request a connection towards one of her friends through the daemon component. In sequence, the daemon forwards a connection request to GCS and if callee accepts the connection, more control messages are exchanged, necessary for connection establishment. Once a peer-to-peer channel is established, the two applications can communicate without their data flowing through GCS nor a third party cloud service. We have provided both a centralized and a distributed version of our system. The latter of course, mitigates a single point of failure, thus improving our system’s availability and fault tolerance. In the distributed version of our system, GCS nodes form a Distributed Hash Table which is used as a routing layer for control messages. Finally, an enticing property of our system is that it allows connection establishment among users even behined NATs and firewalls

QoE on media deliveriy in 5G environments

231 p.5G expandirá las redes móviles con un mayor ancho de banda, menor latencia y la capacidad de proveer conectividad de forma masiva y sin fallos. Los usuarios de servicios multimedia esperan una experiencia de reproducción multimedia fluida que se adapte de forma dinámica a los intereses del usuario y a su contexto de movilidad. Sin embargo, la red, adoptando una posición neutral, no ayuda a fortalecer los parámetros que inciden en la calidad de experiencia. En consecuencia, las soluciones diseñadas para realizar un envío de tráfico multimedia de forma dinámica y eficiente cobran un especial interés. Para mejorar la calidad de la experiencia de servicios multimedia en entornos 5G la investigación llevada a cabo en esta tesis ha diseñado un sistema múltiple, basado en cuatro contribuciones.El primer mecanismo, SaW, crea una granja elástica de recursos de computación que ejecutan tareas de análisis multimedia. Los resultados confirman la competitividad de este enfoque respecto a granjas de servidores. El segundo mecanismo, LAMB-DASH, elige la calidad en el reproductor multimedia con un diseño que requiere una baja complejidad de procesamiento. Las pruebas concluyen su habilidad para mejorar la estabilidad, consistencia y uniformidad de la calidad de experiencia entre los clientes que comparten una celda de red. El tercer mecanismo, MEC4FAIR, explota las capacidades 5G de analizar métricas del envío de los diferentes flujos. Los resultados muestran cómo habilita al servicio a coordinar a los diferentes clientes en la celda para mejorar la calidad del servicio. El cuarto mecanismo, CogNet, sirve para provisionar recursos de red y configurar una topología capaz de conmutar una demanda estimada y garantizar unas cotas de calidad del servicio. En este caso, los resultados arrojan una mayor precisión cuando la demanda de un servicio es mayor

RFID Technology in Intelligent Tracking Systems in Construction Waste Logistics Using Optimisation Techniques

Construction waste disposal is an urgent issue for protecting our environment. This paper proposes a waste management system and illustrates the work process using plasterboard waste as an example, which creates a hazardous gas when land filled with household waste, and for which the recycling rate is less than 10% in the UK. The proposed system integrates RFID technology, Rule-Based Reasoning, Ant Colony optimization and knowledge technology for auditing and tracking plasterboard waste, guiding the operation staff, arranging vehicles, schedule planning, and also provides evidence to verify its disposal. It h relies on RFID equipment for collecting logistical data and uses digital imaging equipment to give further evidence; the reasoning core in the third layer is responsible for generating schedules and route plans and guidance, and the last layer delivers the result to inform users. The paper firstly introduces the current plasterboard disposal situation and addresses the logistical problem that is now the main barrier to a higher recycling rate, followed by discussion of the proposed system in terms of both system level structure and process structure. And finally, an example scenario will be given to illustrate the system’s utilization