Secure multicast in IPTV services

Technological evolution is leading telecommunications to all-IP networks where multiple services are transported as IP packets. Among these are the group communications services with confidentiality requirements. Secure IP multicast may be used to secure the broadcast of video channels. However, in scenarios such as cable TV where the concept of video channel and bundle are present, groups are very large, and users switch very rapidly between channels (zapping), a sort of problems still need to be addressed.The solution proposed in this paper addresses these problems. For that purpose, a centralized form of secure group communications is proposed also used to transmit, not data, but group cryptographic material. Threes types of cryptographic keys are used. End systems use this material to decrypt the data sent by the content providers.     

Protecting query privacy in location-based services

The popularity of location-based services (LBSs) leads to severe concerns on users’ privacy. With the fast growth of Internet applications such as online social networks, more user information becomes available to the attackers, which allows them to construct new contextual information. This gives rise to new challenges for user privacy protection and often requires improvements on the existing privacy-preserving methods. In this paper, we classify contextual information related to LBS query privacy and focus on two types of contexts—user profiles and query dependency: user profiles have not been deeply studied in LBS query privacy protection, while we are the first to show the impact of query dependency on users’ query privacy. More specifically, we present a general framework to enable the attackers to compute a distribution on users with respect to issuing an observed request. The framework can model attackers with different contextual information. We take user profiles and query dependency as examples to illustrate the implementation of the framework and their impact on users’ query privacy. Our framework subsequently allows us to show the insufficiency of existing query privacy metrics, e.g., k-anonymity, and propose several new metrics. In the end, we develop new generalisation algorithms to compute regions satisfying users’ privacy requirements expressed in these metrics. By experiments, our metrics and algorithms are shown to be effective and efficient for practical usage.     

Preplanned restoration of multicast demands in optical networks

The evolution of multicast applications has speeded up. providers have to offer cheap and reliable services for their customers. One way to achieve this is to use a restoration method that provides relatively fast restoration calculated upon a failure, where nearly the minimal amount of resources is allocated. In this paper we propose a new, faster way of restoring multicast demands after link failure that is based on preplaning. We prove its optimality if a few preconditions hold. To do so a new formalization of the wavelength graph transformation (WGT) is presented. We show, based on simulations, that the beneficial properties of our method hold even when one or more preconditions are not kept.     

An efficient algorithm for partially matched services in internet of services

Internet of Things (IoT) connects billions of devices in an Internet-like structure. Each device encapsulated as a real-world service which provides functionality and exchanges information with other devices. This large-scale information exchange results in new interactions between things and people. Unlike traditional web services, internet of services is highly dynamic and continuously changing due to constant degrade, vanish and possibly reappear of the devices, this opens a new challenge in the process of resource discovery and selection. In response to increasing numbers of services in the discovery and selection process, there is a corresponding increase in number of service consumers and consequent diversity of quality of service (QoS) available. Increase in both sides’ leads to the diversity in the demand and supply of services, which would result in the partial match of the requirements and offers. This paper proposed an IoT service ranking and selection algorithm by considering multiple QoS requirements and allowing partially matched services to be counted as a candidate for the selection process. One of the applications of IoT sensory data that attracts many researchers is transportation especially emergency and accident services which is used as a case study in this paper. Experimental results from real-world services showed that the proposed method achieved significant improvement in the accuracy and performance in the selection process.     

Bailout forward contracts for edge-to-edge internet services

Despite the huge success of the Internet in providing basic communication services, its economic architecture needs to be upgraded so as to provide end-to-end guaranteed or more reliable services to its customers. Currently, a user or an enterprise that needs end-to-end bandwidth guarantees between two arbitrary points in the Internet for a short period of time has no way of expressing its needs. To allow these much needed basic services, we propose a single-domain edge-to-edge (g2g) dynamic capacity contracting mechanism, where a network customer can enter into a bandwidth contract on a g2g path at a future time, at a predetermined price. For practical and economic viability, such forward contracts must involve a bailout option to account for bandwidth becoming unavailable at service delivery time, and must be priced appropriately to enable Internet Service Providers (ISPs) manage risks in their contracting and investments. Our design allows ISPs to advertise point-to-point different prices for each of their g2g paths instead of the current point-to-anywhere prices, allowing discovery of better end-to-end paths, temporal flexibility and efficiency of bandwidth usage. We compute the risk-neutral prices for these g2g bailout forward contracts (BFCs), taking into account correlations between different contracts due to correlated demand patterns and overlapping paths. We apply this multiple g2g BFC framework on network models with Rocketfuel topologies. We evaluate our contracting mechanism in terms of key network performance metrics like fraction of bailouts, revenue earned by the provider, and adaptability to link failures. We also explore the tradeoffs between complexity of pricing and performance benefits of our BFC mechanism.     

Architecture and dependability of large-scale internet services

The popularity of large-scale Internet infrastructure services such as AOL, Google, and Hotmail has grown enormously. The scalability and availability requirements of these services have led to system architectures that diverge significantly from those of traditional systems like desktops, enterprise servers, or databases. Given the need for thousands of nodes, cost necessitates the use of inexpensive personal computers wherever possible, and efficiency often requires customized service software. Likewise, addressing the goal of zero downtime requires human operator involvement and pervasive redundancy within clusters and between globally distributed data centers. Despite these services' success, their architectures-hardware, software, and operational-have developed in an ad hoc manner that few have surveyed or analyzed. Moreover, the public knows little about why these services fail or about the operational practices used in an attempt to keep them running 24/7. As a first step toward formalizing the principles for building highly available and maintainable large-scale Internet services, we are surveying existing services' architectures and dependability. This article describes our observations to date.     

A real-time video multicast architecture for assured forwarding services

This paper presents our work on developing an architecture for multicasting real-time MPEG4 over IP networks that provide service differentiation. In particular, this work is targeted at assured forwarding (AF) style services. This work is an attempt to find a simple solution to the problem of multicast congestion control of real-time traffic by exploiting the service differentiation capabilities of AF networks. Our architecture assumes loss differentiation in the network and assumes the network's ability to provide explicit congestion notification messages to the sender. We do not consider policing/shaping at the edge routers. Rather, we consider a more general case where packet marking and flow control are provided at the senders. For this network model, we built an end-to-end architecture and developed a rate-adaptation algorithm that can operate in both unicast and multicast applications with a minor modification. The simulation results show how the rate-adaptation algorithm accommodates different receivers with different networking capabilities and provides receivers with different levels of quality by taking advantage of the queue management capabilities of the AF service. We test how the architecture scales to a large number of receivers, how multiple multicast sessions interact, and how it interacts with TCP.     

Building multicast services from unicast forwarding and ephemeral state

We present an approach to building multicast services using unicast forwarding and two additional building blocks: ephemeral state processing, i.e., extremely lightweight distributed computations based on a time-bounded associative memory; and the ability to enable lightweight packet processing modules at the routers. In our approach, senders and receivers use ephemeral state probes to locate the desired network nodes where packet processing functions, e.g., packet duplication should be activated. Our approach reduces the amount of multicast state in the network, eliminates the need for sophisticated routing mechanisms, allows the end-systems to tailor the service to their needs, and can be deployed incrementally.     

Efficient and scalable provisioning of always-on multicast streaming services

There is a growing need for large-scale distribution of realtime multicast data such as Internet TV channels and scientific and financial data. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) face an urgent challenge in supporting these services; they need to design multicast routing paths that are reliable, cost-effective, and scalable. To meet the realtime constraint, the routing paths need to be robust against a single IP router or link failure, as well as multiple such failures due to sharing fiber spans (SRLGs). Several algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem in the past. However, they are not suitable for today’s large networks, because either they do not find a feasible solution at all or if they do, they take a significant amount of time to arrive at high-quality solutions.In this paper, we present a new Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model for designing a cost-effective and robust multicast infrastructure. Our ILP model is extremely efficient and can be extended to produce quality-guaranteed network paths. We develop two heuristic algorithms for solving the ILP. Our algorithms can guarantee to find high-quality, feasible solutions even for very large networks. We evaluate the proposed algorithms using topologies of four operational backbones and demonstrate their scalability. We also compare the capital expenditure of the resulting multicast designs with existing approaches. The evaluation not only confirms the efficacy of our algorithms, but also shows that they outperform existing schemes significantly.     

A novel multicast mechanism for optical local area networks

In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient multicast scheduling algorithm, the Lookback Queue Access (LBQA) protocol for the employment in an asynchronous WDM optical star network. Network nodes use ALOHA based random access schemes to send their reservation packets over a common packet reservation control channel. A central traffic scheduler is allocated to coordinate message transmissions. The central scheduler carries out the LBQA scheme in real time in two phases. The first phase is to search (through input queues) for a candidate multicast message that can be sent, without partition, to all of its intended recipients. If phase 1 fails, the second phase is then activated to efficiently partition a multicast message into multiple transmissions. Performance results conducted via simulations have revealed that networks employing such a scheduling mechanism can exhibit superior network throughput levels and delay performances. To obtain sustainable high performances, we further propose an interconnected dual-star structure employed with the enhanced scheduling mechanism, the DS_LBQA algorithm. By using a simple heuristic approach, the DS_LBQA scheme is able to successfully exploit the inter data channels and properly utilize the wavelength reuse property of the intra data channels. Performance results have demonstrated the merits of deploying the DS_LBQA multicast algorithm in such a dual-star structure.     

基于多播技术RTI声明管理服务设计的研究

为解决高层体系结构中声明管理服务,分析高层体系结构盟员之间基于公布/定购关系数据交换,提出基于多播技术声明管理服务有两个基本的解决方案,即集中式解决方案和分布式解决方案.在声明管理服务集中式解决方案中,局部RTI部件和中央RTI部件协同解决多播组的合并和分配.在分布式解决方案中,中央RTI部件并不参加,而是由各个局部RTI部件协同解决.     

Improving the multicast state scalability in internet routers by integrating hash algorithm with recursive unicast

In this article, a new protocol called REHASH has been devised that gracefully integrates the idea of recursive unicast with hash algorithm to achieve scalable multicast for improved performance.In this model, data packets have unicast destination addresses. Therefore, REHASH supports pure unicast routers transparently.The key idea of the proposed protocol is to simplify address allocation and implements multicast distribution using recursive unicast hash trees. The branching nodes recursively create packet copies to implement the distribution. REHASH adopts the source-specific channel abstraction to tackle the address allocation and the sender access control problems. Consequently, it provides best routes and is suitable for including QoS and authentication parameters inside hash tree construction algorithm. Additionally, REHASH tree management provides enhanced tree stability in the presence of group dynamics.     

Error resilient video over multimedia broadcast multicast services (MBMS)

With available data rates for mobile devices constantly increasing, services such as video broadcast and multicast are becoming feasible. A new standard called Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) is being developed by 3GPP to enable new class of spectrum-efficient multimedia services. Multicast services are expected to serve a diverse user base with varying connectivity and capabilities. We analyze the problem of video error resilience in MBMS services that is critical to maintain consistent quality for end users. The existing error resilience techniques for IP multicasting are not applicable in the MBMS environment. In this paper, we present error resilience techniques that are applicable within the context of the MBMS standard. We propose an Intra Block Refresh method for MBMS services and the results show improved performance. We develop a methodology that can be applied to adapting traditional error resilience tools for the MBMS environment.     

Error resilient video over multimedia broadcast multicast services (MBMS)

With available data rates for mobile devices constantly increasing, services such as video broadcast and multicast are becoming feasible. A new standard called Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) is being developed by 3GPP to enable new class of spectrum-efficient multimedia services. Multicast services are expected to serve a diverse user base with varying connectivity and capabilities. We analyze the problem of video error resilience in MBMS services that is critical to maintain consistent quality for end users. The existing error resilience techniques for IP multicasting are not applicable in the MBMS environment. In this paper, we present error resilience techniques that are applicable within the context of the MBMS standard. We propose an Intra Block Refresh method for MBMS services and the results show improved performance. We develop a methodology that can be applied to adapting traditional error resilience tools for the MBMS environment.     

Optimal configuration of an optical network providing predefined multicast transmissions

Operators of networks covering large areas are confronted with demands from some of their customers who are virtual service providers. These providers may call for the connectivity service which fulfills the specificity of their services, for instance a multicast transmission with allocated bandwidth. On the other hand, network operators want to make profit by trading the connectivity service of requested quality to their customers and to limit their infrastructure investments (or do not invest anything at all).We focus on circuit switching optical networks and work on repetitive multicast demands whose source and destinations are à priori known by an operator. He may therefore have corresponding trees “ready to be allocated” and adapt his network infrastructure according to these recurrent transmissions. This adjustment consists in setting available branching routers in the selected nodes of a predefined tree. The branching nodes are opto-electronic nodes which are able to duplicate data and retransmit it in several directions. These nodes are, however, more expensive and more energy consuming than transparent ones.In this paper we are interested in the choice of nodes of a multicast tree where the limited number of branching routers should be located in order to minimize the amount of required bandwidth. After formally stating the problem we solve it by proposing a polynomial algorithm whose optimality we prove. We perform exhaustive computations to show an operator gain obtained by using our algorithm. These computations are made for different methods of the multicast tree construction. We conclude by giving dimensioning guidelines and outline our further work.     

The ubiquitous provisioning of internet services to portable devices

Advances in mobile telecommunications and device miniaturization call for providing both standard and novel location- and context-dependent Internet services to mobile clients. Mobile agents are dynamic, asynchronous, and autonomous, making the MA programming paradigm suitable for developing novel middleware for mobility-enabled services.