Survey on 6G Frontiers: Trends, Applications, Requirements, Technologies and Future Research

Emerging applications such as Internet of Everything, Holographic Telepresence, collaborative robots, and space and deep-sea tourism are already highlighting the limitations of existing fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks. These limitations are in terms of data-rate, latency, reliability, availability, processing, connection density and global coverage, spanning over ground, underwater and space. The sixth-generation (6G) of mobile networks are expected to burgeon in the coming decade to address these limitations. The development of 6G vision, applications, technologies and standards has already become a popular research theme in academia and the industry. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of the current developments towards 6G. We highlight the societal and technological trends that initiate the drive towards 6G. Emerging applications to realize the demands raised by 6G driving trends are discussed subsequently. We also elaborate the requirements that are necessary to realize the 6G applications. Then we present the key enabling technologies in detail. We also outline current research projects and activities including standardization efforts towards the development of 6G. Finally, we summarize lessons learned from state-of-the-art research and discuss technical challenges that would shed a new light on future research directions towards 6G

A survey of Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS): Past, present and future

Virtual Private LAN services (VPLS) is a Layer 2 Virtual Private Network (L2VPN) service that has gained immense popularity due to a number of its features, such as protocol independence, multipoint-to-multipoint mesh connectivity, robust security, low operational cost (in terms of optimal resource utilization), and high scalability. In addition to the traditional VPLS architectures, novel VPLS solutions have been designed leveraging new emerging paradigms, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), to keep up with the increasing demand. These emerging solutions help in enhancing scalability, strengthening security, and optimizing resource utilization. This paper aims to conduct an in-depth survey of various VPLS architectures and highlight different characteristics through insightful comparisons. Moreover, the article discusses numerous technical aspects such as security, scalability, compatibility, tunnel management, operational issues, and complexity, along with the lessons learned. Finally, the paper outlines future research directions related to VPLS. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to furnish a detailed survey of VPLS.University College DublinAcademy of Finlan

How DoS attacks can be mounted on Network Slice Broker and can they be mitigated using blockchain?

The 2021 32nd Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (IEEE PIMRC 2021),Virtual Event, 13-16 September 2021Several recent works talk about the potential use of network slice brokering mechanism to facilitate the resource allocation of network slicing in next generation networks. This involves network tenants on the one hand and resource/infrastructure providers on the other hand. However, the potential downside of deploying Network Slice Broker (NSB) is that it can be victimized by DoS (Denial of Service) attack. Thus, the aim of this work is three fold. First, to present the possible ways in which DoS/DDoS attacks can be mounted on NSB and their adverse effects. Second, to propose and implement initial blockchain-based solution named as Security Service Blockchain (SSB) to prevent DoS attacks on NSB. Third, to enumerate the challenges and future research directions to effectively utilize blockchain for mitigating DoS/DDoS attacks on NSB. To evaluate the performance the proposed SSB framework is implemented using Hyperledger Fabric. The results manifest that the latency impact of the legitimate slice creation over scaled up malicious traffic remains minimal with the use of SSB framework. The integration of SSB with NSB results in gaining several fold reduction in latency under DoS attack scenario.European Commission Horizon 20206Genesis Flagship5GEA

Integration of ICN and MEC in 5G and beyond networks : mutual benefits, use cases, challenges, standardization, and future research

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is a novel edge computing paradigm that moves cloudbased processing and storage capabilities closer to mobile users by implementing server resources in the access nodes. MEC helps fulfill the stringent requirements of 5G and beyond networks to offer anytimeanywhere connectivity for many devices with ultra-low delay and huge bandwidths. Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is another prominent network technology that builds on a content-centric network architecture to overcome host-centric routing/operation shortcomings and to realize efficient pervasive and ubiquitous networking. It is envisaged to be employed in Future Internet including Beyond 5G (B5G) networks. The consolidation of ICN with MEC technology offers new opportunities to realize that vision and serve advanced use cases. However, various integration challenges are yet to be addressed to enable the wide-scale co-deployment of ICN with MEC in future networks. In this paper, we discuss and elaborate on ICN MEC integration to provide a comprehensive survey with a forward-looking perspective for B5G networks. In that regard, we deduce lessons learned from related works (for both 5G and B5G networks). We present ongoing standardization activities to highlight practical implications of such efforts. Moreover, we render key B5G use cases and highlight the role for ICN MEC integration for addressing their requirements. Finally, we layout research challenges and identify potential research directions. For this last contribution, we also provide a mapping of the latter to ICN integration challenges and use cases

Minimizing Bandwidth on Peering Links with Deflection in Named Data Networking

Abstract—Content dissemination is the primary usage of the Internet today, whereas the existing Internet architecture based on TCP/IP is mainly designed for point-to-point communications. Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has been proposed to conciliate Internet usage and technology. The idea behind ICN is to omit the notion of host and location and establish content as the first class citizen of the network. ICN advocates innetwork caching, i.e., to cache content on the path from content providers to requesters. This on-path caching achieves good overall performance but is not optimal as content may be replicated on routers so reducing the total volume of content that can be cached. To overcome this limitation, we introduce the notion of off-path caching where we allocate content to well defined off-path caches within the network and deflect the traffic off the optimal path toward these caches that are spread across the network. Off-path caching improves the global hit ratio by efficiently utilizing the network-wide available caching capacity and permits to reduce egress links ’ bandwidth usage. I

Easy CCNx experimentation on PlanetLab

Demo Abstract at CCNxCon'2012Realistic experimentation on top of Internet-like environments is key to evaluate the feasibility of world wide deployment of CCNx, and to assess the impact of existing Internet traffic conditions on CCN traffic. However, deploying live experiments on the Internet is a difficult and error prone task, specially when performed manually. To address this issue, we extended NEPI, a framework for managing network experiments, to support easy design, and automated deployment and control, of CCNx experiments on PlanetLab. Among other features, NEPI enables the deployment of user modi ed CCNx sources on arbitrary PlanetLab nodes, and the creation of tunnels to enable the use of multicast FIB entries between CCNx daemons over the Internet. By supporting easy CCNx experimentation on PlanetLab, NEPI can help to explore the co-existence of CCN and TCP/IP architecture

Blockchain-over-optical networks: a trusted virtual network function (VNF) management proposition for 5G optical networks

Abstract In this paper, we discuss the security issues revolving around the management of VNFs in 5G optical networks; and present a high-level view of work-in-progress by leveraging a Blockchain-over-optical network to mitigate these issues

Privacy Protected Blockchain Based Architecture and Implementation for Sharing of Students’ Credentials

Sharing of students’ credentials is a necessary and integral process of an education ecosystem that comprises various stakeholders like students, schools, companies, professors and the governmental authorities. As of today, all these stakeholders have to put-in an enormous amount of efforts to ensure the authenticity and privacy of students’ credentials. Despite these efforts, the process of sharing students’ credentials is complex, error-prone and not completely secure. Our aim is to leverage blockchain technology to mitigate the existing security-related issues concerning the sharing of students’ credentials. Thus, the paper proposes a tamper-proof, immutable, authentic, non-repudiable, privacy protected and easy to share blockchain-based architecture for secured sharing of students’ credentials. To increase the scalability, the proposed system uses a secure off-chain storage mechanism. The performance and viability of the proposed architecture is analyzed by using an Ethereum based prototypical implementation. The test results imply that requests can be executed within few seconds (without block-time) and the system has stability to process up to 1000 simultaneous requests

The Role of Blockchain to Fight Against COVID-19

IEEE The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected almost all aspects of human life, various sectors of business, and regions of the world. The flow of human activities halted for several months, and are now being carefully redefined to align with guidelines and recommendations to avoid the spread of the novel coronavirus. In contrast to other pandemics the world has witnessed in the past, the technological advancements of the current era are a boon that can play a key role in safeguarding humanity. In this work, we begin by highlighting general challenges that have arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, to gauge the applicability of blockchain as a key enabling technology, we identify potential use cases to meet current needs. Further, for each use case, we present a high-level view of how blockchain can be leveraged and discuss the expected performance. Finally, we highlight the challenges that must be addressed to harness the full potential of blockchain technology and discuss plausible solutions.European CommissionAcademy of FinlandUpdate citation details during checkdate report - A