4,323 research outputs found
Unified radio and network control across heterogeneous hardware platforms
Experimentation is an important step in the investigation of techniques for handling spectrum scarcity or the development of new waveforms in future wireless networks. However, it is impractical and not cost effective to construct custom platforms for each future network scenario to be investigated. This problem is addressed by defining Unified Programming Interfaces that allow common access to several platforms for experimentation-based prototyping, research, and development purposes. The design of these interfaces is driven by a diverse set of scenarios that capture the functionality relevant to future network implementations while trying to keep them as generic as possible. Herein, the definition of this set of scenarios is presented as well as the architecture for supporting experimentation-based wireless research over multiple hardware platforms. The proposed architecture for experimentation incorporates both local and global unified interfaces to control any aspect of a wireless system while being completely agnostic to the actual technology incorporated. Control is feasible from the low-level features of individual radios to the entire network stack, including hierarchical control combinations. A testbed to enable the use of the above architecture is utilized that uses a backbone network in order to be able to extract measurements and observe the overall behaviour of the system under test without imposing further communication overhead to the actual experiment. Based on the aforementioned architecture, a system is proposed that is able to support the advancement of intelligent techniques for future networks through experimentation while decoupling promising algorithms and techniques from the capabilities of a specific hardware platform
A Survey on Data Plane Programming with P4: Fundamentals, Advances, and Applied Research
With traditional networking, users can configure control plane protocols to
match the specific network configuration, but without the ability to
fundamentally change the underlying algorithms. With SDN, the users may provide
their own control plane, that can control network devices through their data
plane APIs. Programmable data planes allow users to define their own data plane
algorithms for network devices including appropriate data plane APIs which may
be leveraged by user-defined SDN control. Thus, programmable data planes and
SDN offer great flexibility for network customization, be it for specialized,
commercial appliances, e.g., in 5G or data center networks, or for rapid
prototyping in industrial and academic research. Programming
protocol-independent packet processors (P4) has emerged as the currently most
widespread abstraction, programming language, and concept for data plane
programming. It is developed and standardized by an open community and it is
supported by various software and hardware platforms. In this paper, we survey
the literature from 2015 to 2020 on data plane programming with P4. Our survey
covers 497 references of which 367 are scientific publications. We organize our
work into two parts. In the first part, we give an overview of data plane
programming models, the programming language, architectures, compilers,
targets, and data plane APIs. We also consider research efforts to advance P4
technology. In the second part, we analyze a large body of literature
considering P4-based applied research. We categorize 241 research papers into
different application domains, summarize their contributions, and extract
prototypes, target platforms, and source code availability.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (COMS) on
2021-01-2
Network layer access control for context-aware IPv6 applications
As part of the Lancaster GUIDE II project, we have developed a novel wireless access point protocol designed to support the development of next generation mobile context-aware applications in our local environs. Once deployed, this architecture will allow ordinary citizens secure, accountable and convenient access to a set of tailored applications including location, multimedia and context based services, and the public Internet. Our architecture utilises packet marking and network level packet filtering techniques within a modified Mobile IPv6 protocol stack to perform access control over a range of wireless network technologies. In this paper, we describe the rationale for, and components of, our architecture and contrast our approach with other state-of-the- art systems. The paper also contains details of our current implementation work, including preliminary performance measurements
Leveraging Programmable Data Plane For Compressing Forwarding Tables
The Forwarding Information Base (FIB) resides in the data plane of a routing device and is used to forward packets to a next-hop, based on packets\u27 destination IP addresses. The constant growth of a FIB forces network operators to spend more resources on maintaining memory with line-rate Longest Prefix Match (LPM) lookup in a FIB, namely, expensive and energy-hungry Ternary Content-Addressable Memory (TCAM) chips. In this work, we review two different approaches used to mitigate the FIB overflow problem. First, we investigate FIB aggregation, i.e., merging adjacent or overlapping routes with the same next-hop while preserving the forwarding behavior of a FIB. We propose a near-optimal algorithm, FIB Aggregation with Quick Selections (FAQS), that minimizes the FIB churn and speeds BGP update processing by more than twice. In the meantime, FAQS preserves a high compression ratio (at most 73\%). FAQS handles BGP updates incrementally, without the need of re-aggregating the entire FIB table. Second, we investigate FIB (or route) caching, when TCAM holds only a portion of a FIB that carries most of the traffic. We leverage the emerging concept of the programmable data plane to propose a Programmable FIB Caching Architecture (PFCA), that allows cache-victim selection at the line rate and significantly reduces the FIB churn compared to FIB aggregation. PFCA achieves 99.8% cache-hit ratio with only 3.3\% of the FIB placed in a FIB cache. Finally, we extend PFCA\u27s design with a novel approach of integrating incremental FIB aggregation and FIB caching. Such integration needed to overcome cache hiding challenge when a less specific prefix in a cache hides a more specific prefix in a secondary FIB table, which leads to incorrect LPM matching at the cache. In Combined FIB Caching and Aggregation (CFCA), cache-hit ratio is maximized up to 99.94% with only 2.5\% entries of the FIB, while the total number of route changes in TCAM is reduced by more than 40\% compared to low-churn FIB aggregation techniques
Quantum Cryptography in Practice
BBN, Harvard, and Boston University are building the DARPA Quantum Network,
the world's first network that delivers end-to-end network security via
high-speed Quantum Key Distribution, and testing that Network against
sophisticated eavesdropping attacks. The first network link has been up and
steadily operational in our laboratory since December 2002. It provides a
Virtual Private Network between private enclaves, with user traffic protected
by a weak-coherent implementation of quantum cryptography. This prototype is
suitable for deployment in metro-size areas via standard telecom (dark) fiber.
In this paper, we introduce quantum cryptography, discuss its relation to
modern secure networks, and describe its unusual physical layer, its
specialized quantum cryptographic protocol suite (quite interesting in its own
right), and our extensions to IPsec to integrate it with quantum cryptography.Comment: Preprint of SIGCOMM 2003 pape
Algorithms for advance bandwidth reservation in media production networks
Media production generally requires many geographically distributed actors (e.g., production houses, broadcasters, advertisers) to exchange huge amounts of raw video and audio data. Traditional distribution techniques, such as dedicated point-to-point optical links, are highly inefficient in terms of installation time and cost. To improve efficiency, shared media production networks that connect all involved actors over a large geographical area, are currently being deployed. The traffic in such networks is often predictable, as the timing and bandwidth requirements of data transfers are generally known hours or even days in advance. As such, the use of advance bandwidth reservation (AR) can greatly increase resource utilization and cost efficiency. In this paper, we propose an Integer Linear Programming formulation of the bandwidth scheduling problem, which takes into account the specific characteristics of media production networks, is presented. Two novel optimization algorithms based on this model are thoroughly evaluated and compared by means of in-depth simulation results
A service-oriented hybrid access network and clouds architecture
Many telecom operators are deploying their own cloud infrastructure with the two-fold objective of providing cloud services to their customers and enabling network function virtualization. In this article we present an architecture we call SHINE, which focuses on orchestrating cloud with heterogeneous access and core networks. In this architecture intra and inter DC connectivity is dynamically controlled, maximizing the overall performance in terms of throughput and latency while minimizing total costs. The main building blocks are: a future-proof network architecture that can scale to offer potentially unlimited bandwidth based on an active remote node (ARN) to interface end-users and the core network; an innovative distributed DC architecture consisting of micro-DCs placed in selected core locations to accelerate content delivery, reducing core network traffic, and ensuring very low latency; and dynamic orchestration of the distributed DC and access and core network segments. SHINE will provide unprecedented quality of experience, greatly reducing costs by coordinating network and cloud and facilitating service chaining by virtualizing network functions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft
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Multimedia delivery in the future internet
The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio
and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks,
like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white
paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked
challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet.
Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted
with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning
media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace
of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more
than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so
regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected
to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising
to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged
that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new)
multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized
way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety.
In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe
network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as
community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of
interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and
innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/
media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content
combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P
networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to
contribute towards such a vision.
Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6)
and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily
contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way
ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms
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