449 research outputs found
Balancing the Migration of Virtual Network Functions with Replications in Data Centers
The Network Function Virtualization (NFV) paradigm is enabling flexibility,
programmability and implementation of traditional network functions into
generic hardware, in form of the so-called Virtual Network Functions (VNFs).
Today, cloud service providers use Virtual Machines (VMs) for the instantiation
of VNFs in the data center (DC) networks. To instantiate multiple VNFs in a
typical scenario of Service Function Chains (SFCs), many important objectives
need to be met simultaneously, such as server load balancing, energy efficiency
and service execution time. The well-known \emph{VNF placement} problem
requires solutions that often consider \emph{migration} of virtual machines
(VMs) to meet this objectives. Ongoing efforts, for instance, are making a
strong case for migrations to minimize energy consumption, while showing that
attention needs to be paid to the Quality of Service (QoS) due to service
interruptions caused by migrations. To balance the server allocation strategies
and QoS, we propose using \emph{replications} of VNFs to reduce migrations in
DC networks. We propose a Linear Programming (LP) model to study a trade-off
between replications, which while beneficial to QoS require additional server
resources, and migrations, which while beneficial to server load management can
adversely impact the QoS. The results show that, for a given objective, the
replications can reduce the number of migrations and can also enable a better
server and data center network load balancing
A survey of communication protocols for internet of things and related challenges of fog and cloud computing integration
The fast increment in the number of IoT (Internet of Things) devices is accelerating the research on new solutions to make cloud services scalable. In this context, the novel concept of fog computing as well as the combined fog-to-cloud computing paradigm is becoming essential to decentralize the cloud, while bringing the services closer to the end-system. This article surveys e application layer communication protocols to fulfill the IoT communication requirements, and their potential for implementation in fog- and cloud-based IoT systems. To this end, the article first briefly presents potential protocol candidates, including request-reply and publish-subscribe protocols. After that, the article surveys these protocols based on their main characteristics, as well as the main performance issues, including latency, energy consumption, and network throughput. These findings are thereafter used to place the protocols in each segment of the system (IoT, fog, cloud), and thus opens up the discussion on their choice, interoperability, and wider system integration. The survey is expected to be useful to system architects and protocol designers when choosing the communication protocols in an integrated IoT-to-fog-to-cloud system architecture.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Engineering a QoS Provider Mechanism for Edge Computing with Deep Reinforcement Learning
With the development of new system solutions that integrate traditional cloud
computing with the edge/fog computing paradigm, dynamic optimization of service
execution has become a challenge due to the edge computing resources being more
distributed and dynamic. How to optimize the execution to provide Quality of
Service (QoS) in edge computing depends on both the system architecture and the
resource allocation algorithms in place. We design and develop a QoS provider
mechanism, as an integral component of a fog-to-cloud system, to work in
dynamic scenarios by using deep reinforcement learning. We choose reinforcement
learning since it is particularly well suited for solving problems in dynamic
and adaptive environments where the decision process needs to be frequently
updated. We specifically use a Deep Q-learning algorithm that optimizes QoS by
identifying and blocking devices that potentially cause service disruption due
to dynamicity. We compare the reinforcement learning based solution with
state-of-the-art heuristics that use telemetry data, and analyze pros and cons
Scaling Performance of Serverless Edge Networking
When clustering devices at the edge, inter-node latency poses a significant
challenge that directly impacts the application performance. In this paper, we
experimentally examine the impact that inter-node latency has on application
performance by measuring the throughput of an distributed serverless
application in a real world testbed. We deploy Knative over a Kubernetes
cluster of nodes and emulate networking delay between them to compare the
performance of applications when deployed over a single-site versus multiple
distributed computing sites. The results show that multi-site edge networks
achieve half the throughput compared to a deployment hosted at a single site
under low processing times conditions, whereas the throughput performance
significantly improves otherwise
Engineering and Experimentally Benchmarking a Container-based Edge Computing System
While edge computing is envisioned to superbly serve latency sensitive
applications, the implementation-based studies benchmarking its performance are
few and far between. To address this gap, we engineer a modular edge cloud
computing system architecture that is built on latest advances in
containerization techniques, including Kafka, for data streaming, Docker, as
application platform, and Firebase Cloud, as realtime database system. We
benchmark the performance of the system in terms of scalability, resource
utilization and latency by comparing three scenarios: cloud-only, edge-only and
combined edge-cloud. The measurements show that edge-only solution outperforms
other scenarios only when deployed with data located at one edge only, i.e.,
without edge computing wide data synchronization. In case of applications
requiring data synchronization through the cloud, edge-cloud scales around a
factor 10 times better than cloud-only, until certain number of concurrent
users in the system, and above this point, cloud-only scales better. In terms
of resource utilization, we observe that whereas the mean utilization increases
linearly with the number of user requests, the maximum values for the memory
and the network I/O heavily increase when with an increasing amount of data
Proximidad del comercio e indicadores de accesibilidad: aplicación a la planificación y regulación en el marco normativo actual
El comercio en entornos de proximidad es un servicio básico para la población, con
múltiples implicaciones para la ciudad, la vitalidad del espacio público y la equidad social.
Este trabajo indaga sobre las posibilidades del concepto y las medidas de accesibilidad, para,
en el actual marco normativo que regula la actividad comercial, poder llegar a construir
indicadores cuantitativos que sirvan para la protección y fomento del comercio en entornos
de proximidad. Para ello, se analiza el encaje del concepto de accesibilidad dentro de las
“razones imperiosas de interés general”, las únicas que permite invocar la Directiva Europea
123/2006 “Bolkestein”. A continuación se valoran diversas propuestas de indicadores para el
caso comercial, de objetivos y aproximaciones diversas, proponiéndose un marco de análisis
basado en su utilidad y precisión, así como su potencial para la planificación y normativa
urbanístico-comercial
Epidemiological and pathogenic relationship between sleep apnea and ischemic heart disease
Obstructive sleep apnea is recognized as having high prevalence and causing remarkable cardiovascular risk. Coronary artery
disease has been associated with obstructive sleep apnea in many reports. The pathophysiology of coronary artery disease in
obstructive sleep apnea patients probably includes the activation of multiple mechanisms, as the sympathetic activity, endothelial
dysfunction, atherosclerosis, and systemic hypertension. Moreover, chronic intermittent hypoxia and oxidative stress have an
important role in the pathogenesis of coronary disease and are also fundamental to the development of atherosclerosis and other
comorbidities present in coronary artery diseases such as lipid metabolic disorders. Interestingly, the prognosis of patients with
coronary artery disease has been associated with obstructive sleep apnea and the severity of sleep disordered breathing may have
a direct relationship with the morbidity and mortality of patients with coronary diseases. Nevertheless, treatment with CPAP may
have important effects, and recent reports have described the benefits of obstructive sleep apnea treatment on the recurrence of
acute heart ischaemic events in patients with coronary artery diseas
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