Notes on the use of RTP for shared workspace applications

The Real-time Transport Protocol, RTP, has become the dominant protocol for streaming audio and video in IP-based environments. A number of proposals have been made which attempt to build on this success and apply RTP for shared workspace applications. We discuss the needs of such applications and the features provided by RTP, with an aim to showing why RTP is not appropriate for such uses

Advanced Caching for Distributing Sensor Data through Programmable Nodes

This paper shows an innovative solution for distributing dynamic sensor data by using distributed caches. Our proposal is based on the concepts of service modularization and virtualization of network nodes made available by the NetServ hosting environment, which has been defined and implemented with the aim of extending the functions of the network nodes. Through a lab experiment involving tens of nodes, we have demonstrated a significant performance improvements in term of traffic saving and download time in comparison with a legacy, Internet-based, approach. Beyond this performance improvements, the proposed solution holds also functional improvements, in terms of dynamic deployment and easy integration with services making use of sensor data.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE LANMAN 201

VoIP security - attacks and solutions

Voice over IP (VoIP) technology is being extensively and rapidly deployed. Flexibility and cost efficiency are the key factors luring enterprises to transition to VoIP. Some security problems may surface with the widespread deployment of VoIP. This article presents an overview of VoIP systems and its security issues. First, we briefly describe basic VoIP architecture and its fundamental differences compared to PSTN. Next, basic VoIP protocols used for signaling and media transport, as well as defense mechanisms are described. Finally, current and potential VoIP attacks along with the approaches that have been adopted to counter the attacks are discussed

On the Design of a SIP-Based Binding Middleware for Next Generation Home Network Services

Abstract. This paper proposes a two-layer component-based middleware frame-work that copes with the complexity of managing and constructing efficient and useful SIP-based home services. In the first layer, the device integration frame-work overcomes the heterogeneity of media home devices by providing protocol-independent components that reify the underlying devices. At the second layer, the binding framework allows constructing open mobile media bindings between SIP and non SIP communication protocol endpoints including media home de-vices. The openness of our framework is motivated by the need of constructing highly flexible home services such as context aware adaptation, session mobility, media session enrichment and QoS. Our framework is implemented as part of a context-aware adaptive middleware on top of the OSGi platform and an illustra-tive use case is shown.

Parsing Protocol Standards to Parse Standard Protocols

Internet protocol standards have been slow to adopt formal protocol description languages and methodologies, and are still largely written as English prose. This makes it hard to check them for correctness, or to automatically derive implementations from standards. Reasons for this are both technical and social. Some methodologies effectively describe complex communication patterns, but cannot model protocol data. Others are unnecessarily tied to particular description formats, or use unfamiliar concepts and terminology, and don't address usability by standards developers. We assess the viability of existing approaches to modelling and parsing protocol data, and identify missing features needed to represent emerging protocols. We present a typed protocol representation that can describe: (i) the format of protocol data, including data-dependent formats; (ii) contextual information needed to maintain parser state, where correct parsing may depend on out-of-band information or prior packets; and (iii) transformations and helper functions needed for multi-stage parsing. We discuss social barriers to adoption, and describe a set of principles to encourage use of formal languages within the Internet standards process. We show how to integrate our approach with the existing standards process, using QUIC as an example