Stimulating green FTTH networks using home router virtualization

Telecom networks consume a considerable amount of electrical energy and according to the environmental guidelines, just as other businesses, telecom should aim at continuously lowering this consumption. Still in a telecom network a lot of the energy consumption is hidden under the radar, as a large part of the energy consumption is caused by the customer premises equipment (CPE), often installed by the network operator. As this equipment is consuming energy from the customer's side, the telecom operator is not confronted with the energy consumption of this equipment. This also means that the operator gains by any reduction in the cost of the CPE, regardless of whether this involves the installation of less energy efficient equipment. In this paper we investigate the use of a bridged CPE solution and a home router virtualization network solution, in which part of the functionality of a CPE is moved into the network operator equipment and as such reduce the energy consumption by equipment aggregation and specialization. In this paper, we show that this will at the same time reduce costs and as such could be a positive action for the operator, simultaneously reducing the power consumption of the CPE. On top of this bridged CPE, the incentives required to stimulate operators to introduce more energy efficient CPE equipment faster in the network are estimated. Finally, by means of game theory, we propose a method to investigate how the incentives should be placed in order to stimulate green FTTH massive deployments

The state of broadband 2015: Broadband as a foundation for sustainable development

Every year, the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Digital Development ‘State of Broadband’ report takes the pulse of the global broadband industry and explores progress in broadband connectivity. This year’s report finds mixed messages about the growth of ICTs and the global state of broadband. Although strong growth rates continue for mobile broadband and Facebook usage, and mobile cellular subscriptions exceeded 7 billion for the first time during 2015, growth in both mobile cellular subscriptions and Internet usage has slowed sharply. The UN Broadband Commission’s 2011 targets have not been achieved by the target date of 2015 and seem unlikely to be achieved before 2020. Likewise, the milestone of four billion Internet users is unlikely to be surpassed before 2020. The growth in Facebook subscribers is now outpacing growth in the Internet. Internet growth By end 2015, some 3.2 billion people will be online, equating to over 43.4% of the total world population, and up from 2.9 billion a year earlier (almost 40.6% of the population). In the developing world, Internet penetration will surpass 35.3% by the end of 2015; penetration will still be under 10% at 9.5% in the UN-designated Least Developed Countries, however. Even though Internet penetration is approaching saturation in the developed world, with 82.2% of the population online, the global target of 60% set by the Broadband Commission in 2011, to be achieved by 2015, is unlikely to be achieved before 2021 at the earliest. Internet user penetration in the developing world is unlikely to achieve the Broadband Commission target of 50% before 2020. By the end of 2015, there will still be 57% of the world’s population – or four billion people – still offline. Household Internet access in developed countries is close to saturation, with more than 81.3% of households connected. The proportion of households in the developing world with Internet access has increased from 31.5% at the end of 2014 to over 34.1% a year later – still well short of the Broadband Commission target of 40% by 2015. Household connectivity figures mask strong disparities – fewer than 7% of households in LDCs have access, while in sub-Saharan Africa only 1 in 9 households is connected. According to Point Topic, Asia has the largest total number of broadband-connected homes, with nearly as many in total as Europe and the Americas combined. The gender gap in Internet users is proving stubbornly persistent, with an estimated 200 million more men online than women as recently as 2013; one major problem is that sex-disaggregated data are not yet widely reported by national governments and statistics agencies. Mobile growth The mobile industry is growing strongly, but unevenly. ITU forecasts that the milestone of seven billion mobile cellular subscriptions will be exceeded by end 2015, equivalent to a global penetration rate of 97 subscriptions per 100 people. ITU also estimates that there will be a total of almost 3.5 billion mobile broadband subscriptions by end 2015. Industry analysts predict 6.5 billion mobile broadband (3G/4G/5G) subscriptions by 2019, making mobile broadband the fastest growing ICT service in history. Asia-Pacific now accounts for half of all mobile broadband subscriptions, up from just under 45% at the end of 2014. In January 2015, China Mobile became the world’s largest mobile operator by number of subscribers. The rapid expansion of Asia-Pacific is squeezing other world regions in terms of their mobile broadband market share – Europe and the Americas saw declining proportional shares of mobile broadband subscriptions from the end of 2014 to the end of 2015, despite absolute increases in subscription numbers. Smartphones now dominate the mobile device market, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Ericsson forecasts that the number of smartphones in service could exceed ‘basic’ phones by 2016. While developed markets become saturated in terms of total mobile penetration, analysts still see plenty of room for growth, with only an estimated one third of all mobile subscriptions currently associated with a smartphone. In hindsight, the year 2014 is likely to prove a tipping point as the year in which growth in ‘3G’ services began to slow, as growth in ‘4G’ services accelerated. Continued in report. &nbsp

Deployment and operational aspects of rural broadband wireless access networks

Broadband speeds, Internet literacy and digital technologies have been steadily evolving over the last decade. Broadband infrastructure has become a key asset in today’s society, enabling innovation, driving economic efficiency and stimulating cultural inclusion. However, populations living in remote and rural communities are unable to take advantage of these trends. Globally, a significant part of the world population is still deprived of basic access to the Internet. Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) networks are regarded as a viable solution for providing Internet access to populations living in rural regions. In recent years, Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) and community organizations around the world proved that rural BWA networks can be an effective strategy and a profitable business. This research began by deploying a BWA network testbed, which also provides Internet access to several remote communities in the harsh environment of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. The experience of deploying and operating this network pointed out three unresolved research challenges that need to be addressed to ease the path towards widespread deployment of rural BWA networks, thereby bridging the rural-urban broadband divide. Below, our research contributions are outlined with respect to these challenges. Firstly, an effective planning paradigm for deploying BWA networks is proposed: incremental planning. Incremental planning allows to anticipate return of investment and to overcome the limited network infrastructure (e.g., backhaul fibre links) in rural areas. I have developed a software tool called IncrEase and underlying network planning algorithms to consider a varied set of operational metrics to guide the operator in identifying the regions that would benefit the most from a network upgrade, automatically suggesting the best long-term strategy to the network administrator. Second, we recognize that rural and community networks present additional issues for network management. As the Internet uplink is often the most expensive part of the operational expenses for such deployments, it is desirable to minimize overhead for network management. Also, unreliable connectivity between the network operation centre and the network being managed can render traditional centralized management approaches ineffective. Finally, the number of skilled personnel available to maintain such networks is limited. I have developed a distributed network management platform called Stix for BWA networks, to make it easy to manage such networks for rural/community deployments and WISPs alike while keeping the network management infrastructure scalable and flexible. Our approach is based on the notions of goal-oriented and in-network management: administrators graphically specify network management activities as workflows, which are run in the network on a distributed set of agents that cooperate in executing those workflows and storing management information. The Stix system was implemented on low-cost and small form-factor embedded boards and shown to have a low memory footprint. Third, the research focus moves to the problem of assessing broadband coverage and quality in a given geographic region. The outcome is BSense, a flexible framework that combines data provided by ISPs with measurements gathered by distributed software agents. The result is a census (presented as maps and tables) of the coverage and quality of broadband connections available in the region of interest. Such information can be exploited by ISPs to drive their growth, and by regulators and policy makers to get the true picture of broadband availability in the region and make informed decisions. In exchange for installing the multi-platform measurement software (that runs in the background) on their computers, users can get statistics about their Internet connection and those in their neighbourhood. Finally, the lessons learned through this research are summarised. The outcome is a set of suggestions about how the deployment and operation of rural BWA networks, including our own testbed, can be made more efficient by using the proper tools. The software systems presented in this thesis have been evaluated in lab settings and in real networks, and are available as open-source software

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

A Matter of Survival. Arctic Communications Infrastructure in the 21st CenturyArctic Communications Infrastructure Assessment (ACIA)

The Arctic Communications Infrastructure Assessment (ACIA) identifies the issues and challenges facing governments and service providers in ensuring the Canadian Arctic is properly connected for the benefit of Arctic citizens and all Canadians

Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad: actas de las VIII Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en ciberseguridad: Vigo, 21 a 23 de junio de 2023

Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad (8ª. 2023. Vigo)atlanTTicAMTEGA: Axencia para a modernización tecnolóxica de GaliciaINCIBE: Instituto Nacional de Cibersegurida