A Novel Approach to Analyzing for Detecting Malicious Network Activity Using a Cloud Computing Testbed

Recent developments have caused the expansion of various cloud computing environments and services. Cloud computing environments have led to research in the areas of data processing, virtual environments, and access control. Information security is the most important research area for these environments security. In this study, we analyzed typical example of network testbeds, which have been used for malicious activity data collection and its subsequent analysis. Further, we propose an effective malicious network application testbed, which is based on a cloud system. We also verified the performance of our new testbed by comparing real malicious activity with the cloud-based testbed results.     

Design and evaluation of an Ethernet-based residential network

When the information superhighway arrives at the neighborhood, a residential network will connect home appliances to the community access network. These appliances include personal computers, printers, and video clients. Among all local-area network (LAN) protocols, Ethernet is the most economic and the most popular. The unique characteristics of residential networks call for new performance studies. A residential network typically has few nodes and runs different applications than business and academic LANs. Consequently, residential networks have traffic characteristics different from the subject of existing studies. We constructed a residential network testbed to collect typical application traffic statistics. Additional live traffic characterization was obtained from campus networks. Also, we investigated the suitability of Ethernet for video distribution through simulation. This paper discusses the design issues for residential networks and presents a network design that is based on Ethernet technology. Traffic models are established from the actual traffic traces and used for the performance evaluation of residential networks. Furthermore, several future data traffic scenarios are considered with bandwidth up to 6 Mb/s by scaling up current data traffic. The simulation results of the performance suggest that Ethernet can be used as a cost-effective residential network for video and data communications     

基于RAS技术上的虚拟传真机系统的设计

介绍了如何运用远程访问服务技术，实现虚拟传真机系统的功能设计。远程访问服务是一种新兴的网络技术，计算机之间通过连接的远程接入设备建立起RAS(远程访问服务)拨号连接后，就搭建了一个类似局域网的广域网．在众多务件受限的工程场合中．这种解决方案可以方便有效地解决远程计算机之间的数据通讯问题。文中首先介绍了远程通讯原理和虚拟传真机原理．并以单站系统为例分析了系统的结构，详述了在Windows NT平台上提供远程访问服务的服务器端计算机的配置方法和过程．最后给出了建立RAS连接和实现虚拟传真机的主要程序代码。     

Designing and building SDN testbeds for energy-aware traffic engineering services

As experimenting with energy-aware techniques on large-scale production infrastructure is prohibitive, a large number of proposed traffic engineering strategies have been evaluated only using discrete-event simulations. The present work discusses (i) challenges towards building testbeds that allow researchers and practitioners to validate and evaluate the performance and quality of energy-aware traffic engineering strategies, (ii) requirements to fulfil when porting simulations to testbeds, and (iii) two proof-of-concept testbeds. One testbed uses and provides software-defined network (SDN) services created on the open-network operating system while the other is a composition of virtual Open vSwitches controlled by the Ryu SDN framework. The aim of the testbeds is to validate previously proposed energy-aware traffic engineering strategies in different environments. We detail the platforms and illustrate how they have been used for performance evaluation. Additionally, the paper compares results obtained in the testbeds with evaluations performed using discrete-event simulations and presents challenges faced while implementing energy-aware traffic engineering mechanisms as SDN services in testbed environments.     

Performance analysis and optimization of best‐effort service in IEEE 802.16 networks

The IEEE 802.16‐based WiMAX technology has great potential for the fourth‐generation mobile networks. Some of its service classes use the contention‐based broadcast polling mechanism to request resources. In this paper, we investigate the performance experienced by these services when the network is unsaturated. In particular, we model each subscriber station as an M/G/1 queue where the service time is determined by the parameters of the network configuration and the binary exponential backoff contention resolution algorithm. We develop a fixed‐point analysis to derive analytical expressions for network throughput and packet access delay. The accuracy of the analytical model is validated by comparing it with simulation over a wide range of operating conditions. The implications of various different parameter configurations on the performance are investigated using the analytical model. Moreover, we show that the model can be degenerated to the saturated condition. The utility of both the unsaturated and saturated models is further demonstrated by finding the optimal set of parameter values that maximize the network throughput. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Unified MAC Layer Framework for Ad-Hoc Networks With Smart Antennas

Smart antennas represent a broad variety of antennas that differ in their performance and transceiver complexity. The superior capabilities of smart antennas, however, can be leveraged only through appropriately designed higher layer network protocols, including at the medium access control (MAC) layer. Although several related works have considered such tailored protocols, they do so in the context of specific antenna technologies. In this paper, we explore the possibility for a unified approach to medium access control in ad hoc networks with smart antennas. We first present a unified representation of the PHY layer capabilities of the different types of smart antennas, and their relevance to MAC layer design. We then define a unified MAC problem formulation, and derive unified MAC algorithms (both centralized and distributed) from the formulation. Finally, using the algorithms developed, we investigate the relative performance trade-offs of the different technologies under varying network conditions. We also analyze theoretically the performance bounds of the different smart antenna technologies when the available gains are exploited for rate increase and communication range increase.     

A service‐agnostic method for predicting service metrics in real time

We predict performance metrics of cloud services using statistical learning, whereby the behaviour of a system is learned from observations. Specifically, we collect device and network statistics from a cloud testbed and apply regression methods to predict, in real‐time, client‐side service metrics for video streaming and key‐value store services. Results from intensive evaluation on our testbed indicate that our method accurately predicts service metrics in real time (mean absolute error below 16% for video frame rate and read latency, for instance). Further, our method is service agnostic in the sense that it takes as input operating systems and network statistics instead of service‐specific metrics. We show that feature set reduction significantly improves the prediction accuracy in our case, while simultaneously reducing model computation time. We find that the prediction accuracy decreases when, instead of a single service, both services run on the same testbed simultaneously or when the network quality on the path between the server cluster and the client deteriorates. Finally, we discuss the design and implementation of a real‐time analytics engine, which processes streams of device statistics and service metrics from testbed sensors and produces model predictions through online learning.     

A common multi-agent testbed for diverse seamless personalinformation networking applications

This article describes the design and implementation of a unique cooperative agents testbed aimed at addressing diverse applications for the difficult problem of seamless personal information networking (SPIN). The real-world SPIN testbed is aimed at two difficult applications. Namely seamless messaging and intelligent network management. Both applications are agent-driven and share agent behavior, and the messaging agents rely on the network management device diagnostic agents for input. The article introduces both problem areas in a common testbed. The first-generation seamless messaging application is described in detail. User-centric seamless messaging assumes heterogeneous communication environments intended to support today's nomadic users. The prototype is introduced for the management of messages across distributed information networks. Its aim is to intercept, filter, interpret, and deliver multimodal messages, be they voice, fax, video, and/or e-mail messages. A user's personal communication agent is charged with delivering messages to the recipient regardless of their target messaging device-a telephone, pager, desktop, wireless laptop, or wireless phone. Personal communication agents classify and act on incoming messages based on their content. A secretary agent routes and tailors urgent messages appropriately to the device manager agent, which delivers the message to a device on which the user may be roaming or active. What makes the seamless messaging application unique is its approach to treating a message in a universal manner, and its ability to mediate between different messaging environments and devices, and to try to track and find the user     

Distributed slot synchronization (DSS): a network-wide slotsynchronization technique for packet-switched optical networks

Distributed slot synchronization (DSS) is a network-wide packet synchronization technique which coordinates node transmissions so that packets arrive aligned to one another at a reference point in the network, independent of propagation delays. DSS was developed for use in the contention resolution with delay-lines (CORD) project, a DARPA-funded 2.5 Gb/s/λ, wavelength division multiplexer (WDM) optical packet-switched network testbed. In this implementation, it was experimentally demonstrated that the DSS system, operating with 80 MHz control logic, achieves a packet arrival jitter of less than 13 ns with 12 km node spacings. DSS was also shown to be robust against noise and node failure or fiber breaks. The technique is data rate and format independent and can be used in other star, extended ring, or tree-and-branch network architectures for metropolitan area network (MAN) and access applications     

R-net: A high speed fibre optics network with reservation access protocol

This paper proposes and describes R-net, a network with a new reservation access protocol that is very suitable for implementation with optical fibre in high speed local area networks. In the operation of R-net, a framing structure with variable length is superimposed on the network bus to bound the network medium access delay which is a highly desirable feature for real time applications. As long as the frame length constraint is not violated, the performance of R-net network is not limited by operating data rate, and the utilization can be set to unity by choosing the appropriate network parameters. The proposed network has the advantage of efficient throughput approaching unity for most practical configurations, bounded delay, and at normal load, the network protocol has fair access for all nodes and allows dynamic bandwidth allocation between the nodes connected to the network bus. A performance (delay and utilization) comparison between R-net and Expressnet is also presented.     

ID/Locator Split-Based Distributed Mobility Management Mechanism

We have designed the heterogeneity inclusion and mobility adaptation through locator ID separation (HIMALIS) architecture to support mobility natively in the New Generation Network. This paper proposes a new distributed mobility scheme in the HIMALIS architecture for supporting seamless mobility for the host moving across access networks of different network-layer protocols. The proposed scheme also supports mobility of an access network. It includes a signaling procedure to redirect downstream traffic from the previous gateway (or previous access router) to the new gateway (or new access router) to minimize the service disruption or packet losses during a handover. The performance results obtained from a testbed implementation in Linux validate the effectiveness of the proposal. The results demonstrate that it can achieve seamless (no packet loss) handovers if overlapped wireless access networks are available.     

A dynamically reconfigurable interconnect for array processors

Reconfigurability of processor arrays is important due to two reasons (1) to efficiently execute different algorithms and (2) to isolate faulty processors. An array processor that is reconfigurable by the user any number of times to yield a different topology or to isolate faults is envisaged in this paper. The system has a host or controller that broadcasts a command to the interconnect to configure itself into a particular fashion. The interconnect uses static-RAM programming technology and can be programmed to different configurations by sending a different set of bits to the configuration random access memory (RAM) in the interconnect. We present three designs reconfigurable into array, ring, mesh, or Illiac mesh topologies. The first design provides no redundancy or fault tolerance. The second design is capable of graceful degradation by bypassing faulty elements. The third design is capable of graceful degradation by rerouting. The details of the interconnect and the configuration RAM contents for typical configurations are illustrated. It is seen that reconfigurable interconnect results in a highly reconfigurable or polymorphic computer     

TCP Veno: TCP enhancement for transmission over wireless access networks

Wireless access networks in the form of wireless local area networks, home networks, and cellular networks are becoming an integral part of the Internet. Unlike wired networks, random packet loss due to bit errors is not negligible in wireless networks, and this causes significant performance degradation of transmission control protocol (TCP). We propose and study a novel end-to-end congestion control mechanism called TCP Veno that is simple and effective for dealing with random packet loss. A key ingredient of Veno is that it monitors the network congestion level and uses that information to decide whether packet losses are likely to be due to congestion or random bit errors. Specifically: (1) it refines the multiplicative decrease algorithm of TCP Reno-the most widely deployed TCP version in practice-by adjusting the slow-start threshold according to the perceived network congestion level rather than a fixed drop factor and (2) it refines the linear increase algorithm so that the connection can stay longer in an operating region in which the network bandwidth is fully utilized. Based on extensive network testbed experiments and live Internet measurements, we show that Veno can achieve significant throughput improvements without adversely affecting other concurrent TCP connections, including other concurrent Reno connections. In typical wireless access networks with 1% random packet loss rate, throughput improvement of up to 80% can be demonstrated. A salient feature of Veno is that it modifies only the sender-side protocol of Reno without changing the receiver-side protocol stack.     

Integrated network experimentation for QoS measurements in opaque MANETs

Integrated network experimentation often combines real nodes with simulated ones, each modeling different portions of the topology, in the same experimental run. They enable new validation techniques and larger experiments than obtainable using real elements alone. Integrated experiments can be particularly useful in testing and validating QoS mechanisms for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), when the characteristics of the intermediate wireless network segments are not observable from the end segments, and as a consequence these intermediate segments have to be treated as opaque networks; and also when there is a need to conduct experiments in a real MANET environment at a scale larger than just a few nodes. End‐to‐end QoS assurance for such opaque networks, consisting of admission control and quality adjustment, can be based on techniques for dynamically measuring throughput representing the state of these networks. In this paper, we describe a distributed and hybrid testbed that has been deployed for running large‐scale integrated experiments to demonstrate the efficacy of a measurement‐based QoS solution. The infrastructure for the testbed provides an integrated platform consisting of real nodes running the actual software under test, augmented with a simulated network environment. We define a set of metrics and run experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of the QoS solution as well the performance of the deployed testbed. We propose an alternative architecture that employs a Xen‐based virtualization of the real nodes from the deployed testbed. We compare the performances of the virtualized architecture with the deployed architecture vis‐à‐vis latency and resource utilization. Our goal is to establish benchmarks for running large‐scale experiments on performance and QoS measurements in virtualized environments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tuning radio resource in an overlay cognitive radio network for TCP: greed isn't good [Accepted from Open Call]

In this article we illustrate the performance of Transmission Control Protocol in an overlay cognitive radio network under dynamic spectrum access. We show that the performance of TCP in overlay CR networks that implement DSA to be quite different from its performance in conventional networks, which do not allow DSA. The key difference is that secondary users in an overlay CR network have to cope with a new type of loss called service interruption loss, due to the existence of primary users. We demonstrate on an NS2 simulation testbed the surprising result: Excessive radio resource usage leads to a decrease in aggregate TCP throughput. This behavior is in contrast to the behavior of TCP in conventional networks, where throughput increases monotonically with the available radio resource.     

Building Grid Portal Applications From a Web Service Component Architecture

This work describes an approach to building Grid applications based on the premise that users who wish to access and run these applications prefer to do so without becoming experts on Grid technology. We describe an application architecture based on wrapping user applications and application workflows as Web services and Web service resources. These services are visible to the users and to resource providers through a family of Grid portal components that can be used to configure, launch, and monitor complex applications in the scientific language of the end user. The applications in this model are instantiated by an application factory service. The layered design of the architecture makes it possible for an expert to configure an application factory service with a custom user interface client that may be dynamically loaded into the portal.     

RFID-Based Smart Freezer

This paper presents a novel radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based smart freezer using a new inventory-management scheme for extremely low temperature environments. The proposed solution utilizes backpressure inventory control, systematic selection of antenna configuration, and antenna power control. The proposed distributed-inventory-control (DIC) scheme dictates the amount of items transferred through the supply chain. When a high item visibility is ensured, the control scheme maintains the desired level of inventory at each supply-chain echelon. The performance of the DIC scheme is guaranteed using a Lyapunov-based analysis. The proposed RFID antenna-configuration design methodology coupled with locally asymptotically stable distributed power control ensures a 99% read rate of items while minimizing the required number of RFID antennas in the confined cold chain environments with non-RF-friendly materials. The proposed RFID-based smart-freezer performance is verified through simulations of supply chain and experiments on an industrial freezer testbed operating at $-100 ^{circ}hbox{F}$.