Investigating Decision Support Techniques for Automating Cloud Service Selection

The compass of Cloud infrastructure services advances steadily leaving users in the agony of choice. To be able to select the best mix of service offering from an abundance of possibilities, users must consider complex dependencies and heterogeneous sets of criteria. Therefore, we present a PhD thesis proposal on investigating an intelligent decision support system for selecting Cloud based infrastructure services (e.g. storage, network, CPU).Comment: Accepted by IEEE Cloudcom 2012 - PhD consortium trac

Fronthaul-Constrained Cloud Radio Access Networks: Insights and Challenges

As a promising paradigm for fifth generation (5G) wireless communication systems, cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) have been shown to reduce both capital and operating expenditures, as well as to provide high spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE). The fronthaul in such networks, defined as the transmission link between a baseband unit (BBU) and a remote radio head (RRH), requires high capacity, but is often constrained. This article comprehensively surveys recent advances in fronthaul-constrained C-RANs, including system architectures and key techniques. In particular, key techniques for alleviating the impact of constrained fronthaul on SE/EE and quality of service for users, including compression and quantization, large-scale coordinated processing and clustering, and resource allocation optimization, are discussed. Open issues in terms of software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and partial centralization are also identified.Comment: 5 Figures, accepted by IEEE Wireless Communications. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1407.3855 by other author

An investigation into dynamical bandwidth management and bandwidth redistribution using a pool of cooperating interfacing gateways and a packet sniffer in mobile cloud computing

Mobile communication devices are increasingly becoming an essential part of almost every aspect of our daily life. However, compared to conventional communication devices such as laptops, notebooks, and personal computers, mobile devices still lack in terms of resources such as processor, storage and network bandwidth. Mobile Cloud Computing is intended to augment the capabilities of mobile devices by moving selected workloads away from resource-limited mobile devices to resource-intensive servers hosted in the cloud. Services hosted in the cloud are accessed by mobile users on-demand via the Internet using standard thick or thin applications installed on their devices. Nowadays, users of mobile devices are no longer satisfied with best-effort service and demand QoS when accessing and using applications and services hosted in the cloud. The Internet was originally designed to provide best-effort delivery of data packets, with no guarantee on packet delivery. Quality of Service has been implemented successfully in provider and private networks since the Internet Engineering Task Force introduced the Integrated Services and Differentiated Services models. These models have their legacy but do not adequately address the Quality of Service needs in Mobile Cloud Computing where users are mobile, traffic differentiation is required per user, device or application, and packets are routed across several network domains which are independently administered. This study investigates QoS and bandwidth management in Mobile Cloud Computing and considers a scenario where a virtual test-bed made up of GNS3 network software emulator, Cisco IOS image, Wireshark packet sniffer, Solar-Putty, and Firefox web browser appliance is set up on a laptop virtualized with VMware Workstation 15 Pro. The virtual test-bed is in turn connected to the real world Internet via the host laptop's Ethernet Network Interface Card. Several virtual Firefox appliances are set up as endusers and generate traffic by launching web applications such as video streaming, file download and Internet browsing. The traffic generated by the end-users and bandwidth used is measured, monitored, and tracked using a Wireshark packet sniffer installed on all interfacing gateways that connect the end-users to the cloud. Each gateway aggregates the demand of connected hosts and delivers Quality of Service to connected users based on the Quality of Service policies and mechanisms embedded in the gateway. Analysis of the results shows that a packet sniffer deployed at a suitable point in the network can identify, measure and track traffic usage per user, device or application in real-time. The study has also demonstrated that when deployed in the gateway connecting users to the cloud, it provides network-wide monitoring and traffic statistics collected can be fed to other functional components of the gateway where a dynamical bandwidth management scheme can be applied to instantaneously allocate and redistribute bandwidth to target users as they roam around the network from one location to another. This approach is however limited and ensuring end-to-end Quality of Service requires mechanisms and policies to be extended across all network layers along the traffic path between the user and the cloud in order to guarantee a consistent treatment of traffic

Interactive Real-Time Embedded Systems Education Infused with Applied Internet Telephony

The transition from traditional circuit-switched phone systems to modern packet-based Internet telephony networks demands tools to support Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) development. In this paper, we introduce the XinuPhone, an integrated hardware/software approach for educating users about VoIP technology on a real-time embedded platform. We propose modular course topics for design-oriented, hands-on laboratory exercises: filter design, timing, serial communications, interrupts and resource budgeting, network transmission, and system benchmarking. Our open-source software platform encourages development and testing of new CODECs alongside existing standards, unlike similar commercial solutions. Furthermore, the supporting hardware features inexpensive, readily available components designed specifically for educational and research users on a limited budget. The XinuPhone is especially good for experimenting with design trade-offs as well as interactions between real-time software and hardware components

Review of SDN-based load-balancing methods, issues, challenges, and roadmap

The development of the Internet and smart end systems, such as smartphones and portable laptops, along with the emergence of cloud computing, social networks, and the Internet of Things, has brought about new network requirements. To meet these requirements, a new architecture called software-defined network (SDN) has been introduced. However, traffic distribution in SDN has raised challenges, especially in terms of uneven load distribution impacting network performance. To address this issue, several SDN load balancing (LB) techniques have been developed to improve efficiency. This article provides an overview of SDN and its effect on load balancing, highlighting key elements and discussing various load-balancing schemes based on existing solutions and research challenges. Additionally, the article outlines performance metrics used to evaluate these algorithms and suggests possible future research directions

Exploiting the power of multiplicity: a holistic survey of network-layer multipath

The Internet is inherently a multipath network: For an underlying network with only a single path, connecting various nodes would have been debilitatingly fragile. Unfortunately, traditional Internet technologies have been designed around the restrictive assumption of a single working path between a source and a destination. The lack of native multipath support constrains network performance even as the underlying network is richly connected and has redundant multiple paths. Computer networks can exploit the power of multiplicity, through which a diverse collection of paths is resource pooled as a single resource, to unlock the inherent redundancy of the Internet. This opens up a new vista of opportunities, promising increased throughput (through concurrent usage of multiple paths) and increased reliability and fault tolerance (through the use of multiple paths in backup/redundant arrangements). There are many emerging trends in networking that signify that the Internet's future will be multipath, including the use of multipath technology in data center computing; the ready availability of multiple heterogeneous radio interfaces in wireless (such as Wi-Fi and cellular) in wireless devices; ubiquity of mobile devices that are multihomed with heterogeneous access networks; and the development and standardization of multipath transport protocols such as multipath TCP. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive survey of the literature on network-layer multipath solutions. We will present a detailed investigation of two important design issues, namely, the control plane problem of how to compute and select the routes and the data plane problem of how to split the flow on the computed paths. The main contribution of this paper is a systematic articulation of the main design issues in network-layer multipath routing along with a broad-ranging survey of the vast literature on network-layer multipathing. We also highlight open issues and identify directions for future work