A novel queue-aware wireless link adaptation mechanism and its fixed-point analytical model

A point-to-point (PTP) wireless link is studied that carries long-lived TCP flows and is controlled with active queue management (AQM). A cross-layer queue-aware adaptive modulation and coding (AMC)-based link adaptation (LA) mechanism is proposed for this wireless link to improve the TCP-level throughput relative to the case where AMC decisions are made based solely on the physical layer (PHY) parameters. The proposed simple-to-implement LA mechanism involves the use of an aggressive modulation and coding scheme (MCS) with high spectral efficiency and high block error rates when the queue occupancy exceeds a certain threshold, but otherwise a relatively conservative MCS with lower spectral efficiency and lower block error rates. A fixed-point analytical model is proposed to obtain the aggregate TCP throughput attained at this wireless link and the model is validated by ns-3 simulations. Numerical experimentation with the proposed analytical model applied to an IEEE 802.16-based wireless link demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed queue-aware LA (QAWLA) mechanism in a wide variety of scenarios including cases where the channel information is imperfect. The impact of the choice of the queue occupancy threshold of QAWLA is extensively studied with respect to the choice of AQM parameters in order to provide engineering guidelines for the provisioning of the wireless link. © 2015, Ozturk and Akar

TCP flow aware adaptive path switching in diffserv enabled MPLS networks

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We propose an adaptive flow-level multi-path routing-based traffic engineering solution for an IP backbone network carrying TCP/IP traffic. Incoming TCP flows are switched between two explicitly routed paths, namely the primary and secondary paths (PP and SP), for resilience and potential goodput improvement at the TCP layer. In the proposed architecture, PPs receive a preferential treatment over SPs using differentiated services mechanisms. The reason for this choice is not for service differentiation but for coping with the detrimental knock-on effect stemming from the use of longer SP that is well known for conventional network load balancing algorithms. Moreover, both paths are congestion-controlled using Explicit Congestion Notification marking at the core and Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease rate adjustment at the ingress nodes. The delay difference between PP and SP is estimated using two per-egress rate-controlling buffers maintained at the ingress nodes for each path, and this delay difference is used to determine the path over which a new TCP flow will be routed. We perform extensive simulations using ns-2 in order to demonstrate the viability of the proposed distributed adaptive multi-path routing method in terms of per-flow TCP goodput. The proposed solution consistently outperforms the single-path routing policy and provides substantial per-flow goodput gains under poor PP conditions. Moreover, highest goodput improvements under the proposed scheme are achieved by flows that receive the lowest goodputs with single-path routing, while the performance of the flows with high goodputs with single-path routing does not deteriorate with the proposed path switching technique. Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Analysis of an Adaptive Modulation and Coding scheme with HARQ for TCP traffic

In this paper, we analyze the aggregate TCP throughput performance of a wireless link utilizing Active Queue Management (AQM) and an Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) scheme with Hybrid ARQ (HARQ) based on the probability of failure in the first transmission attempt. We assume packets arriving out-of-order at the wireless receiver due to random retransmissions are resequenced before being released to the network. For this reason, an approximate model for the delay experienced at the resequencing buffer is also presented. In the light of the results obtained from the presented analysis, we propose a threshold for the aforementioned probability of failure making the investigated AMC scheme work at an overall performance close to that of the optimum policy. © 2015 IEEE

AIMD-based online MPLS traffic engineering for TCP flows via distributed multi-path routing

With this paper, we propose a distributed online traffic engineering architecture for MPLS networks. In this architecture, a primary and secondary MPLS LSP are established from an ingress LSR to every other egress LSR. We propose to split the TCP traffic between the primary and secondary paths using a distributed mechanism based on ECN marking and AIMD-based rate control. Inspired by the random early detection mechanism for active queue management, we propose a random early reroute scheme to adaptively control the delay difference between the primary and secondary LSPS. Considering the adverse effect of packet reordering on TCP performance for packet-based load balancing schemes, we propose that the TCP splitting mechanism operates on a per-flow basis. Using flow-based models developed for Internet traffic and simulations, we show that flow-based distributed multi-path traffic engineering outperforms on a consistent basis the case of a single path in terms of per-flow goodputs. Due to the elimination of out-of-order packet arrivals, flow-based splitting also enhances TCP performance with respect to packet-based splitting especially for long TCP flows that are hit hard by packet reordering. We also compare and contrast two queuing architectures for differential treatment of data packets routed over primary and secondary LSPS in the MPLS data plane, namely first-in-first-out and strict priority queuing. We show through simulations that strict priority queuing is more effective and relatively more robust with respect to the changes in the traffic demand matrix than first-in-first-out queuing in the context of distributed multi-path routing

Performance evaluation of slotted optical burst switching systems with quality of service differentiation

Slotted optical burst switching (SOBS) has recently caught the attention of the optical networking community due to performance gains achievable with synchronous infrastructures. In this paper, we study the loss probabilities in a slotted optical burst switching node fed with Poisson burst traffic where the fixed burst size is an integer multiple of the slot length. We develop a discrete-time Markov chain (DTMC) based framework to obtain the loss probabilities in systems with and without quality of service (QoS) differentiation. In particular, we focus on analytical modeling of priority scheduling and offset-based QoS differentiation mechanisms for SOBS networks. The latter problem suffers from the curse of dimensionality which we address by a discrete phase type distribution approximation for the discrete Poisson distribution leading to an accurate approximation for the loss probabilities. A hybrid QoS mechanism which jointly utilizes offset-based differentiation together with priority scheduling is also analyzed. © 2009 IEEE

Combined use of prioritized AIMD and flow-based traffic splitting for robust TCP load balancing

In this paper, we propose an AIMD-based TCP load balancing architecture in a backbone network where TCP flows are split between two explicitly routed paths, namely the primary and the secondary paths. We propose that primary paths have strict priority over the secondary paths with respect to packet forwarding and both paths are rate-controlled using ECN marking in the core and AIMD rate adjustment at the ingress nodes. We call this technique "prioritized AIMD". The buffers maintained at the ingress nodes for the two alternative paths help us predict the delay difference between the two paths which forms the basis for deciding on which path to forward a new-coming flow. We provide a simulation study for a large mesh network to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach in terms of the average per-flow goodput and byte blocking rates. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004

TCP flow aware adaptive path switching in diffserv enabled MPLS networks

We propose an adaptive flow-level multi-path routing-based traffic engineering solution for an IP backbone network carrying TCP/IP traffic. Incoming TCP flows are switched between two explicitly routed paths, namely the primary and secondary paths (PP and SP), for resilience and potential goodput improvement at the TCP layer. In the proposed architecture, PPs receive a preferential treatment over SPs using differentiated services mechanisms. The reason for this choice is not for service differentiation but for coping with the detrimental knock-on effect stemming from the use of longer SP that is well known for conventional network load balancing algorithms. Moreover, both paths are congestion-controlled using Explicit Congestion Notification marking at the core and Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease rate adjustment at the ingress nodes. The delay difference between PP and SP is estimated using two per-egress rate-controlling buffers maintained at the ingress nodes for each path, and this delay difference is used to determine the path over which a new TCP flow will be routed. We perform extensive simulations using ns-2 in order to demonstrate the viability of the proposed distributed adaptive multi-path routing method in terms of per-flow TCP goodput. The proposed solution consistently outperforms the single-path routing policy and provides substantial per-flow goodput gains under poor PP conditions. Moreover, highest goodput improvements under the proposed scheme are achieved by flows that receive the lowest goodputs with single-path routing, while the performance of the flows with high goodputs with single-path routing does not deteriorate with the proposed path switching technique. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Mesh topology design in overlay virtual private network

The mesh topology design problem in overlay virtual private networks is studied. Given a set of customer nodes and an associated traffic matrix, tunnels that connect node pairs through a service provider network are determined such that the total multi-hopped traffic is minimised. A tabu search based heuristic is proposed

Genome-Wide Transcriptional Reorganization Associated with Senescence-to-Immortality Switch during Human Hepatocellular Carcinogenesis

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Senescence is a permanent proliferation arrest in response to cell stress such as DNA damage. It contributes strongly to tissue aging and serves as a major barrier against tumor development. Most tumor cells are believed to bypass the senescence barrier (become "immortal") by inactivating growth control genes such as TP53 and CDKN2A. They also reactivate telomerase reverse transcriptase. Senescence-to-immortality transition is accompanied by major phenotypic and biochemical changes mediated by genome-wide transcriptional modifications. This appears to happen during hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) development in patients with liver cirrhosis, however, the accompanying transcriptional changes are virtually unknown. We investigated genome-wide transcriptional changes related to the senescence-to-immortality switch during hepatocellular carcinogenesis. Initially, we performed transcriptome analysis of senescent and immortal clones of Huh7 HCC cell line, and identified genes with significant differential expression to establish a senescence-related gene list. Through the analysis of senescence-related gene expression in different liver tissues we showed that cirrhosis and HCC display expression patterns compatible with senescent and immortal phenotypes, respectively; dysplasia being a transitional state. Gene set enrichment analysis revealed that cirrhosis/senescence-associated genes were preferentially expressed in non-tumor tissues, less malignant tumors, and differentiated or senescent cells. In contrast, HCC/immortality genes were up-regulated in tumor tissues, or more malignant tumors and progenitor cells. In HCC tumors and immortal cells genes involved in DNA repair, cell cycle, telomere extension and branched chain amino acid metabolism were up-regulated, whereas genes involved in cell signaling, as well as in drug, lipid, retinoid and glycolytic metabolism were down-regulated. Based on these distinctive gene expression features we developed a 15-gene hepatocellular immortality signature test that discriminated HCC from cirrhosis with high accuracy. Our findings demonstrate that senescence bypass plays a central role in hepatocellular carcinogenesis engendering systematic changes in the transcription of genes regulating DNA repair, proliferation, differentiation and metabolism