Don't Repeat Yourself: Seamless Execution and Analysis of Extensive Network Experiments

This paper presents MACI, the first bespoke framework for the management, the scalable execution, and the interactive analysis of a large number of network experiments. Driven by the desire to avoid repetitive implementation of just a few scripts for the execution and analysis of experiments, MACI emerged as a generic framework for network experiments that significantly increases efficiency and ensures reproducibility. To this end, MACI incorporates and integrates established simulators and analysis tools to foster rapid but systematic network experiments. We found MACI indispensable in all phases of the research and development process of various communication systems, such as i) an extensive DASH video streaming study, ii) the systematic development and improvement of Multipath TCP schedulers, and iii) research on a distributed topology graph pattern matching algorithm. With this work, we make MACI publicly available to the research community to advance efficient and reproducible network experiments

IREEL: remote experimentation with real protocols and applications over emulated network

This paper presents a novel e-learning platform called IREEL. IREEL is a virtual laboratory allowing students to drive experiments with real Internet applications and end-to-end protocols in the context of networking courses. This platform consists in a remote network emulator offering a set of predefined applications and protocol mechanisms. Experimenters configure and control the emulation and the end-systems behavior in order to perform tests, measurements and observations on protocols or applications operating under controlled specific networking conditions. A set of end-to-end mechanisms, mainly focusing on transport and application level protocols, are currently available. IREEL is scalable and easy to use thanks to an ergonomic web interface

End-to-End Simulation of 5G mmWave Networks

Due to its potential for multi-gigabit and low latency wireless links, millimeter wave (mmWave) technology is expected to play a central role in 5th generation cellular systems. While there has been considerable progress in understanding the mmWave physical layer, innovations will be required at all layers of the protocol stack, in both the access and the core network. Discrete-event network simulation is essential for end-to-end, cross-layer research and development. This paper provides a tutorial on a recently developed full-stack mmWave module integrated into the widely used open-source ns--3 simulator. The module includes a number of detailed statistical channel models as well as the ability to incorporate real measurements or ray-tracing data. The Physical (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers are modular and highly customizable, making it easy to integrate algorithms or compare Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) numerologies, for example. The module is interfaced with the core network of the ns--3 Long Term Evolution (LTE) module for full-stack simulations of end-to-end connectivity, and advanced architectural features, such as dual-connectivity, are also available. To facilitate the understanding of the module, and verify its correct functioning, we provide several examples that show the performance of the custom mmWave stack as well as custom congestion control algorithms designed specifically for efficient utilization of the mmWave channel.Comment: 25 pages, 16 figures, submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (revised Jan. 2018

Attaining Realistic Simulations of Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) are comprised of wireless systems that communicate without the assistance of centrally managed routers or base stations. MANET research and development has increased due to computing technologies offering smaller, faster, smarter, and more power efficient platforms to operate on. Largely the testing and evaluation of new and existing MANET protocols has resided in simulation environments. This is due in part to the complexities and expenses incurred when conducting real world tests. Many researchers have come to recognize that these current simulations tend to assume away critical components of the MANET domain. These assumptions are made either to simplify the physical layer of the simulation so that the protocol can be tested or out of necessity because the current simulation platforms are not capable of providing a more realistic physical layer simulation environment. This thesis is focused on addressing these assumptions that affect the physical layer of the MANET protocol by gathering data in the real world and then modifying the simulation environment to model as closely as possible to the gathered results. This modified environment is then compared to the basic MANET simulation environment by analyzing packet delivery and propagation effects of both models

A testbed for MANETs: Implementation, experiences and learned lessons

In this paper, we present the implementation, experiences and lessons learned of our tesbed for Ad-hoc networks and Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). We used OLSR protocol for real experimental evaluation. We investigate the effect of mobility and topology changing in the throughput of a MANET. We study the impact of best-effort traffic for Mesh Topology and Linear Topology. In this work, we consider eight experimental models and we assess the performance of our testbed in terms of throughput, round trip time and packet loss. We found that some of the OLSR's problems can be solved, for instance the routing loop, but this protocol still has the self-interference problem. Also, there is an intricate interdependence between MAC layer and routing layer. We carried out the experiments considering stationary nodes of an Ad-hoc network and the node mobility of MANETs. We found that throughput of TCP was improved by reducing Link Quality Window Size (LQWS). For TCP data flow, we got better results when the LQWS value was 10. Moreover, we found that the node join and leave operations increase the packet loss. The OLSR protocol has a good performance when the source node is moving. However, the performance is not good when the relay nodes are moving.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Client-based and Cross-layer Optimized Flow Mobility for Android Devices in Heterogeneous Femtocell/Wi-Fi Networks*

AbstractThe number of subscribers accessing Internet resources from mobile and wireless devices has been increasing continually since i-mode, the first mobile Internet service launched in 1999. The handling and support of dramatic growth of mobile data traffic create serious challenges for the network operators. Due to the spreading of WLAN networks and the proliferation of multi-access devices, offloading from 3G to Wi-Fi seems to be a promising step towards the solution. To solve the bandwidth limitation and coverage issues in 3G/4G environments, femtocells became key players. These facts motivate the design and development of femtocell/Wi-Fi offloading schemes. Aiming to support advanced offloading in heterogeneous networks, in this paper we propose a client-based, cross-layer optimized flow mobility architecture for Android devices in femtocell/Wi-Fi access environments. The paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation details of the aforementioned mechanisms

QAware: A Cross-Layer Approach to MPTCP Scheduling

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) allows applications to transparently use all available network interfaces by creating a TCP subflow per interface. One critical component of MPTCP is the scheduler that decides which subflow to use for each packet. Existing schedulers typically use estimates of end-to-end path properties, such as delay and bandwidth, for making the scheduling decisions. In this paper, we show that these scheduling decisions can be significantly improved by incorporating readily available local information from the device driver queues in the decision-making process. We propose QAware, a novel cross-layer approach for MPTCP scheduling. QAware combines end-to-end delay estimates with local queue buffer occupancy information and allows for a better and faster adaptation to the network conditions. This results in more efficient use of the available resources and considerable gains in aggregate throughput. We present the design of QAware and evaluate its performance through simulations, and also through real experiments, comparing it to existing schedulers. Our results show that QAware performs significantly better than other available approaches for various use-cases and applications.Comment: in Proceedings of IFIP Networking 2018, 2018 available at: https://files.ifi.uzh.ch/stiller/IFIP%20Networking%202018-Proceedings.pd

Content aware services using edge to edge overlays

Issued as final reportMotorola, inc