Active Topology Inference using Network Coding

Our goal is to infer the topology of a network when (i) we can send probes between sources and receivers at the edge of the network and (ii) intermediate nodes can perform simple network coding operations, i.e., additions. Our key intuition is that network coding introduces topology-dependent correlation in the observations at the receivers, which can be exploited to infer the topology. For undirected tree topologies, we design hierarchical clustering algorithms, building on our prior work. For directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), first we decompose the topology into a number of two-source, two-receiver (2-by-2) subnetwork components and then we merge these components to reconstruct the topology. Our approach for DAGs builds on prior work on tomography, and improves upon it by employing network coding to accurately distinguish among all different 2-by-2 components. We evaluate our algorithms through simulation of a number of realistic topologies and compare them to active tomographic techniques without network coding. We also make connections between our approach and alternatives, including passive inference, traceroute, and packet marking

Turbo NOC: a framework for the design of Network On Chip based turbo decoder architectures

This work proposes a general framework for the design and simulation of network on chip based turbo decoder architectures. Several parameters in the design space are investigated, namely the network topology, the parallelism degree, the rate at which messages are sent by processing nodes over the network and the routing strategy. The main results of this analysis are: i) the most suited topologies to achieve high throughput with a limited complexity overhead are generalized de-Bruijn and generalized Kautz topologies; ii) depending on the throughput requirements different parallelism degrees, message injection rates and routing algorithms can be used to minimize the network area overhead.Comment: submitted to IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems I (submission date 27 may 2009

A Graph Theoretic Perspective on Internet Topology Mapping

Understanding the topological characteristics of the Internet is an important research issue as the Internet grows with no central authority. Internet topology mapping studies help better understand the structure and dynamics of the Internet backbone. Knowing the underlying topology, researchers can better develop new protocols and services or fine-tune existing ones. Subnet-level Internet topology measurement studies involve three stages: topology collection, topology construction, and topology analysis. Each of these stages contains challenging tasks, especially when large-scale backbone topologies of millions of nodes are studied. In this dissertation, I first discuss issues in subnet-level Internet topology mapping and review state-of-the-art approaches to handle them. I propose a novel graph data indexing approach to to efficiently process large scale topology data. I then conduct an experimental study to understand how the responsiveness of routers has changed over the last decade and how it differs based on the probing mechanism. I then propose an efficient unresponsive resolution approach by incorporating our structural graph indexing technique. Finally, I introduce Cheleby, an integrated Internet topology mapping system. Cheleby first dynamically probes observed subnetworks using a team of PlanetLab nodes around the world to obtain comprehensive backbone topologies. Then, it utilizes efficient algorithms to resolve subnets, IP aliases, and unresponsive routers in the collected data sets to construct comprehensive subnet-level topologies. Sample topologies are provided at http://cheleby.cse.unr.edu

Online Joint Topology Identification and Signal Estimation with Inexact Proximal Online Gradient Descent

Identifying the topology that underlies a set of time series is useful for tasks such as prediction, denoising, and data completion. Vector autoregressive (VAR) model based topologies capture dependencies among time series, and are often inferred from observed spatio-temporal data. When the data are affected by noise and/or missing samples, the tasks of topology identification and signal recovery (reconstruction) have to be performed jointly. Additional challenges arise when i) the underlying topology is time-varying, ii) data become available sequentially, and iii) no delay is tolerated. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes two online algorithms to estimate the VAR model-based topologies. The proposed algorithms have constant complexity per iteration, which makes them interesting for big data scenarios. They also enjoy complementary merits in terms of complexity and performance. A performance guarantee is derived for one of the algorithms in the form of a dynamic regret bound. Numerical tests are also presented, showcasing the ability of the proposed algorithms to track the time-varying topologies with missing data in an online fashion.Comment: 14 pages including supplementary material, 2 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

Robust geometric forest routing with tunable load balancing

Although geometric routing is proposed as a memory-efficient alternative to traditional lookup-based routing and forwarding algorithms, it still lacks: i) adequate mechanisms to trade stretch against load balancing, and ii) robustness to cope with network topology change. The main contribution of this paper involves the proposal of a family of routing schemes, called Forest Routing. These are based on the principles of geometric routing, adding flexibility in its load balancing characteristics. This is achieved by using an aggregation of greedy embeddings along with a configurable distance function. Incorporating link load information in the forwarding layer enables load balancing behavior while still attaining low path stretch. In addition, the proposed schemes are validated regarding their resilience towards network failures

Making and breaking power laws in evolutionary algorithm population dynamics

Deepening our understanding of the characteristics and behaviors of population-based search algorithms remains an important ongoing challenge in Evolutionary Computation. To date however, most studies of Evolutionary Algorithms have only been able to take place within tightly restricted experimental conditions. For instance, many analytical methods can only be applied to canonical algorithmic forms or can only evaluate evolution over simple test functions. Analysis of EA behavior under more complex conditions is needed to broaden our understanding of this population-based search process. This paper presents an approach to analyzing EA behavior that can be applied to a diverse range of algorithm designs and environmental conditions. The approach is based on evaluating an individual’s impact on population dynamics using metrics derived from genealogical graphs.\ud From experiments conducted over a broad range of conditions, some important conclusions are drawn in this study. First, it is determined that very few individuals in an EA population have a significant influence on future population dynamics with the impact size fitting a power law distribution. The power law distribution indicates there is a non-negligible probability that single individuals will dominate the entire population, irrespective of population size. Two EA design features are however found to cause strong changes to this aspect of EA behavior: i) the population topology and ii) the introduction of completely new individuals. If the EA population topology has a long path length or if new (i.e. historically uncoupled) individuals are continually inserted into the population, then power law deviations are observed for large impact sizes. It is concluded that such EA designs can not be dominated by a small number of individuals and hence should theoretically be capable of exhibiting higher degrees of parallel search behavior