Management and control for giant gigabit networks

The authors describe the new challenges presented for the management of broadband networks and outline the framework of the COMET research group at Columbia University for finding solutions to these challenges. They review a prototype that implements some of the requirements for managing the broadband networks of the future. In the COMET framework, management operations are defined in terms of primitives with a much higher semantic level than that typified by get and set in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) management model, and the user interface to the managed system is based on virtual worlds that allow the manager to directly visualize and interact with the network. The impact that this new environment may have on existing management architectures is discussed     

Applications of public gigabit networks

Applications likely to require gigabit-per-second communications, including supercomputer networking, remote visualization, and virtual reality, are presented. Specifically, dynamic radiation therapy planning, visualization and telepresence, and medical imaging applications are examined. Public gigabit network requirements, applications of broadband ISDN to gigabit networks, the needs of applications with B-ISDN, and distance hiding in public gigabit networks are discussed     

The latency/bandwidth tradeoff in gigabit networks

It is argued that delays through gigabit networks are dominated by propagation delay, so communications techniques and protocols for megabit networks would be inefficient or ineffective for gigabit networks. The latency-bandwidth tradeoff for gigabit networks is discussed, and an example of it is presented. It is concluded that gigabit networks have forced network designers to deal with propagation delays due to the finite speed of light     

Distributed multimedia applications on gigabit networks

MultiG, an open research program addressing issues that range from end-user requirements on distributed multimedia applications supporting collaborative work to medium-access protocols for multi-gigabit networks on optical fibers, is discussed. The projects in MultiG are described from the top down, beginning with computer-supported cooperative work. Distributed multimedia applications and application generators are then considered, followed by networking issues, including interprocess communication, transport services, network protocols, and high-speed protocol processing. Testbed activities and future plans are described     

Compact wavelength-selective switch for gigabit filtering in access networks

A compact [200/spl times/200 /spl mu/m/sup 2/] wavelength-selective switch based on thermally tunable SiO/sub 2/--Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/ microring resonators has been designed and realized. The switch supports gigabit filtering applications in access networks. Spectral measurements show an ON-OFF ratio of 12 dB and a channel separation of 20 dB. The 10-Gb/s measurements on a single ring show no degradation of the modulated signal and a theoretical BER (bit-error rate) <10/sup -12/.     

An optical infrastructure for future telecommunications networks

For the transport of the increasing traffic volume caused by existing and new narrowband services and evolving broadband services, the enhancement of the existing public telecommunication transport network is necessary. For this purpose an optical network layer with cross-connect and add/drop functionalities will be added to the existing transport network. A comparative analysis of space, time, and optical frequency division multiplexing has shown that for the time being optical frequency multiplexing is best suited for the realization of that new network layer. This multiplexing scheme offers the greatest advantages such as very high bandwidth utilization in the fiber and simple and efficient cross-connecting of high bitrate streams. In the near future, technology will be mature enough for the realization of a demonstrator network based on optical frequency division multiplexing. The functionalities of the optical network are evaluated and the results clearly show that optical frequency conversion and regeneration should be provided by the optical network. The article also deals with the realization aspects (cross-connecting, supervision, and operation and maintenance) of an optical node     

Controllably mobile infrastructure for low energy embedded networks

We discuss the use of mobility to enhance network performance for a certain class of applications in sensor networks. A major performance bottleneck in sensor networks is energy since it is impractical to replace the batteries in embedded sensor nodes post-deployment. A significant portion of the energy expenditure is attributed to communications and, in particular, the nodes close to the sensor network gateways used for data collection typically suffer a large overhead as these nodes must relay data from the remaining network. Even with compression and in-network processing to reduce the amount of communicated data, all the processed data must still traverse these nodes to reach the gateway. We discuss a network infrastructure based on the use of controllably mobile elements to reduce the communication energy consumption at the energy constrained nodes and, thus, increase useful network lifetime. In addition, our approach yields advantages in delay-tolerant networks and sparsely deployed networks. We first show how our approach helps reduce energy consumption at battery constrained nodes. Second, we describe our system prototype, which utilizes our proposed approach to improve the energy performance. As part of the prototyping effort, we experienced several interesting design choices and trade-offs that affect system capabilities and performance. We describe many of these design challenges and discuss the algorithms developed for addressing these. In particular, we focus on network protocols and motion control strategies. Our methods are tested using a practical system and do not assume idealistic radio range models or operation in unobstructed environments.     

Multiwavelength lightwave networks for computer communication

The different approaches being considered to build high-capacity lightwave networks are described. Two kinds of lightwave network architectures are examined: broadcast-and-select networks and wavelength-routing networks. A comparison of the two shows that broadcast-and-select networks may be more suitable for local area networks (LANs) and metropolitan area networks (MANs), while wavelength-routing networks are suitable for wide area networks (WANs). The overall network may then be a combination of broadcast subnets interconnected by a point-to-point wavelength-routing network     

An infrastructure for the management of dynamic service networks

Infrastructures for creating and deploying dynamically cooperating distributed services have become popular. An area that these infrastructures address only insufficiently is the administration of services and their relationships. This article takes an in-depth look at some management topics that are particularly important in a dynamic service environment: service life cycle and service dependencies. It states requirements for these areas that a management system has to fulfill. The article also describes MADYSON (Management Architecture for Dynamic Service-Oriented Networks), a management infrastructure that was developed based on these requirements.     

The Rainbow-II gigabit optical network

This paper describes the Rainbow-II optical metropolitan area network (MAN), which supports 32 nodes each at 1 Gbit/s over a distance of 10-20 km. Rainbow-II uses optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), in a broadcast star architecture. Each node uses a separate fixed wavelength for transmitting data and a tunable receiver for receiving one of several data streams. The network is implemented in the form of optical network nodes, each attached to a host computer via the high-performance parallel interface (HIPPI). Each network node contains protocol processing hardware to offload the protocol processing work from the host computer onto the node. The goal is to provide full gigabit-per-second bandwidth to end-user supercomputer applications. Preliminary protocol performance measurements in a testbed network are given     

Applying ATM to mobile infrastructure networks

In response to the explosive increase in the number of mobile subscribers and the ever stronger demand for mobile multimedia services, the authors propose introducing the ATM technique for next-generation mobile network infrastructures in order to handle a high volume of traffic and develop multimedia communications. First, this article clarifies mobile-specific requirements for and advantages of applying ATM to mobile infrastructure networks. However, it is risky for network operators en bloc to replace the conventional STM-based infrastructure by ATM. Therefore, this article shows a smooth evolution path for the mobile network infrastructure to convert from conventional STM to ATM as mobile multimedia services mature. Even in future mobile networks, the main traffic may still be voice communications, whose bit rate is too low for efficient use of the radio frequency band. Applying ATM to such very-low-bit-rate mobile voice streams is inefficient due to the delay in filling out the payload of an ATM cell; this “packetization delay” degrades the quality of service. This problem can be solved by using a layered cell structure for the mobile ATM network. This cell structure enables the efficient transfer of voice signals ranging from very-low-bit-rate signals to high-speed multimedia signals with little delay. Standardization of this cell structure is progressing in ITU-T and the ATM Forum. Transmission efficiency is estimated by simulation     

Ultralow error rate and dispersion-free transmission of 2.5 Gbit/s SONET for gigabit networks

It is demonstrated that for an NRZ modulated 1310 nm optical transmitter, dispersion-free transmission can be achieved up to approximately 250 km using dispersion-shifted singlemode fibre (DS-SMF) and optical pulse compression. This result implies that DS-SMFs have a potential advantage over standard SMFs for dual-window (1310/1550 nm) multigigabit per second transmission systems. Results on the long-term error performance of experimental prototype 2.5 Gbit/s SONET optical transmission systems are presented with measured error rates smaller than 10/sup -15/.<>     

A rendezvous reservation protocol for energy constrained wireless infrastructure networks

This paper considers a low power wireless infrastructure network that uses multi-hop communications to provide end user connectivity. A generalized Rendezvous Reservation Protocol (RRP) is proposed which permits multi-hop infrastructure nodes to adapt their power consumption in a dynamic fashion. When nodes have a long-term association, power consumption can be reduced by having them periodically rendezvous for the purpose of exchanging data packets. In order to support certain applications, the system invokes a connection set up process to establish the end-to-end path and selects node rendezvous rates along the intermediate nodes to meet the application’s quality of service (QoS) needs. Thus, the design challenge is to dynamically determine rendezvous intervals based on incoming applications’ QoS needs, while conserving battery power. In this paper, we present the basic RRP mechanism and an enhanced mechanism called Rendezvous Reservation Protocol with Battery Management (RRP-BM) that incorporates node battery level information. The performance of the system is studied using discrete-event simulation based experiments for different network topologies. The chief metrics considered are average power consumption and system lifetime (that is to be maximized). The QoS metrics specified are packet latency and end-to-end setup latency. It is shown that the use of the RRP-BM can increase the lifetime up to 48% as compared to basic RRP by efficiently reducing the energy consumption. This work was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Communications and Information Technology Ontario (CITO). Part of the research was supported by Air Force Office of Scientific Research grants F-49620-97-1-0471 and F-49620-99-1-0125; Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, Adelphi, Maryland; and Intel Corporation. The authors may be reached via e-mail at todd@mcmaster. ca, krishna@umbc. edu. The basic RRP mechanism was presented at the IASTED International Conference on Wireless and Optical Communications, Banff, Canada, July 2002. Subalakshmi Venugopal received her Bachelors in Computer Science from R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore, India and her M.S. degree in Computer Science from Washington State University. She interned as a student researcher at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. Ms. Venugopal is currently employed with Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA and is part of the “Kids and Education Group”. Her research interests include low power wireless ad hoc networks. Zhengwei (Wesley) Chen received the M.E. in Electrical & Computer Engineering Dept from McMaster University in Canada in 2002. He joined Motorola Inc. as a CDMA2000 system engineer in 2000. In 2002, he joined UTStarcom as a manager of the Global Service Solution Department. He is currently in charge of R&D for Advanced Services related to the TVoIP and Softswitch products. Terry Todd received the B.A.Sc, M.A.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. While at Waterloo he also spent 3 years as a Research Associate with the Computer Communications Networks Group (CCNG). During that time he worked on the Waterloo Experimental Local Area Network, which was an early local area network testbed. In 1991 Dr. Todd was on research leave in the Distributed Systems Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. He also spent 1998 as a visiting researcher at The Olivetti and Oracle Research Laboratory (ORL) in Cambridge, England. While at ORL he worked on the piconet project, which was an embedded low power wireless network testbed. Dr. Todd is currently a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. At McMaster he has been the Principal Investigator on a number of major research projects in the optical and wireless networking areas. He currently directs a large group working on wireless mesh networks and wireless VoIP. Professor Todd holds the NSERC/RIM/CITO Chair on Pico-Cellular Wireless Internet Access Networks. Dr. Todd’s research interests include metropolitan/local area networks, wireless communications and the performance analysis of computer communication networks and systems. Professor Todd is a Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario. Krishna M. Sivalingam is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of CSEE at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Previously, he was with the School of EECS at Washington State University, Pullman from 1997 until 2002; and with the University of North Carolina Greensboro from 1994 until 1997. He has also conducted research at Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, and at AT&T Labs in Whippany, NJ. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1994 and 1990 respectively; and his B.E. degree in Computer Science and Engineering in 1988 from Anna University, Chennai (Madras), India. While at SUNY Buffalo, he was a Presidential Fellow from 1988 to 1991. His research interests include wireless networks, optical wavelength division multiplexed networks, and performance evaluation. He holds three patents in wireless networks and has published several research articles including more than thirty journal publications. He has published an edited book on Wireless Sensor Networks in 2004 and edited books on optical WDM networks in 2000 and 2004. He served as a Guest Co-Editor for special issues of the ACM MONET journal on “Wireless Sensor Networks” in 2003 and 2004; and an issue of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications on optical WDM networks (2000). He is co-recipient of the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Networks 2000 held in Singapore. His work has been supported by several sources including AFOSR, NSF, Cisco, Intel and Laboratory for Telecommunication Sciences. He is a member of the Editorial Board for ACM Wireless Networks Journal, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Ad Hoc and Sensor Wireless Networks Journal, and KICS Journal of Computer Networks. He serves as Steering Committee Co-Chair for IEEE/CreateNet International Conference on Broadband Networks (BroadNets) that was created in 2004. He is currently serving as General Co-Vice-Chair for the Second Annual International Mobiquitous conference to be held in San Diego in 2005 and as General Co-Chair for the First IEEE/CreateNet International Conference on Security and Privacy for Emerging Areas in Communication Networks (SecureComm) to be held in Athens, Greece in Sep. 2005. He served as Technical Program Co-Chair for the First IEEE Conference on Sensor and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON) held at Santa Clara, CA in 2004; as General Co-Chair for SPIE Opticomm 2003 (Dallas, TX) and for ACM Intl. Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications (WSNA) 2003 held in conjunction with ACM MobiCom 2003 at San Diego, CA; as Technical Program Co-Chair of SPIE/IEEE/ACM OptiComm conference at Boston, MA in July 2002; and as Workshop Co-Chair for WSNA 2002 held in conjunction with ACM MobiCom 2002 at Atlanta, GA in Sep 2002. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a member of ACM.     

An availability evaluation for computer communication networks

Among the various availability criteria for computer communication networks, based on strictly topological considerations or taking into account also the traffic characteristics, we propose, as a network performance measure, the probability that an assigned fraction of the stability throughput can be carried out with average packet and message time delays not greater than specified values.At the aim, an algorithm for the availability analysis has been developed; given the topological and physical characteristics of the network, the external traffic statistics at the network node pairs and the routing procedure, the network availability and the average loss of throughput due to single failures of lines or switching nodes are evaluated with regard, as an example, to a simple five node network.     

Enhanced message addressing capabilities for computer networks

Three message addressing modes are described: 1) Logical adderssing, in which a permanantly,assigned address denotes one or more physical addresses. This permits multiple connections from the subscriber to the network, as well as other functions. 2) Broadcast adderssing, in which a messase is addressed to all subscribers. 3) Group addressing and multidestination addressing, in which a message carries the name of a list of addresses, or the list itself. These methods facilitate many new ways of using computer networks. The paper focuses on two basic issues for each method: efficiency and reliability, and recommends implementation approaches in each case. Significant performance improvements are possible if these addressing methods are implemented with efficient delivery mechanisms. A distinction is made between virtual circuit and datagram systems; virtual circuits are superior for logical addressing, while datagrams are preferable for broadcast, group, and multidestination addressing.     

ATM技术在计算机通信网中的应用

本文简要介绍了ATM的信元、原理、协议结构,对ATM和IP技术进行简单对比,最后分别以LANE和DSLAM为例,讨论了ATM在计算机通信网中的应用。