Design and Evaluation of a Distributed SDN Control Plane Architecture

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a new networking paradigm which aims to decouple forwarding hardware from control decisions. Existing SDN architectures centralize control logic to networks, and, however, cannot meet the requirements of scalability and adaptability simultaneously. Issues are that SDN architectures must be able to scale and able to adapt to dynamic conditions. Therefore, in order to cope with large-scale and dynamically changing networks, new architectures are required and need to be highly flexible. In this paper, an architecture that organizes controllers in a distributed hierarchy is introduced. Design concepts are presented to highlight its operation modes. Simulations have been conducted using Mininet and preliminary results are reported to show that the proposed architecture could reduce setup time of flow initiation

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Vehicular Ad-hoc Network's Privacy Assessment Based on Attack Tree

International audienceIn the recent years, Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) have known a significant interest in terms of security and dependability. Moreover, we cannot ignore that this kind of networks request further work to provide different privacy related issues. Meaning that, the private data of users of this kind of network have to be prevented from different threats that may abuse their privacy. In this paper we propose an overall sight on the privacy threats in vehicular networks and we give our approach that addressing this issues. The goal here is providing the VANET dependability, by preventing the system assets from the potential threats that targets a vehicular system in order to more understand all ways in which the system can be attacked, that could help us to conceive countermeasures to counteract different possible attacks. Which could be done by applying the attack tree model on the vehicular system use case, in order to retrieve from it different informations in order to evaluate the system. Countermeasures could be added to the attack trees, that leads to the attack-defense tree model

Challenges of the internet of things ::IPv6 and network management

Nowadays, many researchers are interested in the concept of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is evolving our knowledge and conception of the world. IoT aims to offer a common communication paradigm for all objects via the Internet and its protocols. For that reasons, it is being applied in all areas of life, such as environmental monitoring, healthcare, military, cities management, and industry. One of the major challenges of the IoT is to integrate IPv6, and its related protocols, into the constrained capabilities offered by Wireless Sensor Networks, building automation, and home appliances. One of the design considerations, for the success of the IoT, is to integrate what exists from IPv6, before creating novel protocols, in order to promote and ensure the interoperability, homogeneity, openness, security, flexibility, and heritage of all existing hardware, tools, and applications of IPv6. This work presents how to integrate the management protocols in IPv6 into the emerging IoT networks based on protocols such as 6LoWPAN. An overview of the different management protocols for IPv6 is presented. Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and the considerations for IoT management from works such as Lightweight Network Management Protocol (LNMP), and the Constrained networks and devices Management (COMAN) Group from the IETF are discussed. COMAN is presenting solutions such as simplified MIB, new SNMP consideration, and CoAP-based management

Big Data for Supply Chain Management in Industry 4.0 context: A comprehensive survey

International audienceThe world now knows a great evolution and explosion of new technologies in many domains that change our lives every day. Obviously, this leads also to the emergence of a new generation of industries commonly known as industry 4.0. Big Data is one of those great technologies, which has considered as the backbone of this type of industry. Hence, that will arise new challenges for companies, and lead them to think differently in the way they design, manage and automate their supply chains processes in order to compete better in the global market and improve their business. The competition within the market space has evolved from ”firm versus firm” towards ”supply chain versus supply chain”. During supply chain operations a great amount of data are generated. Consequently, Big Data Analytics capabilities could be considered the main key to improving data-driven decision-making. Additionally, it enables the development of innovative ways that improve business efficiency and effectiveness from these vast amounts of data. Moreover, it provides a 360-degree view of company operations. This review paper is interested in showing the importance of Big Data and Big Data Analytics in the Smart Supply Chain Management. More precisely, how they contribute in making SCM entities (Procurement, Manufacturing, Logistic/Transportation, Warehousing and Demand management) smarter to be suitable in industry 4.0 context

Access control in IoT environments: Feasible scenarios

International audienceThe Internet of Things (IoT) is the extension of the internet to the physical world where all objects collect information and interact with their environments with no or little human intervention. They collect and transfer sensitive and private data from various users. This puts security and privacy issues at the forefront: the ability to manage the digital identity of millions of people and billions of devices is fundamental for success. As most of the information contained in IoT environment may be personal or sensitive data, there is a requirement to support anonymity and restrain access to information. This article will focus on access control and authentication mechanisms as well as supporting the cryptography algorithms in constrained devices

A big data based architecture for collaborative networks: Supply chains mixed-network

International audienc