A Survey of Positioning Techniques and Location Based Services in Wireless Networks

International audiencePositioning techniques are known in a wide variety of wireless radio access technologies. Traditionally, Global Positioning System (GPS) is the most popular outdoor positioning system. Localization also exists in mobile networks such as Global System for Mobile communications (GSM). Recently, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) become widely deployed, and they are also used for localizing wireless-enabled clients. Many techniques are used to estimate client position in a wireless network. They are based on the characteristics of the received wireless signals: power, time or angle of arrival. In addition, hybrid positioning techniques make use of the collaboration between different wireless radio access technologies existing in the same geographical area. Client positioning allows the introduction of numerous services like real-time tracking, security alerts, informational services and entertainment applications. Such services are known as Location Based Services (LBS), and they are useful in both commerce and security sectors. In this paper, we explain the principles behind positioning techniques used in satellite networks, mobile networks and Wireless Local Area Networks. We also describe hybrid localization methods that exploit the coexistence of several radio access technologies in the same region, and we classify the location based services into several categories. When localization accuracy is improved, position-dependant services become more robust and efficient, and user satisfaction increases

A new SNMP-based algorithm for network traffic balancing in virtual local area networks

Virtual local area network (VLAN). s are being created for improve performance, easy to manage security and ensure address on local area networks. This paper introduces a new approach for load balancing on virtual local area networks. The method which is developed for this approach, is dynamically changing the clients ports VLAN membership according to VLAN's total traffic of the same security policy. The clients which have to register to security VLAN, can access their permission level source at all physically location of LAN, this is the flexibility of the method. The VLAN count which have to be on the LAN, can adjust parametrically or default constantly. In the algorithm which developed for this approach, the hosts belong to traffic on the network, ensures as much as possible equal or nearest distributes homogeneous on the VLAN's. In this way the VLAN's have same or nearest traffic value. A software has developed for testing functionality of this method which using SNMP protocol and reached to the aims by testing on the real network

Wireless network security status in Oulu:war-driving

Abstract. Wireless networks have improvement not only in the timeliness, frequency, convenience and flexibility of connecting to the Internet, but also in economic cost and expansion of the number and location of access points that a user can connect to the internet. They have gained popularity especially after Wireless Local Area Network second evolvement about changing initial secure algorithm Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) to Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and WPA2. WEP has been found to have vulnerabilities in cryptographic techniques and can’t defend against brute force attacks for more than a few minutes and is considered broken nowadays. WPA, a stronger encryption algorithm than WEP, made Wi-Fi a reliable network connection method. Wi-Fi security issues have been found probably since the first wireless network was deployed, but it is widely known by people because of Peter Shipley’s wardriving experimentation and the statistic report which has been published in hacker conference in 2001. Several experiments have been carried out to reveal Wi-Fi security issues and to improve users’ awareness of Wi-Fi security. Wardriving is not a new concept, but only lately wardriving was becoming easier for wardrivers because of continued evolution of technology. The updated software and hardware that are utilized in wardriving have given this activity more economic value and attracted interest from other researchers too. But this method has not yet been used in Oulu, at least in academic research. No studies have reported about wireless network security status with wardriving method by flying a drone to discover wireless APs and most of wardriving has been done by car, walking, or biking. Furthermore, Oulu, as a technology hub with many ICT companies and citywide panOULU public Wi-Fi infrastructure, makes it an ideal location for this experiment. What is Wi-Fi performance and security status in Oulu? Author will scan wireless networks in Oulu center area with a tool kit setting up with Raspberry Pi, Wi-Fi adaptor, GPS receiver and drone using a method called wardriving. Wardriving is the act of discovering and mapping wireless networks in a certain area and restoring access points’ data, such as an encryption standard, network name and location. The fundamental purpose is to find general information about Wi-Fi networks performance and security in Oulu center area and report the issues to raise the awareness of Wi-Fi security. Mobile devices do not need to be connected to wireless networks to be tracked. The Wi-Fi signal is transmitted continuously while a phone device tries to search for available networks. Whether discovered wireless devices quantification is indicative of local personnel density is another research question to be answered. About 65.22% wireless APs have WPA-CCMP encryption standard and 4.2% Wi-Fi have unknown authentication in Oulu. The data showed that the majority of wireless networks in Oulu are secure. Less than 1% networks deployed WEP which has been found severe flaws in authentication method and 10% wireless access points had WPA-TKIP deployed which employed the same underlying mechanism as WEP, therefore it is vulnerable to similar attacks. The amount of insecure networks brings some concerns to the wireless network security state in Oulu. Wardriving by drone turned out to be a more efficient method to discover wireless networks compared to wardriving on ground by walking or biking. The result also found that wireless device quantification is indicative of local personnel density, as almost everyone nowadays has a smartphone. This finding makes the Pi setup more practically usage, such as searching for lost people in forest. Thus, it becomes one future research direction, to build a real time indicator to show the direction and distance between the Pi setup and a specific wireless network device, based on the detected strength of signal

Detection of Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks in Local Area Networks Based on Outgoing Packets

Denial of Service (DoS) is a security threat which compromises the confidentiality of information stored in Local Area Networks (LANs) due to unauthorized access by spoofed IP addresses. DoS is harmful to LANs as the flooding of packets may delay other users from accessing the server and in severe cases, the server may need to be shut down, wasting valuable resources, especially in critical real-time services such as in e-commerce and the medical field. The objective of this project is to propose a new DoS detection system to protect organizations from unauthenticated access to important information which may jeopardize the confidentiality, privacy and integrity of information in Local Area Networks. The new DoS detection system monitors the traffic flow of packets and filters the packets based on their IP addresses to determine whether they are genuine requests for network services or DoS attacks. Results obtained demonstrate that the detection accuracy of the new DoS detection system was in good agreement with the detection accuracy from the network protocol analyzer, Wireshark. For high-rate DoS attacks, the accuracy was 100% whereas for low-rate DoS attacks, the accuracy was 67%

Policing Johannesburg wealthy neighborhoods: the uncertain ‘partnerships’ between police, communities and private security companies

The paper examines the challenges raised by “partnerships” between state and non-state security stakeholders, relying on two security experiments developed in Johannesburg wealthy neighborhoods. It raises the question of their monitoring by the police – understood as the police capacity to coordinate the multiple, non-state policing initiatives that otherwise remain fragmented “security networks”. The community initiatives seem easier to integrate within the local police strategies – since the private security sector has got its own, marketdriven logic. However, the formalisation of partnerships between police and communities have generally failed, due to their technical fragility (flexibility of community involvement, personalization of relationships leading to possible corruption and conflict) and their political difficulties (if the private sector can easily target the high income area, it is considered less legitimate for police to set up “elitist policing” thanks to the involvement of wealthy communities). Finally, abandoning these forms of partnerships might encourage a further privatization of the production of security – using more classical, easier-to-set “contracts” with the private sector that do not seem to lead to a real “partnership” with, nor a monitoring by, the police

A personal networking solution

This paper presents an overview of research being conducted on Personal Networking Solutions within the Mobile VCE Personal Distributed Environment Work Area. In particular it attempts to highlight areas of commonality with the MAGNET initiative. These areas include trust of foreign devices and service providers, dynamic real-time service negotiation to permit context-aware service delivery, an automated controller algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks, and routing protocols for ad hoc networking environments. Where possible references are provided to Mobile VCE publications to enable further reading

Will SDN be part of 5G?

For many, this is no longer a valid question and the case is considered settled with SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualization) providing the inevitable innovation enablers solving many outstanding management issues regarding 5G. However, given the monumental task of softwarization of radio access network (RAN) while 5G is just around the corner and some companies have started unveiling their 5G equipment already, the concern is very realistic that we may only see some point solutions involving SDN technology instead of a fully SDN-enabled RAN. This survey paper identifies all important obstacles in the way and looks at the state of the art of the relevant solutions. This survey is different from the previous surveys on SDN-based RAN as it focuses on the salient problems and discusses solutions proposed within and outside SDN literature. Our main focus is on fronthaul, backward compatibility, supposedly disruptive nature of SDN deployment, business cases and monetization of SDN related upgrades, latency of general purpose processors (GPP), and additional security vulnerabilities, softwarization brings along to the RAN. We have also provided a summary of the architectural developments in SDN-based RAN landscape as not all work can be covered under the focused issues. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of SDN-based RAN and clearly points out the gaps in the technology.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure

Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte