CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Structured Peer-to-Peer Overlays for NATed Churn Intensive Networks

The wide-spread coverage and ubiquitous presence of mobile networks has propelled the usage and adoption of mobile phones to an unprecedented level around the globe. The computing capabilities of these mobile phones have improved considerably, supporting a vast range of third party applications. Simultaneously, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) overlay networks have experienced a tremendous growth in terms of usage as well as popularity in recent years particularly in fixed wired networks. In particular, Distributed Hash Table (DHT) based Structured P2P overlay networks offer major advantages to users of mobile devices and networks such as scalable, fault tolerant and self-managing infrastructure which does not exhibit single points of failure. Integrating P2P overlays on the mobile network seems a logical progression; considering the popularities of both technologies. However, it imposes several challenges that need to be handled, such as the limited hardware capabilities of mobile phones and churn (i.e. the frequent join and leave of nodes within a network) intensive mobile networks offering limited yet expensive bandwidth availability. This thesis investigates the feasibility of extending P2P to mobile networks so that users can take advantage of both these technologies: P2P and mobile networks. This thesis utilises OverSim, a P2P simulator, to experiment with the performance of various P2P overlays, considering high churn and bandwidth consumption which are the two most crucial constraints of mobile networks. The experiment results show that Kademlia and EpiChord are the two most appropriate P2P overlays that could be implemented in mobile networks. Furthermore, Network Address Translation (NAT) is a major barrier to the adoption of P2P overlays in mobile networks. Integrating NAT traversal approaches with P2P overlays is a crucial step for P2P overlays to operate successfully on mobile networks. This thesis presents a general approach of NAT traversal for ring based overlays without the use of a single dedicated server which is then implemented in OverSim. Several experiments have been performed under NATs to determine the suitability of the chosen P2P overlays under NATed environments. The results show that the performance of these overlays is comparable in terms of successful lookups in both NATed and non-NATed environments; with Kademlia and EpiChord exhibiting the best performance. The presence of NATs and also the level of churn in a network influence the routing techniques used in P2P overlays. Recursive routing is more resilient to IP connectivity restrictions posed by NATs but not very robust in high churn environments, whereas iterative routing is more suitable to high churn networks, but difficult to use in NATed environments. Kademlia supports both these routing schemes whereas EpiChord only supports the iterating routing. This undermines the usefulness of EpiChord in NATed environments. In order to harness the advantages of both routing schemes, this thesis presents an adaptive routing scheme, called Churn Aware Routing Protocol (ChARP), combining recursive and iterative lookups where nodes can switch between recursive and iterative routing depending on their lifetimes. The proposed approach has been implemented in OverSim and several experiments have been carried out. The experiment results indicate an improved performance which in turn validates the applicability and suitability of ChARP in NATed environments

On Critical Infrastructure Protection and International Agreements

This paper evaluates the prospects for protecting critical social functions from “cyber” attacks carried out over electronic information networks. In particular, it focuses on the feasibility of devising international laws, conventions or agreements to deter and/or punish perpetrators of such attacks. First,it briefly summarizes existing conventions and laws, and explains to which technological issues they can apply. The paper then turns to a technical discussion of the threats faced by critical infrastructure. By distinguishing between the different types of attacks (theft of information, destructive penetration, denial of service, etc.) that can be conducted, and examining the role of collateral damages in information security, the paper identifies the major challenges in devising and implementing international conventions for critical infrastructure protection. It then turns to a practical examination of how these findings apply to specific instances of critical networks (power grids and water systems, financial infrastructure, air traffic control and hospital networks), and draws conclusions about potential remedies. A notable finding is that critical functions should be isolated from non-critical functions in the network to have a chance to implement viable international agreements; and that, given the difficulty in performing attack attribution, other relevant laws should be designed with the objective of reducing negative externalities that facilitate such attacks

Recent Trends in Communication Networks

In recent years there has been many developments in communication technology. This has greatly enhanced the computing power of small handheld resource-constrained mobile devices. Different generations of communication technology have evolved. This had led to new research for communication of large volumes of data in different transmission media and the design of different communication protocols. Another direction of research concerns the secure and error-free communication between the sender and receiver despite the risk of the presence of an eavesdropper. For the communication requirement of a huge amount of multimedia streaming data, a lot of research has been carried out in the design of proper overlay networks. The book addresses new research techniques that have evolved to handle these challenges

Community Networks and Sustainability: a Survey of Perceptions, Practices, and Proposed Solutions

Community network (CN) initiatives have been around for roughly two decades, evangelizing a distinctly different paradigm for building, maintaining, and sharing network infrastructure but also defending the basic human right to Internet access. Over this time they have evolved into a mosaic of systems that vary widely with respect to their network technologies, their offered services, their organizational structure, and the way they position themselves in the overall telecommunications’ ecosystem. Common to all these highly differentiated initiatives is the sustainability challenge. We approach sustainability as a broad term with an economical, political, and cultural context. We first review the different perceptions of the term. These vary both across and within the different types of stakeholders involved in CNs and are reflected in their motivation to join such initiatives. Then, we study the diverse approaches of CN operators towards the sustainability goal. Given the rich context of the term, these range all the way from mechanisms to fund their activities, to organizational structures and social activities serving as incentives for the engagement of their members. We iterate on incentive mechanisms that have been proposed and theoretically analyzed in the literature for CNs as well as tools and processes that have been actually implemented in them. Finally, we enumerate lessons that have been learned out of these two decades of CNs’ operation and discuss additional technological and regulatory issues that are key to their longer-term sustainability

Enhancing trustability in MMOGs environments

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs; e.g., World of Warcraft), virtual worlds (VW; e.g., Second Life), social networks (e.g., Facebook) strongly demand for more autonomic, security, and trust mechanisms in a way similar to humans do in the real life world. As known, this is a difficult matter because trusting in humans and organizations depends on the perception and experience of each individual, which is difficult to quantify or measure. In fact, these societal environments lack trust mechanisms similar to those involved in humans-to-human interactions. Besides, interactions mediated by compute devices are constantly evolving, requiring trust mechanisms that keep the pace with the developments and assess risk situations. In VW/MMOGs, it is widely recognized that users develop trust relationships from their in-world interactions with others. However, these trust relationships end up not being represented in the data structures (or databases) of such virtual worlds, though they sometimes appear associated to reputation and recommendation systems. In addition, as far as we know, the user is not provided with a personal trust tool to sustain his/her decision making while he/she interacts with other users in the virtual or game world. In order to solve this problem, as well as those mentioned above, we propose herein a formal representation of these personal trust relationships, which are based on avataravatar interactions. The leading idea is to provide each avatar-impersonated player with a personal trust tool that follows a distributed trust model, i.e., the trust data is distributed over the societal network of a given VW/MMOG. Representing, manipulating, and inferring trust from the user/player point of view certainly is a grand challenge. When someone meets an unknown individual, the question is “Can I trust him/her or not?”. It is clear that this requires the user to have access to a representation of trust about others, but, unless we are using an open source VW/MMOG, it is difficult —not to say unfeasible— to get access to such data. Even, in an open source system, a number of users may refuse to pass information about its friends, acquaintances, or others. Putting together its own data and gathered data obtained from others, the avatar-impersonated player should be able to come across a trust result about its current trustee. For the trust assessment method used in this thesis, we use subjective logic operators and graph search algorithms to undertake such trust inference about the trustee. The proposed trust inference system has been validated using a number of OpenSimulator (opensimulator.org) scenarios, which showed an accuracy increase in evaluating trustability of avatars. Summing up, our proposal aims thus to introduce a trust theory for virtual worlds, its trust assessment metrics (e.g., subjective logic) and trust discovery methods (e.g., graph search methods), on an individual basis, rather than based on usual centralized reputation systems. In particular, and unlike other trust discovery methods, our methods run at interactive rates.MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games, como por exemplo, World of Warcraft), mundos virtuais (VW, como por exemplo, o Second Life) e redes sociais (como por exemplo, Facebook) necessitam de mecanismos de confiança mais autónomos, capazes de assegurar a segurança e a confiança de uma forma semelhante à que os seres humanos utilizam na vida real. Como se sabe, esta não é uma questão fácil. Porque confiar em seres humanos e ou organizações depende da percepção e da experiência de cada indivíduo, o que é difícil de quantificar ou medir à partida. Na verdade, esses ambientes sociais carecem dos mecanismos de confiança presentes em interacções humanas presenciais. Além disso, as interacções mediadas por dispositivos computacionais estão em constante evolução, necessitando de mecanismos de confiança adequados ao ritmo da evolução para avaliar situações de risco. Em VW/MMOGs, é amplamente reconhecido que os utilizadores desenvolvem relações de confiança a partir das suas interacções no mundo com outros. No entanto, essas relações de confiança acabam por não ser representadas nas estruturas de dados (ou bases de dados) do VW/MMOG específico, embora às vezes apareçam associados à reputação e a sistemas de reputação. Além disso, tanto quanto sabemos, ao utilizador não lhe é facultado nenhum mecanismo que suporte uma ferramenta de confiança individual para sustentar o seu processo de tomada de decisão, enquanto ele interage com outros utilizadores no mundo virtual ou jogo. A fim de resolver este problema, bem como os mencionados acima, propomos nesta tese uma representação formal para essas relações de confiança pessoal, baseada em interacções avatar-avatar. A ideia principal é fornecer a cada jogador representado por um avatar uma ferramenta de confiança pessoal que segue um modelo de confiança distribuída, ou seja, os dados de confiança são distribuídos através da rede social de um determinado VW/MMOG. Representar, manipular e inferir a confiança do ponto de utilizador/jogador, é certamente um grande desafio. Quando alguém encontra um indivíduo desconhecido, a pergunta é “Posso confiar ou não nele?”. É claro que isto requer que o utilizador tenha acesso a uma representação de confiança sobre os outros, mas, a menos que possamos usar uma plataforma VW/MMOG de código aberto, é difícil — para não dizer impossível — obter acesso aos dados gerados pelos utilizadores. Mesmo em sistemas de código aberto, um número de utilizadores pode recusar partilhar informações sobre seus amigos, conhecidos, ou sobre outros. Ao juntar seus próprios dados com os dados obtidos de outros, o utilizador/jogador representado por um avatar deve ser capaz de produzir uma avaliação de confiança sobre o utilizador/jogador com o qual se encontra a interagir. Relativamente ao método de avaliação de confiança empregue nesta tese, utilizamos lógica subjectiva para a representação da confiança, e também operadores lógicos da lógica subjectiva juntamente com algoritmos de procura em grafos para empreender o processo de inferência da confiança relativamente a outro utilizador. O sistema de inferência de confiança proposto foi validado através de um número de cenários Open-Simulator (opensimulator.org), que mostrou um aumento na precisão na avaliação da confiança de avatares. Resumindo, a nossa proposta visa, assim, introduzir uma teoria de confiança para mundos virtuais, conjuntamente com métricas de avaliação de confiança (por exemplo, a lógica subjectiva) e em métodos de procura de caminhos de confiança (com por exemplo, através de métodos de pesquisa em grafos), partindo de uma base individual, em vez de se basear em sistemas habituais de reputação centralizados. Em particular, e ao contrário de outros métodos de determinação do grau de confiança, os nossos métodos são executados em tempo real