A new lookup model for multiple flow tables of open flow with implementation and optimization considerations

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via the DOI in this record.Open Flow has become the key standard for the southbound interface of software defined networking. The single flow table of Open Flow implementation can lead to fast storage space growth, and finally cause table-overflow, the multiple flow tables can address this problem and provide greater efficiency and flexibility. Through analyzing the potential deployment challenges of Open Flow, this paper proposes a new lookup model with implementation and optimization considerations for multiple flow tables in an Open Flow switch. With the developed lookup model, the original single flow table is split into multiple sub-flow tables, and the fields in each sub-flow table are further divided into several categories according to different field types. Preliminary simulation results demonstrate that the proposed solution can effectively reduce the storage space of flow tables

H-SOFT: a heuristic storage space optimisation algorithm for flow table of OpenFlow

PublishedThis is the peer reviewed version of the article, which has been published in final form at DOI 10.1002/cpe.3206. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.OpenFlow has become the key standard and technology for software defined networking, which has been widely adopted in various environments. However, the global deployment of OpenFlow encountered several issues, such as the increasing number of fields and complex structure of flow entries, making the size of flow table in OpenFlow switches explosively grows, which results in hardware implementation difficulty. To this end, this paper presents the modelling on the minimisation for storage space of flow table and proposes a Heuristic Storage space Optimisation algorithm for Flow Table (H-SOFT) to solve this optimisation problem. The H-SOFT algorithm degrades the complex and high-dimensional fields of a flow table into multiple flow tables with simple and low-dimensional fields based on the coexistence and conflict relationships among fields to release the unused storage space due to blank fields. Extensive simulation experiments demonstrate that the H-SOFT algorithm can effectively reduce the storage space of flow table. In particular, with frequent updates on flow entries, the storage space compression rate of flow table is stable and can achieve at ~70%. Moreover, in comparison with the optimal solution, the H-SOFT algorithm can achieve the similar compression rate with much lower execution time.National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaNational Program on Key Basic Research Project (973 Program)Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of SciencesNational High-Tech R&D Program of China (863 Program

Experimenting adaptive services in sea-cloud innovation environment

Most of existing network testbeds can only support the experimentation of L2~L4 forwarding protocols, leaving the evaluation of L4~L7 applications still a tremendous challenge. This paper pioneers to present the design of sea-cloud innovation environment (SCIE) based on the software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) paradigms to support adaptive service-oriented experimentation, where the virtualized network functions (VNFs) can be implemented or deimplemented dynamically on network devices according to ondemand requirements. The experimentation is running to form an adaptive chain of network functions, which can be achieved by the protocol oblivious forwarding (POF) via user-defined fields and generic flow instruction set to forward the data to appropriate devices with VNFs. In SCIE, we demonstrate the experimentation of DPI service with on-demand requirement of security check

A Kernel-space POF virtual switch

Protocol Oblivious Forwarding (POF) aims at providing a standard southbound interface for sustainable Software Defined Networking (SDN) evolvement. It overcomes the limitations of popular Open Flow protocols (an existing widely-adopted southbound interface), through the enhancement of SDN forwarding plane. This paper pioneers the design and implementation of a Kernel-space POF Virtual Switch (K_POFVS) on Linux platform. K_POFVS can improve the packet processing speed, through fast packet forwarding and the capability of adding/deleting/modifying protocol fields in kernel space. In addition, it is able to enhance flow table matching speed, by separating the mask table (consisting of flow entry masks used to figure out the matching field) and the flow table under a caching mechanism. Furthermore, K_POFVS can achieve efficient communication between the kernel space and the user space, via extending the Netlink communication between them. Experimental results show that K_POFVS can provide much better performance than existing user-space POF virtual switches, in terms of packet forwarding delay, packet processing delay and packet transmission rateThis work is partially supported by the National Program on Key Basic Research Project of China (973 Program) under Grant No. 2012CB315803, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under grant No. XDA06010306, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 61303241, and the University of Exeter’s Innovation Platform – Link Fund under Award No. LF207

Association between cardiovascular risk factors and atrial fibrillation

BackgroundThe most prevalent sustained arrhythmia in medical practice, atrial fibrillation (AF) is closely associated with a high risk of cardiovascular disease. Nevertheless, the risk of AF associated with cardiovascular risk factors has not been well elucidated. We pooled all published studies to provide a better depiction of the relationship among cardiovascular risk factors with AF.MethodsStudies were searched in the MEDLINE, Web of Science, and EMBASE databases since initiation until January 15, 2022. Prospective cohort studies assessing the relationship a minimum of single cardiovascular risk factors to AF incidence were included if they contained adequate data for obtaining relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Random-effects models were utilized to perform independent meta-analyses on each cardiovascular risk factor. PROSPERO registry number: CRD42022310882.ResultsA total of 17,098,955 individuals and 738,843 incident cases were reported for data from 101 studies included in the analysis. In all, the risk of AF was 1.39 (95% CI, 1.30–1.49) for obesity, 1.27 (95% CI, 1.22–1.32) per 5 kg/m2 for increase in body mass index, 1.19 (95% CI, 1.10–1.28) for former smokers, 1.23 (95% CI, 1.09–1.38) for current smokers, 1.31 (95% CI, 1.23–1.39) for diabetes mellitus, 1.68 (95% CI, 1.51–1.87) for hypertension, and 1.12 (95% CI, 0.95–1.32) for dyslipidemia.InterpretationAdverse cardiovascular risk factors correlate with an increased risk of AF, yet dyslipidemia does not increase the risk of AF in the general population, potentially providing new insights for AF screening strategies among patients with these risk factors.Systematic Review Registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/, PROSPERO identifier (CRD42022310882)

Insights into the issue in IPv6 adoption: a view from the Chinese IPv6 Application mix

Published onlineThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.Although IPv6 has been standardized more than 15 years ago, its deployment is still very limited. China has been strongly pushing IPv6, especially due to its limited IPv4 address space. In this paper, we describe measurements from a large Chinese academic network, serving a significant population of IPv6 hosts. We show that despite its expected strength, China is struggling as much as the western world to increase the share of IPv6 traffic. To understand the reasons behind this, we examine the IPv6 applicative ecosystem. We observe a significant IPv6 traffic growth over the past 3 years, with P2P file transfers responsible for more than 80% of the IPv6 traffic, compared with only 15% for IPv4 traffic. Checking the top websites for IPv6 explains the dominance of P2P, with popular P2P trackers appearing systematically among the top visited sites, followed by Chinese popular services (e.g., Tencent), as well as surprisingly popular third-party analytics including Google. Finally, we compare the throughput of IPv6 and IPv4 flows. We find that a larger share of IPv4 flows get a high-throughput compared with IPv6 flows, despite IPv6 traffic not being rate limited. We explain this through the limited amount of HTTP traffic in IPv6 and the presence of Web caches in IPv4. Our findings highlight the main issue in IPv6 adoption, that is, the lack of commercial content, which biases the geographic pattern and flow throughput of IPv6 traffic. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Automatic virtual network embedding: A deep reinforcement learning approach with graph convolutional networks

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via the DOI in this record.Virtual network embedding arranges virtual network services onto substrate network components. The performance of embedding algorithms determines the effectiveness and efficiency of a virtualized network, making it a critical part of the network virtualization technology. To achieve better performance, the algorithm needs to automatically detect the network status which is complicated and changes in a time-varying manner, and to dynamically provide solutions that can best fit the current network status. However, most existing algorithms fail to provide automatic embedding solutions in an acceptable running time. In this paper, we combine deep reinforcement learning with a novel neural network structure based on graph convolutional networks, and propose a new and efficient algorithm for automatic virtual network embedding. In addition, a parallel reinforcement learning framework is used in training along with a newly-designed multi-objective reward function, which has proven beneficial to the proposed algorithm for automatic embedding of virtual networks. Extensive simulation results under different scenarios show that our algorithm achieves best performance on most metrics compared with the existing stateof-the-art solutions, with upto 39.6% and 70.6% improvement on acceptance ratio and average revenue, respectively. Moreover, the results also demonstrate that the proposed solution possesses good robustness

Antitumor activity of celastrol nanoparticles in a xenograft retinoblastoma tumor model

Zhanrong Li,1,* Xianghua Wu,1,* Jingguo Li,2 Lin Yao,1 Limei Sun,1 Yingying Shi,1 Wenxin Zhang,1 Jianxian Lin,1 Dan Liang,1 Yongping Li1 1State Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, 2School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workBackground: Celastrol, a Chinese herbal medicine, has shown antitumor activity against various tumor cell lines. However, the effect of celastrol on retinoblastoma has not yet been analyzed. Additionally, the poor water solubility of celastrol restricts further therapeutic applications. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effect of celastrol nanoparticles (CNPs) on retinoblastoma and to investigate the potential mechanisms involved.Methods: Celastrol-loaded poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(ε-caprolactone) nanopolymeric micelles were developed to improve the hydrophilicity of celastrol. The 2-(2-methoxy-4-nitrophenyl)-3-(4-nitrophenyl)-5-(2,4-disulf-ophenyl)-2H tetrazolium monosodium salt (WST-8) assay was used to determine the inhibitory effect of CNPs on SO-Rb 50 cell proliferation in vitro. Immunofluorescence was used to evaluate the apoptotic effect of CNPs on nuclear morphology, and flow cytometry was used to quantify cellular apoptosis. The expression of Bcl-2, Bax, NF-κB p65, and phospo-NF-κB p65 proteins was assessed by Western blotting. A human retinoblastoma xenograft model was used to evaluate the inhibitory effects of CNPs on retinoblastoma in NOD-SCID mice. Hematoxylin and eosin staining was used to assess the apoptotic effects of CNPs on retinoblastoma.Results: CNPs inhibit the proliferation of SO-Rb 50 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner with an IC50 of 17.733 µg/mL (celastrol-loading content: 7.36%) after exposure to CNPs for 48 hours. CNPs induce apoptosis in SO-Rb 50 cells in a dose-dependent manner. The expression of Bcl-2, NF-κB p65, and phospo-NF-κB p65 proteins decreased after exposure to CNPs 54.4 µg/mL for 48 hours. Additionally, the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio increased, whereas the expression of Bax itself was not significantly altered. CNPs inhibit the growth of retinoblastoma and induce apoptosis in retinoblastoma cells in mice.Conclusion: CNPs inhibit the growth of retinoblastoma in mouse xenograft model by inducing apoptosis in SO-Rb 50 cells, which may be related to the increased Bax/Bcl-2 ratio and the inhibition of NF-κB. CNPs may represent a potential alternative treatment for retinoblastoma.Keywords: apoptosis, SO-Rb 50 cells, poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(ε-caprolactone), nanopolymeric micelles, celastrol nanoparticles&nbsp

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells inhibit dendritic cells differentiation and maturation by microRNA-23b

Correspondence: Lanping Wang ([email protected]) and Bo Xia ([email protected]) Research on regulation and its mechanism of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) on dendritic cells (DCs), which is the initiating factor in immune response has applicable clinical value. Although BMSCs have a significant regulatory effect on the maturation of DCs, its molecular mechanism is still unclear. BMSCs and DCs, were co-cultured by different concentration ratios. Flow cytometry was used to detect the expression of DC markers (CD83, CD11c). Quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) was used to measure the expression of related genes in RNA level. Expression of the target proteins was detected with using Western blot assay. miRNA inhibitor and miRNA mimic were used to suppress and up-regulate the expression of the target gene. In this research, our results demonstrated that BMSCs notably inhibited maturation of DCs in the co-culture system of BMSCs and DCs and confirmed that this inhibition is due to overexpression of miR-23b. Furthermore, this research found that miR-23b overexpression inhibited the expression of p50/p65, thus blocked the activation of the NF-κB pathway. In conclusion, BMSCs affected the activation of NF-κB pathway through miR-23b overexpression resulting in inhibition of the maturation and differentiation of DCs

Celastrol nanoparticles inhibit corneal neovascularization induced by suturing in rats

Zhanrong Li1, Lin Yao1, Jingguo Li2, Wenxin Zhang1, Xianghua Wu1, Yi Liu1, Miaoli Lin1, Wenru Su1, Yongping Li1, Dan Liang11State Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, Sun Yat-Sen University, 2School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of ChinaPurpose: Celastrol, a traditional Chinese medicine, is widely used in anti-inflammation and anti-angiogenesis research. However, the poor water solubility of celastrol restricts its further application. This paper aims to study the effect of celastrol nanoparticles (CNPs) on corneal neovascularization (CNV) and determine the possible mechanism.Methods: To improve the hydrophilicity of celastrol, celastrol-loaded poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(ε-caprolactone) nanopolymeric micelles were developed. The characterization of CNPs was measured by dynamic light scattering and transmission electron microscopy analysis. Celastrol loading content and release were assessed by ultraviolet-visible analysis and high performance liquid chromatography, respectively. In vitro, human umbilical vein endothelial cell proliferation and capillary-like tube formation were assayed. In vivo, suture-induced CNV was chosen to evaluate the effect of CNPs on CNV in rats. Immunohistochemistry for CD68 assessed the macrophage infiltration of the cornea on day 6 after surgery. Real-time quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay were used to evaluate the messenger ribonucleic acid and protein levels, respectively, of vascular endothelial growth factor, matrix metalloproteinase 9, and monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 in the cornea.Results: The mean diameter of CNPs with spherical shape was 48 nm. The celastrol loading content was 7.36%. The release behavior of CNPs in buffered solution (pH 7.4) showed a typical two-phase release profile. CNPs inhibited the proliferation of human umbilical vein endothelial cells in a dose-independent manner and suppressed the capillary structure formation. After treatment with CNPs, the length and area of CNV reduced from 1.16 ± 0.18 mm to 0.49 ± 0.12 mm and from 7.71 ± 0.94 mm2 to 2.29 ± 0.61 mm2, respectively. Macrophage infiltration decreased significantly in the CNP-treated corneas. CNPs reduced the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor, matrix metalloproteinase 9, and monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 in the cornea on day 6 after suturing.Conclusion: CNPs significantly inhibited suture-induced CNV by suppressing macrophage infiltration and the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and matrix metalloproteinase 9 in the rat cornea.Keywords: celastrol, PEG-b-PCL nanopolymeric micelles, corneal neovascularization, macrophages, VEGF, MMP-