iCapture: Facilitating Spontaneous User-Interaction with Pervasive Displays using Smart Devices

Abstract. The eCampus project at Lancaster University is an inter-disciplinary project aiming to deploy a wide range of situated displays across the University campus in order to create a large per-vasive communications infrastructure. At present, we are conducting a series of parallel research activities in order to investigate how the pervasive communications infrastructure can support the daily needs of staff, students and visitors to the University. This paper introduces one of our current research investigations into how one is able to mediate spontaneous interaction with the pervasive display infrastructure through camera equipped mobile phones (i.e. smart devices).

Intrusion Detection Systems for Community Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks are being increasingly used to provide affordable network connectivity to communities where wired deployment strategies are either not possible or are prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately, computer networks (including mesh networks) are frequently being exploited by increasingly profit-driven and insidious attackers, which can affect their utility for legitimate use. In response to this, a number of countermeasures have been developed, including intrusion detection systems that aim to detect anomalous behaviour caused by attacks. We present a set of socio-technical challenges associated with developing an intrusion detection system for a community wireless mesh network. The attack space on a mesh network is particularly large; we motivate the need for and describe the challenges of adopting an asset-driven approach to managing this space. Finally, we present an initial design of a modular architecture for intrusion detection, highlighting how it addresses the identified challenges

An experimental dynamic RAM video cache

As technological advances continue to be made, the demand for more efficient distributed multimedia systems is also affirmed. Current support for end-to-end QoS is still limited; consequently mechanisms are required to provide flexibility in resource loading. One such mechanism, caching, may be introduced both in the end-system and network to facilitate intelligent load balancing and resource management. We introduce new work at Lancaster University investigating the use of transparent network caches for MPEG-2. A novel architecture is proposed, based on router-oriented caching and the employment of large scale dynamic RAM as the sole caching medium. The architecture also proposes the use of the ISO/IEC standardised DSM-CC protocol as a basic control infrastructure and the caching of pre-built transport packets (UDP/IP) in the data plane. Finally, the work discussed is in its infancy and consequently focuses upon the design and implementation of the caching architecture rather than an investigation into performance gains, which we intend to make in a continuation of the work

Towards resilient community wireless mesh networks

Wireless Mesh Networks are an increasingly common technology providing connectivity in many communities, particularly where Internet access is unavailable or restricted via more conventional means. Their comparative ease of installation and relatively low cost makes this especially true for communities which might previously have lacked the technical knowledge or skill to attempt such an endeavour. In such a situation it is important that the operation of the network should be easily manageable; to this end the overall resiliency of the network is a key factor, enabling the network to resolve and remediate problems as they arise without requiring external technical understanding or input. This research aims to improve the resilience of community mesh networks by improving their security, initially examining the use of risk analysis techniques in this environment to identify potential attack vectors. This understanding will then be used to investigate intrusion detection techniques for operation specifically in a community environment

Characterising and exploiting workloads of highly interactive video-on-demand

This paper presents a detailed characterisation of user behaviour for a series of interactive video experiments over a 12 month period, in which we served popular sporting and musical content. In addition to generic VCR-like features, our custom-built Video-on-Demand application provides advanced interactivity features such as bookmarking. The dramatic impact of such functionality on how users consume content is studied and analysed. We discuss in detail how this user behaviour can be exploited by content distributors to improve user experience. Specifically, we study how simple dynamic bookmark placement and interactivity-aware content pre-fetching and replication can reduce the impact of highly interactive media on CDN performance

OpenLIDS:a lightweight intrusion detection system for wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks are being used to provide Internet access in a cost efficient manner. Typically, consumer-level wireless access points with modified software are used to route traffic to potentially multiple back-haul points. Malware infected computers generate malicious traffic, which uses valuable network resources and puts other systems at risk. Intrusion detection systems can be used to detect such activity. Cost constraints and the decentralised nature of WMNs make performing intrusion detection on mesh devices desirable. However, these devices are typically resource constrained. This paper describes the results of examining their ability to perform intrusion detection. Our experimental study shows that commonly-used deep packet inspection approaches are unreliable on such hardware. We implement a set of lightweight anomaly detection mechanisms as part of an intrusion detection system, called OpenLIDS. We show that even with the limited hardware resources of a mesh device, it can detect current malware behaviour in an efficient way