Building Programmable Wireless Networks: An Architectural Survey

In recent times, there have been a lot of efforts for improving the ossified Internet architecture in a bid to sustain unstinted growth and innovation. A major reason for the perceived architectural ossification is the lack of ability to program the network as a system. This situation has resulted partly from historical decisions in the original Internet design which emphasized decentralized network operations through co-located data and control planes on each network device. The situation for wireless networks is no different resulting in a lot of complexity and a plethora of largely incompatible wireless technologies. The emergence of "programmable wireless networks", that allow greater flexibility, ease of management and configurability, is a step in the right direction to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the wireless networks. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the architectures proposed in literature for building programmable wireless networks focusing primarily on three popular techniques, i.e., software defined networks, cognitive radio networks, and virtualized networks. This survey is a self-contained tutorial on these techniques and its applications. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges in building next-generation programmable wireless networks and identify open research issues and future research directions.Comment: 19 page

An Experimental Study on Virtual Machine Live Migration Impact on Services Performance

One important benefit of servers' virtualization is the reduction of the maintenance complexity of infrastructures. A key feature is servers' live migration which allows virtual servers to be exchanged between physical machines without stopping their services. However, virtualization also has some drawbacks caused by the overhead generated. Our research evaluated live migration process overhead, on real and virtual environments, noticed from the client's side regarding two different services: web and database. YCSB and ab Benchmark were adopted as workloads. Almost all tests on real environment overcame those on virtual, with both benchmarks. The impact of the live migration in the services was evident, proving to be more effective on real machines than on virtual machines. We found the DB service accommodated better to the virtual environment and to migration than Web service. We also considered an environment with multiple migrations which presented a higher degradation than when only one migration is performed

Survey of Desktop Virtualization in Higher Education: An Energy- and Cost-Savings Perspective

Benefits of utilizing desktop virtualization technology in higher education environments include the ability to deploy numerous applications, which may conflict on a traditional desktop, into a single image. Additionally, the utilization of thin-clients could produce substantial energy savings and reduce physical desktop replacement costs. Finally, virtualized desktops can be delivered to numerous non-enterprise devices, particularly student’s personal laptops or dorm-room computers. While there appear to be numerous benefits to desktop virtualization, there are many barriers to adoption. This paper outlines the substantial energy- and cost-savings provided through desktop virtualization in higher education. A literature review of relevant works and findings of a university implementation workgroup are presented using a case-study approach

Development of a virtualization systems architecture course for the information sciences and technologies department at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)

Virtualization is a revolutionary technology that has changed the way computing is performed in data centers. By converting traditionally siloed computing assets to shared pools of resources, virtualization provides a considerable number of advantages such as more efficient use of physical server resources, more efficient use of datacenter space, reduced energy consumption, simplified system administration, simplified backup and disaster recovery, and a host of other advantages. Due to the considerable number of advantages, companies and organizations of various sizes have either migrated their workloads to virtualized environments or are considering virtualization of their workloads. As per Gartner Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure 2013 , roughly two-third of x86 server workloads are virtualized [1]. The need for virtualization solutions by companies and organizations has increased the demand for qualified virtualization professionals for planning, designing, implementing, and maintaining virtualized infrastructure of different scales. Although universities are the main source for educating IT professionals, the field of information technology is so dynamic and changing so rapidly that not all universities can keep pace with the change. As a result, providing the latest technology that is being used in the information technology industry in the curriculums of universities is a big advantage for information technology universities. Taking into consideration the trend toward virtualization in computing environments and the great demand for virtualization professionals in the industry, the faculty of Information Sciences and Technologies department at RIT decided to prepare a graduate course in the master\u27s program in Networking and System Administration entitled Virtualization Systems Architecture , which better prepares students to a find a career in the field of enterprise computing. This research is composed of five chapters. It starts by briefly going through the history of computer virtualization and exploring when and why it came into existence and how it evolved. The second chapter of the research goes through the challenges in virtualization of the x86 platform architecture and the solutions used to overcome the challenges. In the third chapter, various types of hypervisors are discussed and the advantages and disadvantages of each one are discussed. In the fourth chapter, the architecture and features of the two leading virtualization solutions are explored. Then in the final chapter, the research goes through the contents of the Virtualization Systems Architecture course

An Undergraduate Information Security Program: More than a Curriculum

This paper describes the implementation of an information security program at a large Midwestern university. The initial work is briefly summarized and improvements that have occurred over time are described. Current activities and future plans are discussed. This paper offers insight and lessons learned for organizations that have or are planning to implement an information security program. Some key success factors for this program have been a faculty project champion, faculty dedication and tenacity, involvement with industry partners, alumni, and students, and continuous improvement

Latin American perspectives to internationalize undergraduate information technology education

The computing education community expects modern curricular guidelines for information technology (IT) undergraduate degree programs by 2017. The authors of this work focus on eliciting and analyzing Latin American academic and industry perspectives on IT undergraduate education. The objective is to ensure that the IT curricular framework in the IT2017 report articulates the relationship between academic preparation and the work environment of IT graduates in light of current technological and educational trends in Latin America and elsewhere. Activities focus on soliciting and analyzing survey data collected from institutions and consortia in IT education and IT professional and educational societies in Latin America; these activities also include garnering the expertise of the authors. Findings show that IT degree programs are making progress in bridging the academic-industry gap, but more work remains

Constructing a Methodology for Developing a Cybersecurity Program

This paper serves to introduce the problem of constructing a methodology to develop a cybersecurity program. The goal of the program is to prepare students graduating from an accredited two-year college for success in cybersecurity careers. Several challenges must be addressed such as program accreditation, workforce development, and DHS/NSA Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense (CAE-CD) designation. All of these serve as inputs in constructing a methodology to develop such a program to meet local industry needs for cyber professional

On the design and development of emulation platforms for NFV-based infrastructures

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) presents several advantages over traditional network architectures, such as flexibility, security, and reduced CAPEX/OPEX. In traditional middleboxes, network functions are usually executed on specialised hardware (e.g., firewall, DPI). Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) on the other hand, are executed on commodity hardware, employing Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies (e.g., OpenFlow, P4). Although platforms for prototyping NFV environments have emerged in recent years, they still present limitations that hinder the evaluation of NFV scenarios such as fog computing and heterogeneous networks. In this work, we present NIEP: a platform for designing and testing NFV-based infrastructures and VNFs. NIEP consists of a network emulator and a platform for Click-based VNFs development. NIEP provides a complete NFV emulation environment, allowing network operators to test their solutions in a controlled scenario prior to deployment in production networks

A Review of Virtualisation and Cloud Computing in Higher Education

Virtualisation in the classroom provides students with the impression that they are interacting with applications, services, and files which are stored locally, when in fact the applications, services, and files may be stored on a server off site, or at an alternative location on site. “Virtualization is a technology that permits the abstraction of the software from one computer and its easy deployment in another one, which may house additional virtualized machines” (Martín, Marrero, Urbano, Barra, & Moreiro, 2011, p. 349). Server virtualisation is when an Information Technology manager or computer administrator partitions a server to create several instances of virtual servers, thereby multiplying the working capacity of the physical server