Offloading Content with Self-organizing Mobile Fogs

Mobile users in an urban environment access content on the internet from different locations. It is challenging for the current service providers to cope with the increasing content demand from a large number of collocated mobile users. In-network caching to offload content at nodes closer to users alleviate the issue, though efficient cache management is required to find out who should cache what, when and where in an urban environment, given nodes limited computing, communication and caching resources. To address this, we first define a novel relation between content popularity and availability in the network and investigate a node's eligibility to cache content based on its urban reachability. We then allow nodes to self-organize into mobile fogs to increase the distributed cache and maximize content availability in a cost-effective manner. However, to cater rational nodes, we propose a coalition game for the nodes to offer a maximum "virtual cache" assuming a monetary reward is paid to them by the service/content provider. Nodes are allowed to merge into different spatio-temporal coalitions in order to increase the distributed cache size at the network edge. Results obtained through simulations using realistic urban mobility trace validate the performance of our caching system showing a ratio of 60-85% of cache hits compared to the 30-40% obtained by the existing schemes and 10% in case of no coalition

Backscatter from the Data Plane --- Threats to Stability and Security in Information-Centric Networking

Information-centric networking proposals attract much attention in the ongoing search for a future communication paradigm of the Internet. Replacing the host-to-host connectivity by a data-oriented publish/subscribe service eases content distribution and authentication by concept, while eliminating threats from unwanted traffic at an end host as are common in today's Internet. However, current approaches to content routing heavily rely on data-driven protocol events and thereby introduce a strong coupling of the control to the data plane in the underlying routing infrastructure. In this paper, threats to the stability and security of the content distribution system are analyzed in theory and practical experiments. We derive relations between state resources and the performance of routers and demonstrate how this coupling can be misused in practice. We discuss new attack vectors present in its current state of development, as well as possibilities and limitations to mitigate them.Comment: 15 page

A software-defined architecture for next-generation cellular networks

In the recent years, mobile cellular networks are undergoing fundamental changes and many established concepts are being revisited. New emerging paradigms, such as Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Internet of Things (IoT),and Mobile Social Networking (MSN), bring challenges in the design of cellular networks architectures. Current Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks are not able to accommodate these new trends in a scalable and efficient way. In this paper, first we discuss the limitations of the current LTE architecture. Second, driven by the new communication needs and by the advances in aforementioned areas, we propose a new architecture for next generation cellular networks. Some of its characteristics include support for distributed content routing, Heterogeneous Networks(HetNets) and multiple Radio Access Technologies (RATs). Finally, we present simulation results which show that significant backhaul traffic savings can be achieved by implementing caching and routing functions at the network edge

The edge cloud: A holistic view of communication, computation and caching

The evolution of communication networks shows a clear shift of focus from just improving the communications aspects to enabling new important services, from Industry 4.0 to automated driving, virtual/augmented reality, Internet of Things (IoT), and so on. This trend is evident in the roadmap planned for the deployment of the fifth generation (5G) communication networks. This ambitious goal requires a paradigm shift towards a vision that looks at communication, computation and caching (3C) resources as three components of a single holistic system. The further step is to bring these 3C resources closer to the mobile user, at the edge of the network, to enable very low latency and high reliability services. The scope of this chapter is to show that signal processing techniques can play a key role in this new vision. In particular, we motivate the joint optimization of 3C resources. Then we show how graph-based representations can play a key role in building effective learning methods and devising innovative resource allocation techniques.Comment: to appear in the book "Cooperative and Graph Signal Pocessing: Principles and Applications", P. Djuric and C. Richard Eds., Academic Press, Elsevier, 201