End-to-End Resilience Mechanisms for Network Transport Protocols

The universal reliance on and hence the need for resilience in network communications has been well established. Current transport protocols are designed to provide fixed mechanisms for error remediation (if any), using techniques such as ARQ, and offer little or no adaptability to underlying network conditions, or to different sets of application requirements. The ubiquitous TCP transport protocol makes too many assumptions about underlying layers to provide resilient end-to-end service in all network scenarios, especially those which include significant heterogeneity. Additionally the properties of reliability, performability, availability, dependability, and survivability are not explicitly addressed in the design, so there is no support for resilience. This dissertation presents considerations which must be taken in designing new resilience mechanisms for future transport protocols to meet service requirements in the face of various attacks and challenges. The primary mechanisms addressed include diverse end-to-end paths, and multi-mode operation for changing network conditions

(at)america.jp: Identity, nationalism, and power on the Internet, 1969-2000

america.jp explores identity, nationalism, and power on the Internet between 1969 and 2000 through a cultural analysis of Internet code and the creative processes behind it. The dissertation opens with an examination of a real-time Internet Blues jam that linked Japanese and American musicians between Tokyo and Mississippi in 1999. The technological, cultural, and linguistic uncertainties that characterized the Internet jam, combined with the inventive reactions of the musicians who participated, help to introduce the fundamental conceptual question of the dissertation: is code a cultural product and if so can the Internet be considered a distinctly American technology?;A comparative study of the Internet\u27s origins in the United States and Japan finds that code is indeed a cultural entity but that it is a product not of one nation, but of many. A cultural critique of the Internet\u27s domain name conventions explores the heavily-gendered creation of code and the institutional power that supports it. An ethnography of the Internet\u27s managing organization, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), investigates conflicts and identity formation within and among nations at a time when new Internet technologies have blurred humans\u27 understanding of geographic boundaries. In the year 2000, an effort to prevent United States domination of ICANN produced unintended consequences: disputes about the definition of geographic regions and an eruption of anxiety, especially in China, that the Asian seat on the ICANN board would be dominated by Japan. These incidents indicate that the Internet simultaneously destabilizes identity and ossifies it. In this paradoxical situation, cultures and the people in them are forced to reconfigure the boundaries that circumscribe who they think they are

Securing military decision making in a network-centric environment

The development of the society and warfare goes hand in hand. With the proliferation of modern information technology, in particular communication technology, concepts such as information warfare and network-centric warfare have emerged. Information has become one of the core elements in military decision making, where the purpose is to gain information superiority with respect to the enemy while denying the enemy from doing the same. Network-centricity comes from the fact that communication networks are used to enable information warfare in the theatre of operations. Thus, the role of the communication network is to support decision making. In this thesis, military decision making in a network-centric environment is analyzed from the perspective of information warfare. Based on the analysis, a set of security requirements are identified. The thesis also proposes a set of solutions and concepts to the vulnerabilities found and analyzes the solutions with respect to the requirements and a set of use scenarios. The main solutions are Packet Level Authentication, which secures the military infrastructure, and Self-healing Networks, which enable the network to restructure itself after a large-scale or dedicated attack. The restructuring process relies on a Context Aware Management architecture, which has originally been developed to allow network nodes to rapidly react to a changing environment. Furthermore, the thesis presents a trust management model based on incomplete trust to cope with compromised nodes. Also privacy issues are discussed; several different privacy classes are identified and the problems with each of them are addressed.reviewe