Quarc: an architecture for efficient on-chip communication

The exponential downscaling of the feature size has enforced a paradigm shift from computation-based design to communication-based design in system on chip development. Buses, the traditional communication architecture in systems on chip, are incapable of addressing the increasing bandwidth requirements of future large systems. Networks on chip have emerged as an interconnection architecture offering unique solutions to the technological and design issues related to communication in future systems on chip. The transition from buses as a shared medium to networks on chip as a segmented medium has given rise to new challenges in system on chip realm. By leveraging the shared nature of the communication medium, buses have been highly efficient in delivering multicast communication. The segmented nature of networks, however, inhibits the multicast messages to be delivered as efficiently by networks on chip. Relying on extensive research on multicast communication in parallel computers, several network on chip architectures have offered mechanisms to perform the operation, while conforming to resource constraints of the network on chip paradigm. Multicast communication in majority of these networks on chip is implemented by establishing a connection between source and all multicast destinations before the message transmission commences. Establishing the connections incurs an overhead and, therefore, is not desirable; in particular in latency sensitive services such as cache coherence. To address high performance multicast communication, this research presents Quarc, a novel network on chip architecture. The Quarc architecture targets an area-efficient, low power, high performance implementation. The thesis covers a detailed representation of the building blocks of the architecture, including topology, router and network interface. The cost and performance comparison of the Quarc architecture against other network on chip architectures reveals that the Quarc architecture is a highly efficient architecture. Moreover, the thesis introduces novel performance models of complex traffic patterns, including multicast and quality of service-aware communication

An Optimal Nonblocking Multicast Virtual Circuit Switch

This paper describes an architecture for a multicast virtual circuit switch using cell recycling. This is the first nonblocking switch architecture that is optimal in both the switching network complexity and the amount of memory required for multicast address translation. Furthermore, it is optimal in the amount of effort required for multicast connection modification. This architecture makes it both technically and economically feasible to construct the large switching systems that will ultimately be needed for wide scale deployment of Broadband ISDN to residential users. In particular, we estimate that systems with tens of thousands of 620 Mb/s ports can be produced for a per port cost of under $500

An autonomic delivery framework for HTTP adaptive streaming in multicast-enabled multimedia access networks

The consumption of multimedia services over HTTP-based delivery mechanisms has recently gained popularity due to their increased flexibility and reliability. Traditional broadcast TV channels are now offered over the Internet, in order to support Live TV for a broad range of consumer devices. Moreover, service providers can greatly benefit from offering external live content (e. g., YouTube, Hulu) in a managed way. Recently, HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) techniques have been proposed in which video clients dynamically adapt their requested video quality level based on the current network and device state. Unlike linear TV, traditional HTTP- and HAS-based video streaming services depend on unicast sessions, leading to a network traffic load proportional to the number of multimedia consumers. In this paper we propose a novel HAS-based video delivery architecture, which features intelligent multicasting and caching in order to decrease the required bandwidth considerably in a Live TV scenario. Furthermore we discuss the autonomic selection of multicasted content to support Video on Demand (VoD) sessions. Experiments were conducted on a large scale and realistic emulation environment and compared with a traditional HAS-based media delivery setup using only unicast connections

Multicast broadcast services support in OFDMA-based WiMAX systems [Advances in mobile multimedia]

Multimedia stream service provided by broadband wireless networks has emerged as an important technology and has attracted much attention. An all-IP network architecture with reliable high-throughput air interface makes orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA)-based mobile worldwide interoperability for microwave access (mobile WiMAX) a viable technology for wireless multimedia services, such as voice over IP (VoIP), mobile TV, and so on. One of the main features in a WiMAX MAC layer is that it can provide'differentiated services among different traffic categories with individual QoS requirements. In this article, we first give an overview of the key aspects of WiMAX and describe multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS) architecture of the 3GPP. Then, we propose a multicast and broadcast service (MBS) architecture for WiMAX that is based on MBMS. Moreover, we enhance the MBS architecture for mobile WiMAX to overcome the shortcoming of limited video broadcast performance over the baseline MBS model. We also give examples to demonstrate that the proposed architecture can support better mobility and offer higher power efficiency

Multi-layer virtual transport network management

Nowadays there is an increasing need for a general paradigm which can simplify network management and further enable network innovations. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an efficient way to make the network programmable and reduce management complexity, however it is plagued with limitations inherited from the legacy Internet (TCP/IP) architecture. In this paper, in response to limitations of current Software Defined Networking (SDN) management solutions, we propose a recursive approach to enterprise network management, where network management is done through managing various Virtual Transport Networks (VTNs) over different scopes (i.e., regions of operation). Different from the traditional virtual network model which mainly focuses on routing/tunneling, our VTN provides communication service with explicit Quality-of-Service (QoS) support for applications via transport flows, and it involves all mechanisms (e.g., addressing, routing, error and flow control, resource allocation) needed to support such transport flows. Based on this approach, we design and implement a management architecture, which recurses the same VTN-based management mechanism for enterprise network management. Our experimental results show that our management architecture achieves better performance.National Science Foundation awards: CNS-0963974 and CNS-1346688

Application-driven network management with ProtoRINA

Traditional network management is tied to the TCP/IP architecture, thus it inherits its many limitations, e.g., static management and one-size-fits-all structure. Additionally there is no unified framework for application management, and service (application) providers have to rely on their own ad-hoc mechanisms to manage their application services. The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) is our solution to achieve better network management. RINA provides a unified framework for application-driven network management along with built-in mechanisms (including registration, authentication, enrollment, addressing, etc.), and it allows the dynamic formation of secure communication containers for service providers in support of various requirements. In this paper, we focus on how application-driven network management can be achieved over the GENI testbed using ProtoRINA, a user-space prototype of RINA. We demonstrate how video can be efficiently multicast to many clients on demand by dynamically creating a delivery tree. Under RINA, multicast can be enabled through a secure communication container that is dynamically formed to support video transport either through application proxies or via relay IPC processes. Experimental results over the GENI testbed show that application-driven network management enabled by ProtoRINA can achieve better network and application performance.National Science Foundation (NSF grant CNS-0963974)

TINA as a virtual market place for telecommunication and information services: the VITAL experiment

The VITAL (Validation of Integrated Telecommunication Architectures for the Long-Term) project has defined, implemented and demonstrated an open distributed telecommunication architecture (ODTA) for deploying, managing and using a set of heterogeneous multimedia, multi-party, and mobility services. The architecture was based on the latest specifications released by TINA-C. The architecture was challenged in a set of trials by means of a heterogeneous set of applications. Some of the applications were developed within the project from scratch, while some others focused on integrating commercially available applications. The applications were selected in such a way as to assure full coverage of the architecture implementation and reflect a realistic use of it. The VITAL experience of refining and implementing TINA specifications and challenging the resulting platform by a heterogeneous set of services has proven the openness, flexibility and reusability of TINA. This paper describes the VITAL approach when choosing the different services and how they challenge and interact with the architecture, focusing especially on the service architecture and the Ret reference point definitions. The VITAL adjustments and enhancements to the TINA architecture are described. This paper contributes to proving that the TINA-based VITAL ODTA allows for easy and cost-effective development and deployment of advanced end-user and operator services, and can indeed act as the basis for a virtual market place for telecommunications service

Integrating security in a group oriented distributed system

A distributed security architecture is proposed for incorporation into group oriented distributed systems, and in particular, into the Isis distributed programming toolkit. The primary goal of the architecture is to make common group oriented abstractions robust in hostile settings, in order to facilitate the construction of high performance distributed applications that can tolerate both component failures and malicious attacks. These abstractions include process groups and causal group multicast. Moreover, a delegation and access control scheme is proposed for use in group oriented systems. The focus is the security architecture; particular cryptosystems and key exchange protocols are not emphasized

A novel on-board Unit to accelerate the penetration of ITS services

In-vehicle connectivity has experienced a big expansion in recent years. Car manufacturers have mainly proposed OBU-based solutions, but these solutions do not take full advantage of the opportunities of inter-vehicle peer-to-peer communications. In this paper we introduce GRCBox, a novel architecture that allows OEM user-devices to directly communicate when located in neighboring vehicles. In this paper we also describe EYES, an application we developed to illustrate the type of novel applications that can be implemented on top of the GRCBox. EYES is an ITS overtaking assistance system that provides the driver with real-time video fed from the vehicle located in front. Finally, we evaluated the GRCbox and the EYES application and showed that, for device-to-device communication, the performance of the GRCBox architecture is comparable to an infrastructure network, introducing a negligible impact