Adaptive Broadcasting for Similarity Queries in Wireless Content Delivery Systems

We present a new adaptive and energy-efficient broadcast dissemination model that supports flexible responses to client requests. In current broadcast dissemination models, clients must specify precisely what documents they require, and servers disseminate exactly those documents. This approach can be impractical, since in practice, clients may know the characteristics of the documents, but not the document names or IDs. In our model, clients specify the required document using attributes, and servers broadcast documents that match client requests at a prespecified level of similarity. A single document may satisfy several clients, so the server broadcasts a minimal set of documents that achieves a desired level of satisfaction in the client population. We introduce a mechanism for the server to obtain randomized feedback from clients to adapt its broadcast program to client needs. Finally, the server integrates a selective tune-in scheme based on approximate index matching to allow clients to conserve energy. Our simulation results show that our model captures client interest patterns efficiently and accurately and scales very well with the number of clients, while reducing overall client average waiting times. The selective tune-in scheme can considerably reduce the consumption of client energy with moderate waiting time overhead.     

Web++ architecture,design and performance

We describe the design of a system for fast and reliable HTTP service which we call Web++. Web++ achieves high reliability by dynamically replicating web data among multiple web servers. Web++ selects the available server that is expected to provide the fastest response time. Furthermore, Web++ guarantees data delivery given that at least one server containing the requested data is available. After detecting a server failure, Web++ client requests are satisfied transparently to the user by another server. Furthermore, the Web++ architecture is flexible enough for implementing additional performance optimizations. We describe implementation of one such optimization, batch resource transmission, whereby all resources embedded in an HTML page that are not cached by the client are sent to the client in a single response. Web++ is built on top of the standard HTTP protocol and does not require any changes either in existing web browsers or the installation of any software on the client side. In particular, Web++ clients are dynamically downloaded to web browsers as signed Java applets. We implemented a Web++ prototype; performance experiments indicate that the Web++ system with 3 servers improves the response time perceived by clients on average by 36.6%, and in many cases by as much as 59%, when compared with the current web performance. In addition, we show that batch resource transmission can improve the response time on average by 39% for clients with fast network connections and 21% for the clients with 56 Kb modem connections. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A scalable architecture for 3D map navigation on mobile devices

Mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets are rapidly increasing their graphics and networking capabilities. However, real-time visualization of 3D maps is still a challenging task to accomplish on such limited devices. In this paper, we describe the principles involved in the design and development of a scalable client–server architecture for delivering 3D maps over wireless networks to mobile devices. We have developed a hybrid adaptive streaming and rendering method that distributes the 3D map rendering task between the mobile clients and a remote server. This architecture provides support for efficient delivery of 3D contents to mobile clients according to their capabilities. As a proof of concept, we have implemented a prototype and carried out exhaustive experiments considering different scenarios and hundreds of concurrent connected clients. The analysis of the server workload and the mobile clients performance show that our architecture achieves a great scalability and performance even when using low-end hardware.     

Parallel computation with dynamic load distribution for locally distributed Windows NT environments

Today 's requirements for computational power are still not satisfied. One answer for this demand is expensive supercomputers. Another attempt is the collection of computational power in a network. Connected workstations operate for parallel computation. Our approach for collecting unused resources in workstation clusters enables dynamic distribution of computational load over the network. Any computer individually distinguishes the amount of server resources sharing for others in the network. Our architecture is based on the client /server model —clients divide potentially hard problems into sub problems and forward them to different servers in the network. The usage of standardized remote procedure calls (rpc) as the basic mechanism for transmission of data between the workstations allows the extension of the concept for heterogeneous environments. This article gives a discussion of our implementation for Windows NT and presents the latest benchmarks with two special parallel applications.     

Efficient and fair scheduling for two‐level information broadcasting systems

In a ubiquitous environment, there are many applications where a server disseminates information of common interest to pervasive clients and devices. For an example, an advertisement server sends information from a broadcast server to display devices. We propose an efficient information scheduling scheme for information broadcast systems to reduce average waiting time for information access while maintaining fairness between information items. Our scheme allocates information items adaptively according to relative popularity for each local server. Simulation results show that our scheme can reduce the waiting time up to 30% compared with the round robin scheme while maintaining cost‐effective fairness. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

协同特征造型系统中细胞元模型动态分割和增量编辑*

针对基于瘦客户端结构的协同特征造型系统需要在服务器和客户端之间持续地传输庞大的数据模型,网络代价很高,提出一种基于细胞元模型的增量编辑方法。在服务器端对细胞元模型进行动态分割,识别并提取出一个很小变化的细胞元模型(CCM),然后传输到客户端并嵌入到编辑前的细胞元模型中。由于客户端向服务器发送的是造型指令和参数,而服务器反馈回客户端的是一个很小的变化的细胞元模型,从而降低了网络负荷,提高了更新效率。     

On the effectiveness of secure overlay forwarding systems under intelligent distributed DoS attacks

In the framework of a set of clients communicating with a critical server over the Internet, a recent approach to protect communication from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks involves the usage of overlay systems. SOS, MAYDAY, and I3 are such systems. The architecture of these systems consists of a set of overlay nodes that serve as intermediate forwarders between the clients and the server, thereby controlling access to the server. Although such systems perform well under random DDoS attacks, it is questionable whether they are resilient to intelligent DDoS attacks which aim to infer architectures of the systems to launch more efficient attacks. In this paper, we define several intelligent DDoS attack models and develop analytical/simulation approaches to study the impacts of architectural design features of such, overlay systems on the system performance in terms of path availability between clients and the server under attacks. Our data clearly demonstrate that the system performance is indeed sensitive to the architectural features and the different features interact with each other to impact overall system performance under intelligent DDoS attacks. Our observations provide important guidelines in the design of such secure overlay forwarding systems.     

Design and analysis of a demand adaptive and locality aware streaming media server cluster

The wide availability of broadband networking technologies such as cable modems and DSL coupled with the growing popularity of the Internet has led to a dramatic increase in the availability and the use of online streaming media. With the “last mile” network bandwidth no longer a constraint, the bottleneck for video streaming has been pushed closer to the server. Streaming high-quality audio and video to a myriad of clients imposes significant resource demands on the server. In this work, we propose a demand adaptive and locality aware (DALA) clustered media server architecture that can dynamically allocate resources to adapt to changing demand and also maximize the number of clients serviced by the server cluster. Moreover, our design exploits temporal locality among requests by dispatching newly arriving requests to servers that are already servicing prior requests for those objects, thereby extracting the benefits of locality. We explore the efficacy of the DALA clustered architecture through both performance models and simulations. Evaluation of the models and simulation results show that DALA exhibits significant performance gains when compared to static schemes. Furthermore, our simulation results show that DALA is highly adaptive, and has a low system overhead. Our results demonstrate that DALA is a simple, yet effective approach for designing clustered media servers.     

Proxy-assisted scalable periodic broadcasting of videos for heterogeneous clients

Periodic broadcasting (PB) is a scalable technique for providing video-on-demand services. It significantly reduces server input and output (I/O) and backbone network bandwidth requirements, but increases the clients’ need for storage space and network bandwidth. Traditional protocols assume homogeneous clients with identical resources. In practice, however, clients have very different bandwidths, which are usually not sufficient for video-on-demand service from a PB server. Existing work on heterogeneous clients has focused on devising broadcast schedules that cater to low-bandwidth clients; these schedules inevitably require additional backbone network bandwidth between the server and the clients. In this paper, we propose a scheme to significantly reduce the waiting time of all heterogeneous clients, without the need for any additional backbone bandwidth. This scheme uses a proxy buffer within video-on-demand systems using PB. In the proposed system, the server broadcasts a video using one of the traditional PB protocols. Simultaneously, the proxy receives the stream from the server and stores it in its local buffer, then broadcasts the stored data to the clients in its local network. Because the proxy provides extra, transparent channels to the server, clients are likely to reduce their reception bandwidth requirements through the use of efficient reception schedules using the extra channels.     

Performance analysis of a novel hybrid push–pull algorithm with QoS adaptations in wireless networks

In this paper, we present a novel hybrid push–pull algorithm which combines broadcasting of push data items, with dissemination upon request of pull items in asymmetric communication environments. These environments are made up only of one database server and many clients. Requests made by the clients are queued up for the pull items. The (pull) item with the number of pending requests is the one selected to be pulled. We present a performance analysis of our scheme, and determine the individual response time for each item disseminated and the overall time for the pull queue to be flushed. Next, we extend our algorithm by incorporating quality of service (QoS) factors, and then, study its performance analytically.     

影响多媒体服务器性能的关键因素研究

在构建大规模视频服务系统时 ,基于层次型多服务器群的体系结构在吞吐率、可扩展性、经济性等方面都有其突出的优势 ,尤其适合于在因特网上的应用 .但是 ,要充分发挥和提高视频服务系统的性能 ,还要针对一些主要的瓶颈(如服务器磁盘 I/ O带宽与网络带宽 ) ,解决好一系列的问题 .本文分析了影响多媒体视频服务器性能的一些主要因素 ,如视频服务器的体系结构、服务器与客户端之间的数据传送方式、媒体数据在视频服务器存储子系统中的分布与放置方式、对磁盘访问请求的调度、单服务器中的缓存及多服务器间协同缓存的管理、接入控制策略、流调度策略等 ,这些因素对视频服务器的性能与吞吐率有着极大的影响 .本文还介绍了一些适用于大规模视频服务系统的性能优化技术 ,如广播、批处理等流调度策略 .在构建视频服务器系统时 ,只有综合考虑这些因素 ,才能真正提高服务器乃至整个视频服务系统的吞吐率 ,并较好地满足客户的 Qo S要求     

Techniques for update handling in the enhanced client-server DBMS

The Client-Server computing paradigm has significantly influenced the way modern Database Management Systems are designed and built. In such systems, clients maintain data pages in their main-memory caches, originating from the server's database. The Enhanced Client-Server architecture takes advantage of all the available client resources, including their long-term memory. Clients can cache server data into their own disk units if these data are part of their operational spaces. However, when updates occur at the server, a number of clients may need to not only be notified about these changes, but also obtain portions of the updates as well. In this paper, we examine the problem of managing server imposed updates that affect data cached on client disk managers. We propose a number of server update propagation techniques in the context of the Enhanced Client-Server DBMS architecture, and examine the performance of these strategies through detailed simulation experiments. In addition, we study how the various settings of the network affect the performance of these policies     

基于动态云的智慧农业架构研究

云计算是所有数据汇集到云中心进行统一处理,用户不再需要部署计算能力很强的客户端,而是直接从“云冶里（服务器端）获得计算能力。流行的云计算架构采用强数据中心（服务端）、弱客户端模式。而建设云计算中心的强服务端,需要硬件高配置,需要良好的网络环境,造成建设云中心资金投入过大。对于智慧农业云架构,亦是如此。目前智慧农业的各网络客户端硬件配置优良。文中提出基于动态云的智慧农业架构,该架构通过将具有一定存储能力、数据处理能力、能够提供一定网络服务能力的客户端,根据需要,结合到云数据中心,使该中心的规模动态地扩大或者缩小。实际上,就是让某客户端为云服务中的其他客户端提供服务,减轻实际云数据中心的数据存储、数据处理、资源配置等压力。基于该动态云的智慧农业架构部分已经实现,并且在南京和安徽地区的部分农产品的各环节中得到稳定应用,证明了该架构的实用性。     

VKSE-MO: verifiable keyword search over encrypted data in multi-owner settings

Searchable encryption (SE) techniques allow cloud clients to easily store data and search encrypted data in a privacy-preserving manner, where most of SE schemes treat the cloud server as honest-but-curious. However, in practice, the cloud server is a semi-honest-but-curious third-party, which only executes a fraction of search operations and returns a fraction of false search results to save its computational and bandwidth resources. Thus, it is important to provide a results verification method to guarantee the correctness of the search results. Existing SE schemes allow multiple data owners to upload different records to the cloud server, but these schemes have very high computational and storage overheads when applied in a different but more practical setting where each record is co-owned by multiple data owners. To address this problem, we develop a verifiable keyword search over encrypted data in multi-owner settings (VKSE-MO) scheme by exploiting the multisignatures technique. Thus, our scheme only requires a single index for each record and data users are assured of the correctness of the search results in challenging settings. Our formal security analysis proved that the VKSE-MO scheme is secure against a chosen-keyword attack under a random oracle model. In addition, our empirical study using a real-world dataset demonstrated the efficiency and feasibility of the proposed scheme in practice.     

A cache invalidation scheme for continuous partial match queries in mobile computing environments

The continuous partial match query is a partial match query whose result remains consistently in the client’s memory. Conventional cache invalidation methods for mobile clients are record ID-based. However, since the partial match query uses content-based retrieval, the conventional ID-based approaches cannot efficiently manage the cache consistency of mobile clients. In this paper, we propose a predicate-based cache invalidation scheme for continuous partial match queries in mobile computing environments. We represent the cache state of a mobile client as a predicate, and also construct a cache invalidation report (CIR), which the server broadcasts to clients for cache management, with predicates. In order to reduce the amount of information that is needed for cache management, we propose a set of methods for CIR construction (in the server) and identification of invalidated data (in the client). Through experiments, we show that the predicate-based approach is very effective for the cache management of mobile clients.     

Broadcast-Based Spatial Queries

Indexing techniques have been developed for wireless data broadcast environments, in order to conserve the scarce power resources of the mobile clients. However, the use of interleaved index segments in a broadcast cycle increases the average access latency for the clients. In this paper, the broadcast-based spatial query processing methods (BBS) are presented for the location-based services. In the BBS, broadcasted data objects are sorted sequentially based on their locations, and the server broadcasts the location dependent data along with an index segment. Then, a sequential prefetching and caching scheme is designed to reduce the query response time. The performance of this scheme is investigated in relation to various environmental variables, such as the distributions of the data objects, the average speed of the clients and the size of the service area.     

面向通信成本优化的联邦学习算法

联邦学习是一种能够保护数据隐私的机器学习设置,然而高昂的通信成本和客户端的异质性问题阻碍了联邦学习的规模化落地。针对这两个问题,提出一种面向通信成本优化的联邦学习算法。首先,服务器接收来自客户端的生成模型并生成模拟数据;然后,服务器利用模拟数据训练全局模型并将其发送给客户端,客户端利用全局模型进行微调后得到最终模型。所提算法仅需要客户端与服务器之间的一轮通信,并且利用微调客户端模型来解决客户端异质性问题。在客户端数量为20个时,在MNIST和CIFAR-10这两个数据集上进行了实验。结果表明,所提算法能够在保证准确率的前提下,在MNIST数据集上将通信的数据量减少至联邦平均（FedAvg）算法的1/10,在CIFAR-10数据集上将通信数据量减少至FedAvg算法的1/100。     

Modeling and real-time simulation architectures for virtual prototyping of off-road vehicles

Virtual Reality-based simulation technology has evolved as a useful design and analysis tool at an early stage in the design for evaluating performance of human-operated agricultural and construction machinery. Detecting anomalies in the design prior to building physical prototypes and expensive testing leads to significant cost savings. The efficacy of such simulation technology depends on how realistically the simulation mimics the real-life operation of the machinery. It is therefore necessary to achieve ‘real-time’ dynamic simulation of such machines with operator-in-the-loop functionality. Such simulation often leads to intensive computational burdens. A distributed architecture was developed for off-road vehicle dynamic models and 3D graphics visualization to distribute the overall computational load of the system across multiple computational platforms. Multi-rate model simulation was also used to simulate various system dynamics with different integration time steps, so that the computational power can be distributed more intelligently. This architecture consisted of three major components: a dynamic model simulator, a virtual reality simulator for 3D graphics, and an interface to the controller and input hardware devices. Several off-road vehicle dynamics models were developed with varying degrees of fidelity, as well as automatic guidance controller models and a controller area network interface to embedded controllers and user input devices. The simulation architecture reduced the computational load to an individual machine and increased the real-time simulation capability with complex off-road vehicle system models and controllers. This architecture provides an environment to test virtual prototypes of the vehicle systems in real-time and the opportunity to test the functionality of newly developed controller software and hardware.     

不对称通信环境中动态广播调度算法分析

在数据传输模式中，服务器拥有比客户更强的通信传输能力的这类系统被称为不对称通信系统，如客户服务器模型与数据广播系统。这类伴随着网络、无线通信和移动计算等技术快速发展的系统都有其高效率的数据传输方式。其中广播系统包含着两种运行模式：pull—based的客户从服务器请求数据的模式和push—based的服务器直接将数据分发给大量客户的模式。这两种系统都需要高效的广播调度机制才能充分发挥系统的性能。分别讨论了pull—based的按需广播和push—based的主动广播的动态调度算法、性能参数指标及其性能特点。     

An SSL Back-End Forwarding Scheme in Cluster-Based Web Servers

State-of-the-art cluster-based data centers consisting of three tiers (Web server, application server, and database server) are being used to host complex Web services such as e-commerce applications. The application server handles dynamic and sensitive Web contents that need protection from eavesdropping, tampering, and forgery. Although the secure sockets layer (SSL) is the most popular protocol to provide a secure channel between a client and a cluster-based network server, its high overhead degrades the server performance considerably and, thus, affects the server scalability. Therefore, improving the performance of SSL-enabled network servers is critical for designing scalable and high-performance data centers. In this paper, we examine the impact of SSL offering and SSL-session-aware distribution in cluster-based network servers. We propose a back-end forwarding scheme, called ssl_with_bf, that employs a low-overhead user-level communication mechanism like virtual interface architecture (VIA) to achieve a good load balance among server nodes. We compare three distribution models for network servers, round robin (RR), ssl_with_session, and ssl_with_bf, through simulation. The experimental results with 16-node and 32-node cluster configurations show that, although the session reuse of ssl_with_session is critical to improve the performance of application servers, the proposed back-end forwarding scheme can further enhance the performance due to better load balancing. The ssl_with_bf scheme can minimize the average latency by about 40 percent and improve throughput across a variety of workloads.