Multi-Agent Distributed Reinforcement Learning for Making Decentralized Offloading Decisions

We formulate computation offloading as a decentralized decision-making problem with autonomous agents. We design an interaction mechanism that incentivizes agents to align private and system goals by balancing between competition and cooperation. The mechanism provably has Nash equilibria with optimal resource allocation in the static case. For a dynamic environment, we propose a novel multi-agent online learning algorithm that learns with partial, delayed and noisy state information, and a reward signal that reduces information need to a great extent. Empirical results confirm that through learning, agents significantly improve both system and individual performance, e.g., 40% offloading failure rate reduction, 32% communication overhead reduction, up to 38% computation resource savings in low contention, 18% utilization increase with reduced load variation in high contention, and improvement in fairness. Results also confirm the algorithm's good convergence and generalization property in significantly different environments

KIRA: Distributed Scalable ID-based Routing with Fast Forwarding

Emerging network infrastructures are increasingly softwarized, virtualized and, thus, flexible. They may even be viewed as a large, dynamic, and distributed elastic resource pool of network devices that can be flexibly configured and employed according to the needs of network services. Full control of such a resource pool requires resilient control plane connectivity. In this paper, we present KIRA, a two-tier routing architecture that provides self-organized, zero-touch, and extremely robust control plane connectivity. KIRA consists of the distributed, highly scalable, ID-based routing protocol R²/Kad that can run on top of any link layer. It is complemented by a forwarding tier with PathID-based fast forwarding for (control) data packets. KIRA shows excellent performance even in very large networks (evaluated with up to 200000 nodes). R²/Kad allows for flexible memory/stretch tradeoff per node and finds shortest paths to certain destinations in most cases. R²/Kad converges loop-free and fast, even in very large networks with drastic failure scenarios

Runtime Verification of P4 Switches with Reinforcement Learning

© ACM 2019. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Proceedings of the 2019 Workshop on Network Meets AI & ML - NetAI’19, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3341216.3342206.We present the design and early implementation of p4rl, a system that uses reinforcement learning-guided fuzz testing to execute the verification of P4 switches automatically at runtime. p4rl system uses our novel user-friendly query language, p4q to conveniently specify the intended properties in simple conditional statements (if-else) and check the actual runtime behavior of the P4 switch against such properties. In p4rl, user-specified p4q queries with the control plane configuration, Agent, and the Reward System guide the fuzzing process to trigger runtime bugs automatically during Agent training. To illustrate the strength of p4rl, we developed and evaluated an early prototype of p4rl system that executes runtime verification of a P4 network device, e.g., L3 (Layer-3) switch. Our initial results are promising and show that p4rl automatically detects diverse bugs while outperforming the baseline approach.EC/H2020/679158/EU/Resolving the Tussle in the Internet: Mapping, Architecture, and Policy Making/ResolutioNetBMBF, 01IS17052, Adaptiver, Virtueller Assistent zur LAwinenwarnung Nach CHarakter Eigenschaften (AVALANCHE

The Global Alliance for Infections in Surgery : defining a model for antimicrobial stewardship-results from an international cross-sectional survey

Background: Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs (ASPs) have been promoted to optimize antimicrobial usage and patient outcomes, and to reduce the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant organisms. However, the best strategies for an ASP are not definitively established and are likely to vary based on local culture, policy, and routine clinical practice, and probably limited resources in middle-income countries. The aim of this study is to evaluate structures and resources of antimicrobial stewardship teams (ASTs) in surgical departments from different regions of the world. Methods: A cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted in 2016 on 173 physicians who participated in the AGORA (Antimicrobials: A Global Alliance for Optimizing their Rational Use in Intra-Abdominal Infections) project and on 658 international experts in the fields of ASPs, infection control, and infections in surgery. Results: The response rate was 19.4%. One hundred fifty-six (98.7%) participants stated their hospital had a multidisciplinary AST. The median number of physicians working inside the team was five [interquartile range 4-6]. An infectious disease specialist, a microbiologist and an infection control specialist were, respectively, present in 80.1, 76.3, and 67.9% of the ASTs. A surgeon was a component in 59.0% of cases and was significantly more likely to be present in university hospitals (89.5%, p <0.05) compared to community teaching (83.3%) and community hospitals (66.7%). Protocols for pre-operative prophylaxis and for antimicrobial treatment of surgical infections were respectively implemented in 96.2 and 82.3% of the hospitals. The majority of the surgical departments implemented both persuasive and restrictive interventions (72.8%). The most common types of interventions in surgical departments were dissemination of educational materials (62.5%), expert approval (61.0%), audit and feedback (55.1%), educational outreach (53.7%), and compulsory order forms (51.5%). Conclusion: The survey showed a heterogeneous organization of ASPs worldwide, demonstrating the necessity of a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach in the battle against antimicrobial resistance in surgical infections, and the importance of educational efforts towards this goal.Peer reviewe

Ten golden rules for optimal antibiotic use in hospital settings: the WARNING call to action

Antibiotics are recognized widely for their benefits when used appropriately. However, they are often used inappropriately despite the importance of responsible use within good clinical practice. Effective antibiotic treatment is an essential component of universal healthcare, and it is a global responsibility to ensure appropriate use. Currently, pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to develop new antibiotics due to scientific, regulatory, and financial barriers, further emphasizing the importance of appropriate antibiotic use. To address this issue, the Global Alliance for Infections in Surgery established an international multidisciplinary task force of 295 experts from 115 countries with different backgrounds. The task force developed a position statement called WARNING (Worldwide Antimicrobial Resistance National/International Network Group) aimed at raising awareness of antimicrobial resistance and improving antibiotic prescribing practices worldwide. The statement outlined is 10 axioms, or “golden rules,” for the appropriate use of antibiotics that all healthcare workers should consistently adhere in clinical practice

Contrôle d'accès et gestion des réseaux 4G hétérogènes

The future of mobile communications will go far beyond the existing voice and data communications (2G/3G). We pursue the idea of the next generation global telecommunications system providing a highly adaptive and context-aware access to services all over the world. We discuss different problems with the existing wireless and mobile systems and give an argumentation for a heterogeneous, technology-opportunistic, user-centric 4G vision combining the economic and technological advantages of different transmission technologies. We then identify the logical service access control and the associated user and infrastructure management as major challenges and critical issues in this 4G vision. In our vision, service access should be completely operator- and infrastructure-independent, context-adaptive, scalable, rapid and easy-to-manage. In the context of the general logical access problem in heterogeneous systems, we discuss the existing solutions and demonstrate the shortcomings of both the technology-bound low-layer and the overlaid high-layer access architectures. We propose a novel low-layer solution that virtualizes the access control mechanisms without overlaying. We show how this solution can be implemented in our 4G vision. We present an example implementation for 802.11 WLANs. Regarding management, we first study centralized architectures in the 4G scope and propose two classic approaches to the organization of provider networks. We then present our new proposal that applies the peer-to-peer (P2P) paradigm to the control plane. We show the advantages and the open issues with this approach. Finally, we identify open topics and give an outlook to the future research.Dans ce travail, nous poursuivons l'idée de la prochaine génération des réseaux mobiles capable de fournir globalement un accès adaptatif aux services. Nous discutons les problèmes des technologies sans fil et mobiles actuelles et argumentons pour une vision de la 4e Génération en tant qu'un système intégrant d'une manière opportuniste des technologies hétérogènes, se concentrant sur l'utilisateur et ses besoins. Nous identifions le contrôle d'accès aux services et la gestion des utilisateurs et de l'infrastructure en tant que défis majeurs et points critiques dans cette vision 4G. Dans notre vision, l'accès aux services doit être adaptatif et indépendant de l'opérateur et de l'infrastructure, permettre un contrôle rapide et garantir le passage à l'échelle. Quant à l'accès logique aux services dans 4G, nous discutons les solutions proposées et démontrons les limites du contrôle d'accès sur les couches basses et les problèmes de sécurité avec le contrôle sur les couches hautes. Nous proposons une solution nouvelle basée sur la virtualisation des mécanismes du contrôle d'accès. Nous présentons une réalisation possible dans notre vision 4G et montrons une implémentation fonctionnelle pour les réseaux 802.11. Concernant la gestion, nous étudions d'abord le contrôle d'accès centralisé et discutons les problématiques dans 4G, notamment la séparation de l'interface d'utilisateur de l'organisation interne des réseaux des opérateurs. Nous proposons deux approches classiques et une approche nouvelle appliquant les paradigmes égal-à-égal (P2P) dans le plan de contrôle. Finalement, nous présentons les perspectives de recherches

Contrôle d'accès et gestion des réseaux 4G hétérogènes

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