Publications
- Wireless Ad-hoc & Sensor Networks
- Wireless Access & Wired/Wireless Integration
- Internet Architecture, Protocols, Characterization & Traffic Management
- Real-time, QoS & P2P Management
Click here for pre-2002 publications.
Wireless Ad-hoc & Sensor Networks
- [TorstenCareglioMatta:VTC18]
- Torsten Braun, Davide Careglio, and Ibrahim Matta. Vehicular Networking in the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture. In Proceedings of the IEEE 87th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC 2018), Porto, Portugal, June 2018.
Abstract: Vehicles such as cars are expected to use communication technologies for retrieving different kinds of information and exchanging information with other vehicles for safety and infotainment purposes. This results in vehicular networks, where vehicles can connect to other vehicles or communication infrastructures such as Road Side Units. The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) has been proposed as a Future Internet architecture. This paper investigates and analyses how vehicular networks can be supported by RINA and how a RINA based vehicular network architecture can be designed to support the efficient management of mobile vehicles.
- [MorcosAtiaBestavrosMatta:ADHOC10]
Hany Morcos, George Atia, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. An Information Theoretic Framework for Field Monitoring Using Autonomously Mobile Sensors. Ad Hoc Networks: Special Issue on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems, 9(6):1049–1058, August 2011.
Abstract: We consider a mobile sensor network monitoring a spatio-temporal field. Given limited caches at the sensor nodes, the goal is to develop a distributed cache management algorithm to efficiently answer queries with a known probability distribution over the spatial dimension. First, we propose a novel distributed information theoretic approach assuming knowledge of the distribution of the monitored phenomenon. Under this scheme, nodes minimize an entropic utility function that captures the average amount of uncertainty in queries given the probability distribution of query locations. Second, we propose a correlation-based technique, which only requires knowledge of the second-order statistics, relaxing the stringent constraint of a priori knowledge of the query distribution, while significantly reducing the computational overhead. We show that the proposed approaches considerably improve the average field estimation error. Further, we show that the correlation-based technique is robust to model mismatch in case of imperfect knowledge of the underlying generative correlation structure.
Hany Morcos, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Preferential Field Coverage Through Detour-Based Mobility Coordination. In Proceedings of the 9th IFIP Annual Mediterranean Ad Hoc Networking Workshop (Med-Hoc-Net), Juan-les-pins, France, June 2010. (Best Paper Award)
Abstract: Controlling the mobility of mobile nodes (e.g., robots) to monitor a given field is a well-studied problem in sensor networks. In this setup, absolute control over the nodes’ mobility is assumed. In this paper, we address a more general setting in which mobility of each node is externally constrained by a schedule consisting of a list of locations that the node must visit at particular times. Typically, such schedules exhibit some level of slack, which could be leveraged to achieve a specific coverage distribution of a field. Such a distribution defines the relative importance of different field locations. We define the Constrained Mobility Coordination problem for Preferential Coverage (CMC-PC) as follows: given a field with a desired monitoring distribution, and a number of nodes n, each with its own schedule, we need to coordinate the mobility of the nodes in order to achieve the following two goals: 1) satisfy the schedules of all nodes, and 2) attain the required coverage of the given field. We show that the CMC-PC problem is NP-complete (by reduction from the Hamiltonian Cycle problem). Then we propose TFM, a distributed heuristic to achieve field coverage that is as close as possible to the required coverage distribution. We verify the premise of TFM using extensive simulations, as well as taxi logs from a major metropolitan area. We compare TFM to the random mobility strategy —the latter provides a lower bound on performance. Our results show that TFM is very successful in matching the required field coverage distribution, and that it provides, at least, two-fold query success ratio for queries that follow the target coverage distribution of the field.
Alberto Medina, Gonca Gursun, Prithwish Basu, and Ibrahim Matta. On the Universal Generation of Mobility Models. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual Meeting of the IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS), Miami Beach, Florida, August 2010.
Abstract: Mobility models have traditionally been tailored to specific application domains such as human, military, or ad hoc transportation scenarios. This tailored approach often renders a mobility model useless when the application domain changes, and leads to wrong conclusions about the performance of protocols and applications running atop of different domains. In this work we propose and implement a mobility modeling framework (UMMF) based on the observation that the mobility characteristics of most mobility-based applications can be captured in terms of a few fundamental factors: (1) Targets; (2) Obstacles; (3) Dynamic events; (4) Navigation; (5) Steering behaviors; and (6) Dynamic behaviors. We demonstrate the mapping of application-domain-specifics to UMMF elements, showing the power and flexibility of our approach.
- [EspositoMatta:GC09]
Flavio Esposito and Ibrahim Matta. PreDA: Predicate Routing for DTN Architectures over MANET. In Proceedings of the IEEE Globecom 2009 Next-Generation Networking and Internet Symposium (GC’09 NGNI), Honolulu, Hawaii, December 2009.
Abstract: We consider a Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) whose users (nodes) are connected by an underlying Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) substrate. Users can declaratively express high-level policy constraints on how content should be routed. For example, content can be directed through an intermediary DTN node for the purposes of preprocessing, authentication, etc., or content from a malicious MANET node can be dropped. To support such content routing at the DTN level, we implement Predicate Routing where high-level constraints of DTN nodes are mapped into low-level routing predicates within the MANET nodes. Our testbed uses a Linux system architecture with User Mode Linux to emulate every DTN node with a DTN Reference Implementation code. In our initial architecture prototype, we use the On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol at the MANET level. We use the network simulator ns-2 (ns-emulation version) to simulate the wireless connectivity of both DTN and MANET nodes. Preliminary results show the efficient and correct operation of propagating routing predicates. For the application of content re-routing through an intermediary, as a side effect, results demonstrate the performance benefit of content re-routing that dynamically (on-demand) breaks the underlying end-to-end TCP connections into shorter-length TCP connections.
- [MorcosBestavrosMatta:secon08]
Hany Morcos, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Amorphous Placement and Informed Diffusion for Timely Field Monitoring by Autonomous, Resource-Constrained, Mobile Sensors. In Proceedings of IEEE SECON Conference, San Francisco, CA, June 2008.
Abstract: Personal communication devices are increasingly equipped with sensors for passive monitoring of encounters and surroundings. We envision the emergence of services that enable a community of mobile users carrying such resource-limited devices to query such information at remote locations in the eld in which they collectively roam. One approach to implement such a service is directed placement and retrieval (DPR), whereby readings/queries about a specic location are routed to a node responsible for that location. In a mobile, potentially sparse setting, where end-to-end paths are unavailable, DPR is not an attractive solution as it would require the use of delay-tolerant (ooding-based store-carry-forward) routing of both readings and queries, which is inappropriate for applications with data freshness constraints, and which is incompatible with stringent device power/memory constraints. Alternatively, we propose the use of amorphous placement and retrieval (APR), in which routing and eld monitoring are integrated through the use of a cache management scheme coupled with an informed exchange of cached samples to diffuse sensory data throughout the network, in such a way that a query answer is likely to be found close to the query origin. We argue that knowledge of the distribution of query targets could be used effectively by an informed cache management policy to maximize the utility of collective storage of all devices. Using a simple analytical model, we show that the use of informed cache management is particularly important when the mobility model results in a non-uniform distribution of users over the eld. We present results from extensive simulations which show that in sparsely-connected networks, APR is more cost-effective than DPR, that it provides extra resilience to node failure and packet losses, and that its use of informed cache management yields superior performance.
Hany Morcos, George Atia, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. An Information Theoretic Framework for Field Monitoring Using Autonomously Mobile Sensors. In Proceedings of International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS), Santorini Island, Greece, June 2008. (Best Paper Award, Applications Track)
Abstract: We consider a mobile sensor network monitoring a spatio-temporal field. Given limited caches at the sensor nodes, the goal is to develop a distributed cache management algorithm to efficiently answer queries with a known probability distribution over the spatial dimension. First, we propose a novel distributed information theoretic approach assuming knowledge of the distribution of the monitored phenomenon. Under this scheme, nodes minimize an entropic utility function that captures the average amount of uncertainty in queries given the probability distribution of query locations. Second, we propose a correlation-based technique, which only requires knowledge of the second-order statistics, relaxing the stringent constraint of a priori knowledge of the query distribution, while signicantly reducing the computational overhead. We show that the proposed approaches considerably improve the average field estimation error. Further, we show that the correlation-based technique is robust to model mismatch in case of imperfect knowledge of the underlying generative correlation structure.
Gabriele Ferrari Aggradi, Flavio Esposito, and Ibrahim Matta. Supporting Predicate Routing in DTN over MANET. In Proceedings of ACM MobiCom Workshop on Challenged Networks (CHANTS 2008), San Francisco, CA, September 2008. (Demo)
Abstract: We consider a Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) whose users (nodes) are connected by an underlying Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) substrate. Users can declaratively express high-level policy constraints on how content should be routed. For example, content may be diverted through an intermediary DTN node for the purposes of preprocessing, authentication, etc. To support such capability, we implement Predicate Routing where high-level constraints of DTN nodes are mapped into low-level routing predicates at the MANET level. Our testbed uses a Linux system architecture and leverages User Mode Linux to emulate every node running a DTN Reference Implementation code. In our initial prototype, we use the On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) MANET routing protocol. We use the network simulator ns-2 (ns-emulation version) to simulate the mobility and wireless connectivity of both DTN and MANET nodes. We show preliminary throughput results showing the efficient and correct operation of propagating routing predicates, and as a side effect, the performance benefit of content re-routing that dynamically (on-demand) breaks the underlying end-to-end TCP connection into shorter-length TCP connections.
Niky Riga, Ibrahim Matta, Alberto Medina, Craig Partridge, and Jason Redi. JTP: An Energy-conscious Transport Protocol for Multi-hop Wireless Networks. In Proceedings of CoNEXT Conference, New York, NY, December 2007.
Abstract: We present a transport protocol whose goal is to reduce power consumption without compromising delivery requirements of applications. To meet its goal of energy efficiency, our transport protocol (1) contains mechanisms to balance endto- end vs. local retransmissions; (2) minimizes acknowledgment traffic using receiver regulated rate-based flow control combined with selected acknowledgements and in-network caching of packets; and (3) aggressively seeks to avoid any congestion-based packet loss. Within a recently developed ultra low-power multi-hop wireless network system, extensive simulations and experimental results demonstrate that our transport protocol meets its goal of preserving the energy efficiency of the underlying network.
[RigaMattaBestavros:globecom-asns07]
Niky Riga, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. A Geometric Approach to Slot Alignment in Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (Globecom’07) Ad-hoc and Sensor Networking Symposium, Washington, DC, November 2007.
Abstract: Traditionally, slotted communication protocols have employed guard times to delineate and align slots. These guard times may expand the slot duration significantly, especially when clocks are allowed to drift for longer time to reduce clock synchronization overhead. Recently, a new class of lightweight protocols for statistical estimation in wireless sensor networks have been proposed. This new class requires very short transmission durations (jam signals), thus the traditional approach of using guard times would impose significant overhead. We propose a new, more efficient algorithm to align slots. Based on geometrical properties of space, we prove that our approach bounds the slot duration by only a constant factor of what is needed. Furthermore, we show by simulation that this bound is loose and an even smaller slot duration is required, making our approach even more efficient.
Niky Riga, Alberto Medina, Ibrahim Matta, Craig Partridge, Jason Redi, and Isidro Castineyra. Transport Services for Energy Constrained Environments. In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM’05, Philadelphia, PA, August 2005. Work-in-progress Session.
Abstract: JAVeLEN (Joint Architecture Vision for Low Energy Networking) is a network architecture whose design targets the reduction of the energy-per-bit used for data delivery in tactical wireless mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs). It comprises the physical, MAC, routing, and transport layers of the communication stack. In this extended abstract we briefly summarize our work in progress on the design of JTP, the JAVeLEN Transport Protocol. The central question of our JTP research is, given a network-wide energy efficiency objective, how should a transport protocol be designed so that such objective is achieved while taking into account application semantics. JTP achieves that goal by exploiting reliability semantics weaker than those offered by TCP when applications tolerate it. JTP incorporates as well additional QoS provisions for applications.
Hany Morcos, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. M2RC: Multiplicative-increase/additive-decrease Multipath Routing Control for Wireless Sensor Networks. SIGBED Review—Special Issue on the Best of SenSys 2004 Work-in-Progress, 2(1), January 2005.
Abstract: Routing protocols in wireless sensor networks (WSN) face two main challenges: first, the challenging environments in which WSN’s are deployed negatively affect the quality of the routing process. Therefore, routing protocols for WSN’s should recognize and react to node failures and packet losses. Second, sensor nodes are battery-powered, which makes power a scarce resource. Routing protocols should optimize power consumption to prolong the lifetime of the WSN. In this paper, we present a new adaptive routing protocol for WSN’s, we call it M2RC. M2RC has two phases: mesh establishment phase and data forwarding phase. In the first phase, M2RC establishes the routing state to enable multipath data forwarding. In the second phase, M2RC forwards data packets from the source to the sink. Targeting hop-by-hop reliability, an M2RC forwarding node waits for an acknowledgement (ACK) that its packets were correctly received at the next neighbor. Based on this feedback, an M2RC node applies multiplicative-increase/additive-decrease (MIAD) to control the number of neighbors targeted by its packet broadcast. We simulated M2RC in the ns-2 simulator [4] and compared it to GRAB [1], Max-power, and Min-power routing schemes. Our simulations show that M2RC achieves the highest throughput with at least 10-30% less consumed power per delivered report in scenarios where a certain number of nodes unexpectedly fail.
Hany Morcos, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. BiPAR: A Bimodal Power-Aware Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the First International Computer Engineering Conference (ICENCO 2004), Cairo, Egypt, December 2004.
Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have the potential to change the way we perform many tasks today. Examples include military applications, agriculture applications and medical applications. Routing protocols in WSN have to operate in challenged environments. In these environments, packet losses and node failures are common. One other challenge is the limited power supply of sensors since they are battery-powered, which makes power saving a crucial feature of any WSN protocol in order to increase the lifetime of the whole network. In this paper, we present, BiPAR, a new routing protocol that counteracts the effects of the environment on sensors and, at the same time, tries to minimize its power consumption. The design of BiPAR is very intuitive. It is a semi-reliable protocol that tries to use the least amount of power to deliver data packets, i.e., it routes packets on the least-power path to the sink. If successful, this behavior saves as much battery power as possible. On the other hand, if the first transmission on the least-power path is not successful, BiPAR switches to the max-power path to the sink. This behavior consumes more energy than the first transmission, but maximizes the probability of successful communication. We simulated BiPAR in ns-2 [4] and evaluated it under different node failure models. We compared it against GRAB [1], min-power routing scheme, and max-power routing scheme. Our simulations show that BiPAR delivers at least 30% more reports than GRAB, when node failures are spread all over the routing field. BiPAR delivers as much as 50% more reports than min-power routing under the same conditions.
Hany Morcos, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. M2RC: Multiplicative-increase/additive-decrease Multipath Routing Control for Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the Second ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys ’04), Baltimore, Maryland, November 2004. Poster.
Vijay Erramilli, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. On the Interaction between Data Aggregation and Topology Control in Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the First IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (IEEE SECON 2004), Santa Clara, CA, October 2004.
Abstract: Wireless sensor networks are characterized by limited energy resources. To conserve energy, application-specific aggregation (fusion) of data reports from multiple sensors can be beneficial in reducing the amount of data flowing over the network. Furthermore, controlling the topology by scheduling the activity of nodes between active and sleep modes has often been used to uniformly distribute the energy consumption among all nodes by de-synchronizing their activities. We present an integrated analytical model to study the joint performance of in-network aggregation and topology control. We define performance metrics that capture the tradeoffs among delay, energy, and fidelity of the aggregation. Our results indicate that to achieve high fidelity levels under medium to high event reporting load, shorter and fatter aggregation/routing trees (toward the sink) offer the best delay-energy tradeoff as long as topology control is well coordinated with routing.
Georgios Smaragdakis, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. SEP: A Stable Election Protocol for clustered heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Sensor and Actuator Network Protocols and Applications (SANPA ’04), Boston, MA (in conjunction with Mobiquitous 2004), August 2004.
Abstract: We study the impact of heterogeneity of nodes, in terms of their energy, in wireless sensor networks that are hierarchically clustered. In these networks some of the nodes become cluster heads, aggregate the data of their cluster members and transmit it to the sink. We assume that a percentage of the population of sensor nodes is equipped with additional energy resources—this is a source of heterogeneity which may result from the initial setting or as the operation of the network evolves. We also assume that the sensors are randomly (uniformly) distributed and are not mobile, the coordinates of the sink and the dimensions of the sensor field are known. We show that the behavior of such sensor networks becomes very unstable once the first node dies, especially in the presence of node heterogeneity. Classical clustering protocols assume that all the nodes are equipped with the same amount of energy and as a result, they can not take full advantage of the presence of node heterogeneity. We propose SEP, a heterogeneous-aware protocol to prolong the time interval before the death of the first node (we refer to as stability period), which is crucial for many applications where the feedback from the sensor network must be reliable. SEP is based on weighted election probabilities of each node to become cluster head according to the remaining energy in each node. We show by simulation that SEP always prolongs the stability period compared to (and that the average throughput is greater than) the one obtained using current clustering protocols. We conclude by studying the sensitivity of our SEP protocol to heterogeneity parameters capturing energy imbalance in the network. We found that SEP yields longer stability region for higher values of extra energy brought by more powerful nodes.
Niky Riga, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. DIP: Density Inference Protocol for wireless sensor networks and its application to density-unbiased statistics. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Sensor and Actuator Network Protocols and Applications (SANPA ’04), Boston, MA (in conjunction with Mobiquitous 2004), August 2004.
Abstract: Wireless sensor networks have recently emerged as enablers of important applications such as environmental, chemical and nuclear sensing systems. Such applications have sophisticated spatial-temporal semantics that set them aside from traditional wireless networks. For example, the computation of temperature averaged over the sensor field must take into account local densities. This is crucial since otherwise the estimated average temperature can be biased by over-sampling areas where a lot more sensors exist. Thus, we envision that a fundamental service that a wireless sensor network should provide is that of estimating local densities. In this paper, we propose a lightweight probabilistic density inference protocol, we call DIP, which allows each sensor node to implicitly estimate its neighborhood size without the explicit exchange of node identifiers as in existing density discovery schemes. The theoretical basis of DIP is a probabilistic analysis which yields the relationship between the number of sensor nodes contending in the neighborhood of a node and the level of contention measured by that node. Extensive simulations confirm the premise of DIP: it can provide statistically reliable and accurate estimates of local density at a very low energy cost and constant running time. We demonstrate how applications could be built on top of our DIP-based service by computing density-unbiased statistics from estimated local densities.
Wireless Access & Wired/Wireless Integration
Nabeel Akhtar, Ibrahim Matta, Ali Raza, Leonardo Goratti, Torsten Braun, and Flavio Esposito. Managing Chains of Application Functions over Multi-Technology Edge Networks. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 2021.
Abstract: Next-generation networks are expected to provide higher data rates and ultra-low latency in support of demanding applications, such as virtual and augmented reality, robots and drones, etc. To meet these stringent requirements of applications, edge computing constitutes a central piece of the solution architecture wherein functional components of an application can be deployed over the edge network to reduce bandwidth demand over the core network while providing ultra-low latency communication to users. In this paper, we provide solutions to resource orchestration and management for applications over a virtualized client-edge-server infrastructure. We investigate the problem of optimal placement of pipelines of application functions (virtual service chains) and the steering of traffic through them, over a multi-technology edge network model consisting of both wired and wireless millimeter-wave (mmWave) links. This problem is NP-hard. We provide a comprehensive “microscopic” binary integer program to model the system, along with a heuristic that is one order of magnitude faster than optimally solving the problem. Extensive evaluations demonstrate the benefits of orchestrating virtual service chains (by distributing them over the edge network) compared to a baseline “middlebox” approach in terms of overall admissible virtual capacity. Moreover, we observe significant gains when deploying a small number of mmWave links that complement the Wire physical infrastructure in high node density networks.
Nabeel Akhtar, Ibrahim Matta, Ali Raza, Leonardo Goratti, Torsten Braun, and Flavio Esposito. Virtual Function Placement and Traffic Steering over 5G Multi-Technology Networks. The 4th IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft), June 2018.
Abstract: Next-generation mobile networks (5G and beyond) are expected to provide higher data rates and ultra-low latency in support of demanding applications, such as virtual and augmented reality, robots and drones, etc. To meet these stringent requirements, edge computing constitutes a central piece of the solution architecture wherein functional components of an application can be deployed over the edge network so as to reduce bandwidth demand over the core network while providing ultra-low latency communication to users. In this paper, we investigate the joint optimal placement of virtual service chains consisting of virtual application functions (components) and the steering of traffic through them, over a 5G multi-technology edge network model consisting of both Ethernet and mmWave links. This problem is NP-hard. We provide a comprehensive microscopic binary integer program to model the system, along with a heuristic that is one order of magnitude faster than solving the corresponding binary integer program. Extensive evaluations demonstrate the benefits of managing virtual service chains (by distributing them over the edge network) compared to a baseline middlebox approach in terms of overall admissible virtual capacity. We observe significant gains when deploying mmWave links that complement the Ethernet physical infrastructure. Moreover, most of the gains are attributed to only 30% of these mmWave links.
Eleni Trouva, Eduard Grasa, John Day, Ibrahim Matta, Lou Chitkushev, Steve Bunch, Miguel Ponce de Leon, Patrick Phelan, and Xavier Hesselbach-Serra. Transport over Heterogeneous Networks Using the RINA Architecture. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Wired/Wireless Internet Communications (WWIC), Barcelona, Spain, June 2011.
Abstract: The evolution of various wireless technologies has greatly increased the interest in heterogeneous networks, in which the mobile users can enjoy services while roaming between different networks. The current Internet architecture does not seem to cope with the modern networking trends and the growing application demands for performance, stability and efficiency, as the integration of different technologies faces many problems. In this paper, we focus on the issues raised when attempting to provide seamless mobility over a hybrid environment. We highlight the shortcomings of the current architecture, discuss some of the proposed solutions and try to identify the key choices that lead to failure. Finally, we introduce RINA (Recursive Inter-Network Architecture), a newly-proposed network architecture that seeks to integrate networks of different characteristics inherently and show a simple example that demonstrates this feature.
Flavio Esposito, Anna-Maria Vegni, Ibrahim Matta, and Alessandro Neri. On Modeling Speed-based Vertical Handovers in Vehicular Networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE GLOBECOM 2010 Workshop on Seamless Wireless Mobility, Miami, Florida, December 2010.
Abstract: Although vehicular ad hoc networks are emerging as a novel paradigm for safety services, supporting real-time applications (e.g., video-streaming, Internet browsing, online gaming, etc.) while maintaining ubiquitous connectivity remains a challenge due to both high vehicle speed, and non-homogeneous nature of the network access infrastructure. To guarantee acceptable Quality-of-Service and to support seamless connectivity, vertical handovers across different access networks are performed. In this work we prove the counterintuitive result that in vehicular environments, even if a candidate network has significantly higher bandwidth, it is not always beneficial to abandon the serving network. To this end, we introduce an analytical model for a vertical handover algorithm based on vehicle speed. We argue that the proposed approach may help providers incentivize safety by forcing vehicular speed reduction to guarantee acceptable Quality-of-Service for real-time applications.
Karim Mattar, Ashwin Sridharan, Hui Zang, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. TCP over CDMA2000 Networks: A Cross-Layer Measurement Study. In Proceedings of the 8th Passive and Active Measurement Conference (PAM), Louvain-la-neuve, Belgium, 2007.
Abstract: Modern cellular channels in 3G networks incorporate sophisticated power control and dynamic rate adaptation which can have a significant impact on adaptive transport layer protocols, such as TCP. Though there exists studies that have evaluated the performance of TCP over such networks, they are based solely on observations at the transport layer and hence have no visibility into the impact of lower layer dynamics, which are a key characteristic of these networks. In this work, we present a detailed characterization of TCP behavior based on cross-layer measurement of transport, as well as RF and MAC layer parameters. In particular, through a series of active TCP/UDP experiments and measurement of the relevant variables at all three layers, we characterize both, the wireless scheduler in a commercial CDMA2000 network and its impact on TCP dynamics. Somewhat surprisingly, our findings indicate that the wireless scheduler is mostly insensitive to channel quality and sector load over short timescales and is mainly affected by the transport layer data rate. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrate the impact of the wireless scheduler on various TCP parameters such as the round trip time, throughput and packet loss rate.
Mohamed Hassan, Marwan Krunz, and Ibrahim Matta. Markov-based Channel Characterization for Tractable Performance Analysis in Wireless Packet Networks. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 3(3):821–831, May 2004.
Abstract: Finite-state Markov Chain (FSMC) models have often been used to characterize the wireless channel. The fitting is typically performed by partitioning the range of the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) into a set of intervals (states). Different partitioning criteria have been proposed in the literature, but none of them was targeted to facilitating the analysis of the packet delay and loss performance over the wireless link. In this paper, we propose a new partitioning approach that results in an FSMC model with tractable queueing performance. Our approach utilizes Jake’s level-crossing analysis, the distribution of the received SNR, and the elegant analytical structure of Mitra’s producer-consumer fluid queueing model. An algorithm is provided for computing the various parameters of the model, which are then used in deriving closed-form expressions for the effective bandwidth (EB) subject to packet loss and delay constraints. Resource allocation based on the EB is key to improving the perceived capacity of the wireless medium. Numerical investigations are carried out to study the interactions among various key parameters, verify the adequacy of the analysis, and study the impact of error control parameters on the allocated bandwidth for guaranteed packet loss and delay performance.
Dhiman Barman and Ibrahim Matta. Model-based Loss Inference by TCP over Heterogeneous Networks. In Proceedings of WiOpt’04: Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc and Wireless Networks, University of Cambridge, UK, March 2004.
Abstract: The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has been the protocol of choice for many Internet applications requiring reliable connections. The design of TCP has been challenged by the extension of connections over wireless links. In this paper, we investigate a Bayesian approach to infer at the source host the reason of a packet loss, whether congestion or wireless transmission error. Our approach is “mostly” end-to-end since it requires only one long-term average quantity (namely, long-term average packet loss probability over the wireless segment) that may be best obtained with help from the network (e.g. wireless access agent). Specifically, we use Maximum Likelihood Ratio tests to evaluate TCP as a classifier of the type of packet loss. We study the effectiveness of short-term classification of packet errors (congestion vs. wireless), given stationary prior error probabilities and distributions of packet delays conditioned on the type of packet loss (measured over a longer time scale). Using our Bayesian-based approach and extensive simulations, we demonstrate that an efficient online error classifier can be built as long as congestion-induced losses and losses due to wireless transmission errors produce sufficiently different statistics. We introduce a simple queueing model to underline the conditional delay distributions arising from different kinds of packet losses over a heterogeneous wired/wireless path. To infer conditional delay distributions, we consider Hidden Markov Model (HMM) which explicitly considers discretized delay values observed by TCP as part of its state definition, in addition to an HMM which does not as in [LiuMattaCrovella:WiOpt03]. We demonstrate how estimation accuracy is influenced by different proportions of congestion versus wireless losses and penalties on incorrect classification.
Dhiman Barman, Ibrahim Matta, Eitan Altman, and Rachid El Azouzi. TCP Optimization through FEC, ARQ and Transmission Power Tradeoffs. In Proceedings of WWIC 2004: The 2nd International Conference on Wired/Wireless Internet Communications, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, February 2004.
Abstract: TCP performance degrades when end-to-end connections extend over wireless connections — links which are characterized by high bit error rate and intermittent connectivity. Such link characteristics can significantly degrade TCP performance as the TCP sender assumes wireless losses to be congestion losses resulting in unnecessary congestion control actions. Link errors can be reduced by increasing transmission power, code redundancy (FEC) or number of retransmissions (ARQ). But increasing power costs resources, increasing code redundancy reduces available channel bandwidth and increasing persistency increases end-to-end delay. The paper proposes a TCP optimization through proper tuning of power management, FEC and ARQ in wireless environments (WLAN and WWAN). In particular, we conduct analytical and numerical analysis taking into account the three aforementioned factors, and evaluate TCP (and “wireless-aware” TCP) performance under different settings. Our results show that increasing power, redundancy and/or retransmission levels always improves TCP performance by reducing link-layer losses. However, such improvements are often associated with cost and arbitrary improvement cannot be realized without paying a lot in return. It is therefore important to consider some kind of net utility function that should be optimized, thus maximizing throughput at the least possible cost.
Karu Ratnam and Ibrahim Matta. WTCP: An Efficient Mechanism for Improving Wireless Access to TCP Services. International Journal of Communication Systems — Special Issue on Wireless Access to the Global Internet: Mobile Radio Networks and Satellite Systems, 16:47–62, 2003.
Abstract: The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has been mainly designed assuming a relatively reliable wireline network. It is known to perform poorly in the presence of wireless links because of its basic assumption that any loss of a data segment is due to congestion and consequently it invokes congestion control measures. However, on wireless access links, a large number of segment losses will occur more often because of wireless link errors or host mobility. For this reason, many proposals have recently appeared to improve TCP performance in such environment. They usually rely on the wireless access points (base stations) to locally retransmit the data in order to hide wireless losses from TCP. In this paper, we present WTCP (Wireless-TCP), a new mechanism for improving wireless access to TCP services. We use extensive simulations to evaluate TCP performance in the presence of congestion and wireless losses when the base station employs WTCP, and the well-known Snoop proposal. Our results show that WTCP significantly improves the throughput of TCP connections due to its unique feature of hiding the time spent by the base station to locally recover from wireless link errors so that TCP’s round trip time estimation at the source is not affected. This proved to be critical since otherwise the ability of the source to effectively detect congestion in the fixed wireline network is hindered.
Jun Liu, Ibrahim Matta, and Mark Crovella. End-to-end Inference of Loss Nature in Hybrid Wired/Wireless Environment. In Proceedings of WiOpt’03: Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc and Wireless Networks, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France, March 2003.
Abstract: In a hybrid wired/wireless environment, an effective classification technique that identifies the type of a packet loss, i.e., a loss due to wireless link errors or a loss due to congestion, is needed to help a TCP connection take congestion control actions only on congestion-induced losses. Our classification technique is developed based on the loss pairs measurement technique and Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The intuition is that the delay distribution around wireless losses is different from the one around congestion losses. An HMM can be trained to capture the delays observed around each type of loss by different state(s) in the derived HMM. We develop an automated way to associate a loss type with a state based on the delay features it captures. Thus, classification of a loss can be determined by the loss type associated with the state in which the HMM is at that loss. Simulations confirm the effectiveness of our technique under most network conditions, and its superiority over the Vegas predictor. We identify conditions under which our technique does not perform well.
Dhiman Barman and Ibrahim Matta. Effectiveness of Loss Labeling in Improving TCP Performance in Wired/Wireless Networks. In Proceedings of ICNP’2002: The 10th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, Paris, France, November 2002.
Abstract: The current congestion-oriented design of TCP hinders its ability to perform well in hybrid wireless/wired networks. We propose a new improvement on TCP NewReno (NewReno-FF) using a new loss labeling technique to discriminate wireless from congestion losses. The proposed technique is based on the estimation of average and variance of the round trip time using a filter, called Flip Flop filter, that is augmented with history information. We show the comparative performance of TCP NewReno, NewReno-FF, and TCP Westwood through extensive simulations. We study the fundamental gains and limits using TCP NewReno with varying Loss Labeling accuracy (NewReno-LL) as a benchmark. Lastly our investigation opens up important research directions. First, there is a need for a finer grained classification of losses (even within congestion and wireless losses) for TCP in heterogeneous networks. Second, it is essential to develop an appropriate control strategy for recovery after the correct classification of a packet loss.
Vassilis Tsaoussidis and Ibrahim Matta. Open Issues on TCP for Mobile Computing. Journal of Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing — Special Issue on Reliable Transport Protocols for Mobile Computing, 2(1), February 2002.
Abstract: We discuss the design principles of TCP within the context of heterogeneous wired/wireless networks and mobile networking. We identify three shortcomings in TCP’s behavior: (i) the protocol’s error detection mechanism, which does not distinguish different types of errors and thus does not suffice for heterogeneous wired/wireless environments, (ii) the error recovery, which is not responsive to the distinctive characteristics of wireless networks such as transient or burst errors due to handoffs and fading channels, and (iii) the protocol strategy, which does not control the tradeoff between performance measures such as goodput and energy consumption, and often entails a wasteful effort of retransmission and energy expenditure. We discuss a solution-framework based on selected research proposals and the associated evaluation criteria for the suggested modifications. We highlight an important angle that did not attract the required attention so far: the need for new performance metrics, appropriate for evaluating the impact of protocol strategies on battery-powered devices.
Internet Architecture, Protocols, Characterization & Traffic Management
Ali Raza, Ibrahim Matta, Nabeel Akhtar, Vasiliki Kalavri, and Vatche Isahagian. Function-as-a-Service: From an Application Developer’s Perspective. Journal of Systems Research (JSYS), Accepted August 2021.
Abstract: In the past few years, FaaS has gained significant popularity and became a go-to choice for deploying cloud applications and micro-services. FaaS with its unique `pay as you go’ pricing model and key performance benefits over other cloud services, offers an easy and intuitive programming model to build cloud applications. In this model, a developer focuses on writing the code of the application while infrastructure management is left to the cloud provider who is responsible for the underlying resources, security, isolation, and scaling of the application. Recently, a number of commercial and open-source FaaS platforms have emerged, offering a wide range of features to application developers. In this paper, first, we present measurement studies demystifying various features and performance of commercial and open-source FaaS platforms that can help developers with deploying and configuring their serverless applications. Second, we discuss the distinct performance and cost benefits of FaaS and interesting use cases that leverage the performance, cost, or both aspects of FaaS. Lastly, we discuss challenges a developer may face while developing or deploying a serverless application. We also discuss state of the art solutions and open problems.
[SarabiMattaSyrotiuk:COMLET2021]
Arash Sarabi, Ibrahim Matta, and Violet Syrotiuk. MLED: A Layered Architecture for Reducing Undetected Error Probability in File Transfer. IEEE Communications Letters, Accepted August 2021.
Abstract: Reliability in petabyte-scale file transfers is critical for data collected from scientific instruments. We introduce a Multi-Layer Error Detection (MLED) architecture that significantly reduces the Undetected Error Probability (UEP) in file transfer. MLED is parameterized by a number of layers $n$, and a policy $P_i$ for each layer $1 \le i \le n$ that describes its operation. MLED generalizes existing error detection approaches used in file transfer. We show conditions under which MLED reduces UEP. Analytical results show that a petabyte-size file transfer in MLED with $n=2$ using CRC-32s improves UEP by $2.49E+28$ compared to a single-layer CRC-64, when the BER is $10^{-10}$.
Ali Raza, Zongshun Zhang, Nabeel Akhtar, Vatche Ishakian, and Ibrahim Matta. LIBRA: An Economical Hybrid Approach for Cloud Applications with Strict SLAs. In Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E), October 2021.
Abstract: Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) has recently emerged to reduce the deployment cost of running cloud applications compared to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). FaaS follows a serverless “pay-as-you-go” computing model; it comes at a higher cost per unit of execution time but typically application functions experience lower provisioning time (startup delay). IaaS requires the provisioning of Virtual Machines, which typically suffer from longer cold-start delays that cause higher queuing delays and higher request drop rates. We present LIBRA, a balanced (hybrid) approach that leverages both VM-based and serverless resources to efficiently manage cloud resources for the applications. LIBRA closely monitors the application demand and provisions appropriate VM and serverless resources such that the running cost is minimized and Service-Level Agreements are met. Unlike state of the art, LIBRA not only hides VM cold-start delays, and hence reduces response time, by leveraging serverless, but also directs a low-rate bursty portion of the demand to serverless where it would be less costly than spinning up new VMs. We evaluate LIBRA on real traces in a simulated environment as well as on the AWS commercial cloud. Our results show that LIBRA outperforms other resource-provisioning policies, including a recent hybrid approach — LIBRA achieves more than 85% reduction in SLA violations and up to 53% cost savings.
[TurinaZhangEspositoMatta:CLOUD2021]
Valeria Turina, Zongshun Zhang, Flavio Esposito, and Ibrahim Matta. Federated or Split? A Performance and Privacy Analysis of Hybrid Split and Federated Learning Architectures. In IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD), September 2021.
Abstract: Mobile phones, wearable devices, and other sensors produce every day a large amount of distributed and sensitive data. Classical machine learning approaches process these large datasets usually on a single machine, training complex models to obtain useful predictions. To better preserve user and data privacy and at the same time guarantee high performance, distributed machine learning techniques such as Federated and Split Learning have been recently proposed. Both of these distributed learning architectures have merits but also drawbacks. In this work, we analyze such tradeoffs and propose a new hybrid Federated Split Learning architecture, to combine the benefits of both in terms of efficiency and privacy. Our evaluation shows how Federated Split Learning may reduce the computational power required for each client running a Federated Learning and enable Split Learning parallelization while maintaining a high prediction accuracy with unbalanced datasets during training. Furthermore, FSL provides a better accuracy-privacy tradeoff in specific privacy approaches compared to Parallel Split Learning.
Valeria Turina, Zongshun Zhang, Flavio Esposito, and Ibrahim Matta. Poster: Combining Split and Federated Architectures for Efficiency and Privacy in Deep Learning. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT 2020), Barcelona, Spain, December 2020.
Abstract: Distributed learning systems are increasingly being adopted for a variety of applications as centralized training becomes unfeasible. A few architectures have emerged to divide and conquer the computational load, or to run privacy-aware deep learning models, using split or federated learning. Each architecture has benefits and drawbacks. In this work, we compare the efficiency and privacy performance of two distributed learning architectures that combine the principles of split and federated learning, trying to get the best of both. In particular, our design goal is to reduce the computational power required by each client in Federated Learning and to parallelize Split Learning. We share some initial lessons learned from our implementation that leverages the PySyft and PyGrid libraries.
Violet Syrotiuk and Ibrahim Matta. Challenges with Petabyte-Scale Flows and Beyond (White Paper). Large Scale Networking (LSN) Workshop on Huge Data: A Computing, Networking and Distributed Systems Perspective, April 2020.
Ibrahim Matta. Midscale Education and Research Infrastructure in the Era of Serverless and Microservices (White Paper). MERIF Workshop Report on Future Midscale Experimental Research Infrastructures, April 2020.
Nabeel Akhtar, Ali Raza, Vatche Ishakian, and Ibrahim Matta. COSE: Configuring Serverless Functions using Statistical Learning. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Beijing, China, April 2020.
Abstract: Serverless computing has emerged as a new compelling paradigm for the deployment of applications and services. It represents an evolution of cloud computing with a simplified programming model, that aims to abstract away most, if not all, operational concerns. Running serverless functions requires users to configure multiple parameters, such as memory, CPU, cloud provider, etc. While relatively simpler, configuring such parameters correctly while minimizing cost and meeting delay constraints is not trivial. In this paper, we present COSE, a framework that uses Bayesian Optimization to find the optimal configuration for serverless functions. COSE uses statistical learning techniques to intelligently collect samples with the goal of predicting the cost and execution time of a serverless function across unseen configuration values. Our framework uses the predicted cost and execution time, to select the “best” configuration parameters for running a single or a chain of serverless functions (service chains), while satisfying customer objectives such as minimizing cost or satisfying delay constraints. In addition, COSE has the ability to dynamically adapt to changes in the execution time of a serverless function. We evaluate our framework not only on a commercial cloud provider, where we successfully found optimal/near-optimal configurations in as few as five samples, but also over a wide range of simulated distributed cloud environments that confirm the efficacy of our approach.
Nabeel Akhtar, Ali Razza, and Ibrahim Matta. EcoForecast: A Scalable and Secure Cyberinfrastructure for the Repeatability of Ecological Research (Demo). Chameleon User Meeting Demo Session, February 2019.
[GhasemiMattaEsposito:COMNET19]
Maryam Ghasemi, Ibrahim Matta, and Flavio Esposito. The Effect of (Non-)Competing Brokers on the Quality and Price of Differentiated Internet Services. Computer Networks, June 2019.
Abstract: Price war, as an important factor in undercutting competitors and attracting customers, has spurred considerable work that analyzes such conflict situation. However, in most of these studies, quality of service (QoS), as an important decision-making criterion, has been neglected. Furthermore, with the rise of service-oriented architectures, where players may offer different levels of QoS for different prices, more studies are needed to examine the interaction among players within the service hierarchy. In this paper, we present a new approach to modeling price competition in (virtualized) service-oriented architectures, where there are multiple service levels. In our model, brokers, as intermediaries between end-users and service providers, offer different QoS by adapting the service that they obtain from lower-level providers so as to match the demands of their clients to the services of providers. To maximize profit, players, i.e. providers and brokers, at each level compete in a Bertrand game while they offer different QoS. To maintain an oligopoly market, we then describe underlying dynamics which lead to a Bertrand game with price constraints at the providers’ level. We also study cooperation among a subset of brokers. Numerical simulations demonstrate the behavior of brokers and providers and the effect of price competition on their market shares
Yuefeng Wang and Ibrahim Matta. Multi-Layer Virtual Transport Network Management. Computer Communications, 130:38–49, October 2018.
Abstract: Nowadays there is an increasing need for a general paradigm which can simplify network management and further enable network innovations. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an efficient way to make the network programmable and reduce management complexity, however it is plagued with limitations inherited from the legacy Internet (TCP/IP) architecture. In this paper, in response to limitations of current Software Defined Networking (SDN) management solutions, we propose a recursive approach to enterprise network management, where network management is done through managing various Virtual Transport Networks (VTNs) over different scopes (i.e., regions of operation). Different from the traditional virtual network model which mainly focuses on routing/tunneling, our VTN provides communication service with explicit Quality-of-Service (QoS) support for applications via transport flows, and it involves all mechanisms (e.g., addressing, routing, error and flow control, resource allocation) needed to support such transport flows. Based on this approach, we design and implement a management architecture, which recurses the same VTN-based management mechanism for enterprise network management. Our experimental results show that our management architecture achieves better performance.
Ilia Baldin, Jim Griffioen, KC Wang, J. Aikat, M. Berman, J. Breen, R. Brooks, P. Calyam, J. Chase, W. Chase, R. Clark, C. Elliott, D. Huang, J. Ibarra, T. Lehman, I. Monga, A. Matta, C. Papadopoulos, M. Reither, D. Raychaudhuri, G. Ricard, R. Ricci, P. Ruth, I. Seskar, J. Sobieski, K.~Van derMerwe, T. Wolf, and M. Zink. The Future of Distributed Network Research Infrastructure. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (Editorial Note), 48(2):46–51, April 2018.
Abstract: Shared research infrastructure that is globally distributed and widely accessible has been a hallmark of the networking community. We present a vision for a future mid-scale distributed research infrastructure aimed at enabling new types of discoveries. The lessons learned from constructing and operating the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) infrastructure are the basis for our attempt to project future concepts and solutions. Our aim is to engage the community to contribute new ideas and to inform funding agencies about future research directions.
Nabeel Akhtar, Ibrahim Matta, Ali Raza, and Yuefeng Wang. EL-SEC: ELastic Management of SECurity Applications on Virtualized Infrastructure. In Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM International Workshop on Computer and Networking Experimental Research using Testbeds (CNERT 2018), Honolulu, HI, April 2018.
Abstract: The concept of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) aims to move Network Functions (NFs) out of dedicated hardware devices into software that runs on commodity hardware. A single NF consists of multiple VNF instances, usually running on virtual machines in a cloud infrastructure. The elastic management of an NF refers to load management across the VNF instances and the autonomic scaling of the number of VNF instances as the load on the NF changes. In this paper, we present EL-SEC, an autonomic framework to elastically manage security NFs on a virtualized infrastructure. As a use case, we deploy the Snort Intrusion Detection System as the NF on the GENI testbed. Concepts from control theory are used to create an Elastic Manager, which implements various controllers — in this paper, Proportional Integral (PI) and Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) — to direct traffic across the VNF Snort instances by monitoring the current load. RINA (a clean-slate Recursive InterNetwork Architecture) is used to build a distributed application that monitors load and collects Snort alerts, which are processed by the Elastic Manager and an Attack Analyzer, respectively. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is used to steer traffic through the VNF instances, and to block attack traffic. Our results show that virtualized security NFs can be easily deployed using our EL-SEC framework. With the help of real-time graphs, we show that PI and PID controllers can be used to easily scale the system, which leads to quicker detection of attacks.
Yuefeng Wang and Ibrahim Matta. Multi-Layer Virtual Transport Network Design. Journal of Network and Systems Management, pages 1–35, November 2017.
Abstract: Service overlay networks and network virtualization enable multiple overlay/virtual networks to run over a common physical network infrastructure. They are widely used to overcome deficiencies of the Internet (e.g., resiliency, security and QoS guarantees). However, most overlay/virtual networks are used for routing/tunneling purposes, and not for providing scoped transport flows (involving all mechanisms such as error and flow control, resource allocation, etc.), which can allow better network resource allocation and utilization. Most importantly, the design of overlay/virtual networks is mostly single-layered, and lacks dynamic scope management, which is important for application and network management. In response to these limitations, we propose a multi-layer approach to virtual transport network (VTN) design. This design is a key part of VTN-based network management, where network management is done via managing various VTNs over different scopes (i.e., ranges of operation). We explain the details of the multi-layer VTN design problem as well as our design algorithms, and focus on leveraging the VTN structure to partition the network into smaller scopes for better network performance. Our simulation and experimental results show that our multi-layer approach to VTN design can achieve better performance compared to the traditional single-layer design used for overlay/virtual networks.
Zhongliang Zhao, Eryk Schiller, Eirini Kalogeiton, Torsten Braun, Burkhard Stiller, Mevlut Turker Garip, Joshua Joy, Mario Gerla, Nabeel Akhtar, and Ibrahim Matta. Autonomic Communications in Software-driven Networks. IEEE JSAC Special issue on Emerging Technologies in Software-driven Communication, 35(11):2431–2445, November 2017.
Abstract: Autonomic Communications aims to provide Quality-of-Service (QoS) in networks using self-management mechanisms. It inherits many characteristics from Autonomic Computing, in particular, when communication systems are running as specialized applications in Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) enabled cloud environments. This paper surveys Autonomic Computing and Communications in the context of software-driven networks, i.e. networks based on SDN/NFV concepts. Autonomic Communications creates new challenges in terms of security, operations, and business support. We discuss several goals, research challenges, and development issues on self-management mechanisms and architectures in software-driven networks. The paper covers multiple perspectives of Autonomic Communications in software-driven networks, such as automatic testing, integration, and deployment of network functions. We also focus on self-management and optimization, which make use of machine learning techniques.
Yuefeng Wang, Ibrahim Matta, and Nabeel Akhtar. Application-Driven Network Management with ProtoRINA. In Proceedings of the IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2016), Istanbul, Turkey, April 2016.
Abstract: Traditional network management is tied to the TCP/IP architecture, thus it inherits its many limitations. Additionally there is no unified framework for application management, and service providers have to rely on their own ad-hoc mechanisms to manage their application services. The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) is our solution to achieve better network management. RINA provides a unified framework for application-driven network management along with built-in mechanisms. It allows the dynamic formation of secure communication containers for service providers in support of various requirements. In this paper, we focus on how application-driven network management can be achieved over the GENI testbed using ProtoRINA, a user-space prototype of RINA. We use video multicast as an example, and experimental results show that application-driven network management enabled by ProtoRINA can achieve better network and application performance.
Maryam Ghasemi and Ibrahim Matta. Pricing Differentiated Brokered Internet Services. In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Smart Data Pricing (SDP 2016), co-located with IEEE INFOCOM 2016, San Francisco, CA, April 2016.
Abstract: Price war, as an important factor in undercutting competitors and attracting customers, has spurred considerable work that analyzes such conflict situation. However, in most of these studies, quality of service (QoS), as an important decision-making criterion, has been neglected. Furthermore, with the rise of service-oriented architectures, where players may offer different levels of QoS for different prices, more studies are needed to examine the interaction among players within the service hierarchy. In this paper, we present a new approach to modeling price competition in service-oriented architectures, where there are multiple service levels. In our model, brokers, as the intermediaries between end-users and service providers, offer different QoS by adapting the service that they obtain from lower-level providers so as to match the demands of their clients to the services of providers. To maximize profit, players at each level, compete in a Bertrand game, while they offer different QoS. To maintain an oligopoly market, we then describe underlying dynamics which lead to a Bertrand game with price constraints at the providers’ level. Numerical examples demonstrate the behavior of brokers and providers and the effect of price competition on their market shares.
[AkhtarMattaWang:ManFI-NOMS2016]
Nabeel Akhtar, Ibrahim Matta, and Yuefeng Wang. Managing NFV using SDN and Control Theory. In The Eighth IEEE/IFIP International Workshop on Management of the Future Internet (ManFI 2016), in conjunction with NOMS2016, Istanbul, Turkey, April 2016.
Abstract: Control theory and SDN (Software Defined Networking) are key components for NFV (Network Function Virtualization) deployment. However little has been done to use a control-theoretic approach for SDN and NFV management. In this demo, we describe a use case for NFV management using control theory and SDN. We use the management architecture of RINA (a clean-slate Recursive InterNetwork Architecture) to manage Virtual Network Function (VNF) instances over the GENI testbed. We deploy Snort, an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as the VNF. Our network topology has source and destination hosts, multiple IDSes, an Open vSwitch (OVS) and an OpenFlow controller. A distributed management application running on RINA measures the state of the VNF instances and communicates this information to a Proportional Integral (PI) controller, which then provides load balancing information to the OpenFlow controller. The latter controller in turn updates traffic flow forwarding rules on the OVS switch, thus balancing load across the VNF instances. This demo demonstrates the benefits of using such a control-theoretic load balancing approach and the RINA management architecture in virtualized environments for NFV management. It also illustrates that the GENI testbed can easily support a wide range of SDN and NFV related experiments.
[MattaChitkushevDay:NSF-SDI2016]
Ibrahim Matta, Lou Chitkushev, and John Day. Toward a Dynamic, Recursive SDN/SDX. In Workshop on Software-defined Infrastructure and Software-defined Exchanges (part of the NSF “Looking Beyond the Internet” series of workshops), Washington, DC, February 2016.
Flavio Esposito, Ibrahim Matta, and Yuefeng Wang. VINEA: An Architecture for Virtual Network Embedding Policy Programmability. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 2016. Accepted January 2016 (to appear).
Abstract: Network virtualization has enabled new business models by allowing infrastructure providers to lease or share their physical network. A fundamental management problem that cloud providers face to support customized virtual network (VN) services is the virtual network embedding. This requires solving the (NP-hard) problem of matching constrained virtual networks onto the physical network. In this paper we present VINEA, a policy-based virtual network embedding architecture, and its system implementation. VINEA leverages our previous results on VN embedding optimality and convergence guarantees, and it is based on a network utility maximization approach that separates policies (i.e., high-level goals) from underlying embedding mechanisms: resource discovery, virtual network mapping, and allocation on the physical infrastructure. We show how VINEA can subsume existing embedding approaches, and how it can be used to design novel solutions that adapt to different scenarios, by merely instantiating different policies. We describe the VINEA architecture, as well as our object model: our VINO protocol and the API to program the embedding policies; we then analyze key representative tradeoffs among novel and existing VN embedding policy configurations, via event-driven simulations, and with our prototype implementation. Among our findings, our evaluation shows how, in contrast to existing solutions, simultaneously embedding nodes and links may lead to lower providers’ revenue. We release our implementation on a testbed that uses a Linux system architecture to reserve virtual node and link capacities. Our prototype can be also used to augment existing open-source Networking-as-a-Service architectures such as OpenStack Neutron, that currently lacks a VN embedding protocol, and as a policy-programmable solution to the slice stitching problem within wide-area virtual network testbeds.
John Day, Lou Chitkushev, and Ibrahim Matta. On the Fundamental Nature of Applications and Services. In Workshop on Applications and Services in the Year 2021 (part of the NSF “Looking Beyond the Internet” series of workshops), Washington, DC, January 2016.
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Flavio Esposito, Donato Di Paola, and Ibrahim Matta. On Distributed Virtual Network Embedding with Guarantees. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. December 2014.
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Abstract: To provide wide-area network services, resources from different infrastructure providers are needed. Leveraging the consensus-based resource allocation literature, we propose a general distributed auction mechanism for the (NP-hard) virtual network (VNET) embedding problem. Under reasonable assumptions on the bidding scheme, the proposed mechanism is proven to converge, and it is shown that the solutions guarantee a worst-case efficiency of (1-1/e) relative to the optimal node embedding, or VNET embedding if virtual links are mapped to exactly one physical link. This bound is optimal, that is, no better polynomial-time approximation algorithm exists, unless P = NP. Using extensive simulations, we confirm superior convergence properties and resource utilization when compared with existing distributed VNET embedding solutions, and we show how by appropriate policy design, our mechanism can be instantiated to accommodate the embedding goals of different service and infrastructure providers, resulting in an attractive and flexible resource allocation solution.
- [WangMatta:CoolSDN14]
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Yuefeng Wang and Ibrahim Matta. SDN Management Layer: Design Requirements and Future Direction. In Proceedings of the Workshop on COntrol, Operation, and appLication in SDN Protocols (CoolSDN 2014), co-located with ICNP 2014, Raleigh, NC, October 2014.
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Abstract: Computer networks are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to manage. The research community has been expending a lot of efforts to come up with a general management paradigm that is able to hide the details of the physical infrastructure and enable flexible network manage ment. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is such a paradigm that simplifies network management and enables network innovations. In this survey paper, by reviewing existing SDN management layers (platforms), we identify the general common management architecture for SDN networks, and further identify the design requirements of the management layer that is at the core of the architecture. We also point out open issues and weaknesses of existing SDN management layers. We conclude with a promising future direction for improving the SDN management layer.
- [WangAkhtarMatta:cnert14]
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Yuefeng Wang, Nabeel Akhtar, and Ibrahim Matta. Programming Routing Policies for Video Traffic. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Computer and Networking Experimental Research using Testbeds (CNERT 2014), co-located with ICNP 2014, Raleigh, NC, October 2014.
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Abstract: Making the network programmable simplifies network management and enables network innovations. The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) is our solution to enable network programmability. ProtoRINA is a user-space prototype of RINA and provides users with a framework with common mechanisms so a user can program recursive-networking policies without implementing mechanisms from scratch. In this paper, we focus on how routing policies, which is an important aspect of network management, can be programmed using ProtoRINA, and demonstrate how ProtoRINA can be used to achieve better performance for a video streaming application by instantiating different routing policies over the GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations) testbed, which provides a large-scale experimental facility for networking research.
Yuefeng Wang, Ibrahim Matta, Flavio Esposito, and John Day. Introducing ProtoRINA: A Prototype for Programming Recursive-Networking Policies. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, July 2014. To appear.
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Abstract: ProtoRINA is a user-space prototype of the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture. RINA is a new architecture that builds on the fundamental principle that networking is inter-process communication. As a consequence, RINA overcomes inherent weaknesses of the current Internet, e.g., security, mobility support, and manageability. ProtoRINA serves not only as a prototype that demonstrates the advantages of RINA, but also as a network experimental tool that enables users to program different policies using its built-in mechanisms. In this note, we introduce ProtoRINA as a vehicle for making RINA concepts concrete and for encouraging researchers to use and benefit from the prototype.
Yuefeng Wang, Ibrahim Matta, and Nabeel Akhtar. Experimenting with Routing Policies using ProtoRINA over GENI. In Proceedings of the Third GENI Research and Educational Experiment Workshop (GEC19 / GREE), Atlanta, Georgia, March 2014.
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Abstract: ProtoRINA is a user-space prototype of the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA), a new architecture that overcomes inherent weaknesses of the current Internet, e.g., security, mobility, and manageability. By separating mechanisms and policies, RINA supports the programmability of different control and management policies over different communication scopes while using the same mechanisms. GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations) provides a large-scale virtual network testbed that supports experimentation and possible deployment of future network architectures. In this paper, using ProtoRINA over GENI resources, we demonstrate how RINA’s support for the scoping of routing control and management, and instantiation of different routing policies, can be leveraged to yield faster convergence and lower routing overhead in the face of node or link failures.
- [EspositoMatta:DCC2014]
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Flavio Esposito and Ibrahim Matta. A Decomposition-based Architecture for Distributed Virtual Network Embedding. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Distributed Cloud Computing (DCC’14), Chicago, August 2014. To appear.
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Abstract: Network protocols have historically been developed on an ad-hoc basis, and cloud computing is no exception. A fundamental management protocol, not yet standardized, that cloud providers need to run to support wide-area virtual network services is the virtual network (VN) embedding protocol. In this paper, we use decomposition theory to provide a unifying architecture for the VN embedding problem. We show how our architecture subsumes existing solutions, and how it can be used by cloud providers to design a distributed VN embedding protocol that adapts to different scenarios, by merely instantiating different decomposition policies. We analyze key representative tradeoffs via simulation, and with our VN embedding testbed that uses a Linux system architecture to reserve virtual node and link capacities. In contrast with existing VN embedding solutions, we found that partitioning a VN request not only increases the signaling overhead, but may decrease cloud providers’ revenue.
Yuefeng Wang, Flavio Esposito, and Ibrahim Matta. Demonstrating RINA Using the GENI Testbed. In Proceedings of the Second GENI Research and Educational Experiment Workshop (GEC16 / GREE), Salt Lake City, Utah, March 2013.
Abstract: The inability of the current Internet architecture to accommodate modern requirements has spurred novel designs for future Internet architectures. The Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) is a wide-area virtual network testbed which allows experimentation of such architectures for possible deployment. We have contributed to the efforts of redesigning the Internet with a Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA), and in this paper we demonstrate its practicability by running a prototype on the GENI testbed. We focus on testing two fundamental features of our architecture: security and manageability, discussing in detail how the experimentation was carried, and pointing out some lessons learned using the testbed.
- [EspositoWangMattaDay:NSDI2013]
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Flavio Esposito, Yuefeng Wang, Ibrahim Matta, and John Day. Dynamic Layer Instantiation as a Service. In Proceedings of the 10th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), April 2013. Demo.
- [EspositoPaolaMatta:Networking2013]
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Flavio Esposito, Donato Di Paola, and Ibrahim Matta. A General Distributed Approach to Slice Embedding with Guarantees. In Proceedings of IFIP Networking, Brooklyn, New York, May 2013.
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Abstract: To provide wide-area network services, resources from different infrastructure providers are needed. Leveraging the consensus-based resource allocation literature, we propose a general distributed auction mechanism for the (NP-hard) slice embedding problem. Under reasonable assumptions on the bidding scheme, the proposed mechanism is proven to converge, and it is shown that the solutions guarantee a worst-case efficiency of (1 – 1/e ) relative to the optimal solution. Using extensive simulations, we confirm superior convergence properties and resource utilization when compared with existing distributed slice embedding solutions, and we show how by appropriate policy design, our mechanism can be instantiated to accommodate the embedding goals of different service and infrastructure providers, resulting in an attractive and flexible resource allocation solution for network virtualization.
- [GC-book2012]
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Luca Chiaraiglio and Ibrahim Matta. Energy-Aware Network Management and Content Distribution. In Green Communications: Theoretical Fundamentals, Algorithms, and Applications, chapter 27, pages 765–791. CRC Press. Editors: Jinsong Wu, Sundeep Rangan, and Honggang Zhang, 2013.
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Abstract: In this chapter, we propose a new approach to reducing power consumption for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Content Providers (CPs). In particular, we aim at controlling the whole system composed of the ISP and the CP in order to find the minimal set of network resources and servers that minimize the total power consumption while satisfying the current content requests. We recognize however that avoiding sharing information is crucial for both ISPs and CPs. We therefore propose two distributed algorithms to minimize power consumption while limiting the amount of shared information, such as the network topology and the servers’ load. We investigate the performance tradeoffs on real ISP topologies and considering realistic power figures. In particular, we start solving the centralized problem optimally and compare it with a classic formulation, whose aim is to minimize user delay. Results show that power savings can be huge: up to 71% on real ISP topologies. We also show how the degree of cooperation impacts overall power consumption. Then, we consider the impact of CP servers’ location on the total power savings. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the distributed approach. Results show that both distributed algorithms are close to the optimal solution, with a power efficiency loss less than 18%. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces the problem. The centralized formulations of the problem are presented in Section 2. Section 3 details the distributed algorithms. Performance evaluation is detailed in Section 4. Section 5 discusses the presented algorithms with respect to their effectiveness and complexity of their implementation. Section 6 reviews related work. Finally, Section 7 concludes the chapter.
- [IshakianX:ComCom2012]
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Vatche Ishakian, Joseph Akinwumi, Flavio Esposito, and Ibrahim Matta. On Supporting Mobility and Multihoming in Recursive Internet Architectures. Computer Communications, 35(13):1561–1573, July 2012.
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Abstract: As the Internet has evolved and grown, an increasing number of nodes (hosts or autonomous systems) have become multihomed, i.e., a node is connected to more than one network. Mobility can be viewed as a special case of multihoming—as a node moves, it unsubscribes from one network and subscribes to another, which is akin to one interface becoming inactive and another active. The current Internet architecture has been facing significant challenges in effectively dealing with multihoming (and consequently mobility), which has led to the emergence of several custom point-solutions. The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) was recently proposed as a clean-slate solution to the current problems of the Internet. In this paper, we present a specification of the process of ROuting in Recursive Architectures (RORA). We also perform an average-case cost analysis to compare the multihoming / mobility support of RINA, against that of other approaches such as LISP and Mobile-IP. Extensive experimental results confirm the premise that the RINA architecture and its RORA routing approach are inherently better suited for supporting mobility and multihoming.
- [FlavioX:CS2012]
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Flavio Esposito, Ibrahim Matta, and Vatche Ishakian. Slice Embedding Solutions for Distributed Service Architectures. ACM Computing Surveys, 2012.
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Abstract: Network virtualization provides a novel approach to run multiple concurrent virtual networks over a common physical network infrastructure. From a research perspective, this enables the networking community to concurrently experiment with new Internet architectures and protocols. From a market perspective, on the other hand, this paradigm is appealing as it enables infrastructure service providers to experiment with new business models that range from leasing virtual slices of their infrastructure to host multiple concurrent network services. In this paper, we present the slice embedding problem and recent developments in the area. A slice is a set of virtual instances spanning a set of physical resources. The embedding problem consists of three main tasks: (1) resource discovery, which involves monitoring the state of the physical resources, (2) virtual network mapping, which involves matching users’ requests with the available resources, and (3) allocation, which involves assigning the resources that match the users’ query. We also outline how these three tasks are tightly connected, and how there exists a wide spectrum of solutions that either solve a particular task, or jointly solve multiple tasks along with the interactions among them. To dissect the space of solutions, we introduce three main classification criteria, namely, (1) the type of constraints imposed by the user, (2) the type of dynamics considered in the embedding process, and (3) the allocation strategy adopted. Finally, we conclude with a few interesting research directions.
- [GowthamX:NPSec2012]
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Gowtham Boddapati, John Day, Ibrahim Matta, and Lou Chitkushev. Assessing the Security of a Clean-Slate Internet Architecture. In Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Secure Network Protocols (NPSec), Austin, Texas, October 2012.
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Abstract: The TCP/IP architecture was originally designed without taking security measures into consideration. Over the years, it has been subjected to many attacks, which has led to many patches to counter them. Our investigations into the fundamental principles of networking have shown that carefully following an abstract model of Inter-Process Communication (IPC) addresses many problems [1]. Guided by this IPC principle, we designed a clean-slate Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) [2]. In this paper, we show how, without the aid of cryptographic techniques, the bare-bones architecture of RINA can resist most of the security attacks faced by TCP/IP, and of course, is only more secure if cryptographic techniques are employed. Specifically, the RINA model decouples different concerns that makes it more resistant to transport-level attacks: (1) RINA decouples authentication from connection management, thus transport-level attacks are limited to insider attacks, and (2) RINA decouples transport port allocation and access control from data synchronization and transfer, thus making transport-level attacks much harder to mount. Using typical field lengths in packet headers, we analyze how hard it is for an intruder to compromise RINA.
- [EleniX:TERENA2011]
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Eleni Trouva, Eduard Grasa, John Day, Ibrahim Matta, Lou Chitkushev, Patrick Pheland, Miguel Ponce deLeon, and Steve Bunch. Is the Internet an unfinished demo? Meet RINA! In Proceedings of the TERENA Networking Conference (TNC), Prague, Czech Republic, May 2011.
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Abstract: The aim of this paper is to look at the deficiencies of the current Internet architecture, consider a deeper understanding of why the current architecture is failing to provide solutions and contrast the traditional beliefs on networking with new ones, coming from a network architecture based on the fundamentals. First, we briefly introduce the early history of packet-switched networking to provide the reader with background for the discussion that follows. We highlight the main issues that the current Internet faces and expose the architectural decisions that lead to these problems. Next, we present RINA (Recursive InterNetwork Architecture), a network architecture based on fundamentals among which is that networking is interprocess communication and only IPC. We show the fundamental principles from which RINA is derived, the core elements of the architecture and give a simple example of communication. The adoption of RINA as the architecture for the future networks would enable enhanced security, inherent support for quality of service, mobility, multi-homing, offer new market opportunities and decrease the complexity of the current technology by an order of magnitude.
- [EleniX:wwic2011]
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Eleni Trouva, Eduard Grasa, John Day, Ibrahim Matta, Lou Chitkushev, Steve Bunch, Miguel Ponce deLeon, Patrick Phelan, and Xavier Hesselbach Serra. Transport over Heterogeneous Networks Using the RINA Architecture. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Wired/Wireless Internet Communications (WWIC), Barcelona, Spain, June 2011.
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Abstract: The evolution of various wireless technologies has greatly increased the interest in heterogeneous networks, in which the mobile users can enjoy services while roaming between different networks. The current Internet architecture does not seem to cope with the modern networking trends and the growing application demands for performance, stability and efficiency, as the integration of different technologies faces many problems. In this paper, we focus on the issues raised when attempting to provide seamless mobility over a hybrid environment. We highlight the shortcomings of the current architecture, discuss some of the proposed solutions and try to identify the key choices that lead to failure. Finally, we introduce RINA (Recursive Inter-Network Architecture), a newly-proposed network architecture that achieves to integrate networks of different characteristics inherently and show a simple example that demonstrates this feature.
John Day, Eleni Trouva, Eduard Grasa, Patrick Phelan, Miguel Ponce deLeon, Steve Bunch, Ibrahim Matta, Lou Chitkushev, and Louis Pouzin. Bounding the Router Table Size in an ISP Network using RINA. In Proceedings of the 2011 Second International Conference on Network of the Future, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, November 2011.
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Abstract: One of the biggest problems of today’s Internet is the explosion of the size of the routing tables of Internet core routers, especially due to the growth of multi-homed hosts and networks. This paper explains the benefits that the Recursive InterNetworkArchitecture (RINA) brings to network service providers in terms of routing scalability: with an appropriate design the size of the router tables can be bounded. The recursive layer approach, the independence of the address space at each layer in conjunction with the use of hierarchical addressing prove to be effective tools that greatly reduce the storage requirements of routers as well as speed up the calculation of routes, resulting in more efficient and scalable routing.
Luca Chiaraviglio and Ibrahim Matta. An Energy-Aware Distributed Approach for Content and Network Management. In Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM 2011 Green Communications and Networking Workshop, Shanghai, China, April 2011.
Abstract: We propose a distributed approach in which an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a Content Provider (CP) cooperate to minimize total power consumption. Our solution is distributed between the ISP and the CP to limit shared information, such as network topology and servers’ load. In particular, we adopt a dual decomposition technique. We investigate the performance of the proposed solution on realistic case-studies. We compare our algorithms with a centralized model, whose aim is to minimize total power consumption. We consider different power models for devices. Results show that the distributed algorithm is close to the optimal solution, with a power efficiency loss less than 17%.
- [GursunCrovellaMatta:infocom2011]
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Gonca Gursun, Mark Crovella, and Ibrahim Matta. Describing and Forecasting Video Access Patterns. In Proceedings of the 30th IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) – Mini Conference, Shanghai, China, April 2011.
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Abstract: Computer systems are increasingly driven by workloads that reflect large-scale social behavior, such as rapid changes in the popularity of media items like videos. Capacity planners and system designers must plan for rapid, massive changes in workloads when such social behavior is a factor. In this paper we make two contributions intended to assist in the design and provisioning of such systems. We analyze an extensive dataset consisting of the daily access counts of hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos. In this dataset, we find that there are two types of videos: those that show rapid changes in popularity, and those that are consistently popular over long time periods. We call these two types rarely-accessed and frequently-accessed videos, respectively. We observe that most of the videos in our data set clearly fall in one of these two types. For each type of video we ask two questions: first, are there relatively simple models that can describe its daily access patterns? And second, can we use these simple models to predict the number of accesses that a video will have in the near future, as a tool for capacity planning? To answer these questions we develop two different frameworks for characterization and forecasting of access patterns. We show that for frequently-accessed videos, daily access patterns can be extracted via principal component analysis, and used efficiently for forecasting. For rarely-accessed videos, we demonstrate a clustering method that allows one to classify bursts of popularity and use those classifications for forecasting.
J. Touch, I. Baldine, R. Dutta, G. Finn, B. Ford, S. Jordan, D. Massey, I. Matta, C. Papadopoulos, P. Reiher, and G. Rouskas. A Dynamic Recursive Unified Internet Design (DRUID). Computer Networks – Special Issue on Architectures and Protocols for the Future Internet, 55(4):919–935, March 2011.
Abstract: The Dynamic Recursive Unified Internet Design (DRUID) is a future Internet design that unifies overlay networks with conventional layered network architectures. DRUID is based on the fundamental concept of recursion, enabling a simple and direct network architecture that unifies the data, control, management, and security aspects of the current Internet, leading to a more trustworthy network. DRUID’s architecture is based on a single recursive block that can adapt to support a variety of communication functions, including parameterized mechanisms for hard/soft state, flow and congestion control, sequence control, fragmentation and reassembly, compression, encryption, and error recovery. This recursion is guided by the structure of a graph of translation tables that help compartmentalize the scope of various functions and identifier spaces, while relating these spaces for resource discovery, resolution, and routing. The graph also organizes persistent state that coordinates behavior between individual data events (e.g., coordinating packets as a connection), among different associations (e.g., between connections), as well as helping optimize the recursive discovery process through caching, and supporting prefetching and distributed pre-coordination. This paper describes the DRUID architecture composed of these three parts (recursive block, translation tables, persistent state), and highlights its goals and benefits, including unifying the data, control, management, and security planes currently considered orthogonal aspects of network architecture.
Vatche Ishakian, Ibrahim Matta, and Joseph Akinwumi. On the Cost of Supporting Mobility and Multihoming. In Proceedings of the IEEE GLOBECOM 2010 Workshop on Network of the Future, Miami, Florida, December 2010.
Abstract: As the Internet has evolved and grown, an increasing number of nodes (hosts or autonomous systems) have become multihomed, i.e., a node is connected to more than one network. Multihoming can be viewed as a special case of mobility—as a node moves, it unsubscribes from one network and subscribes to another, which is akin to one interface becoming inactive and another active. The current Internet architecture has been facing significant challenges in effectively dealing with mobility (and consequently multihoming). The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) was recently proposed as a clean-slate solution to the current problems of the Internet. In this paper, we perform an average-case cost analysis to compare the mobility / multihoming support of RINA, against that of other approaches such as LISP and Mobile-IP. We also validate our analysis using simulation.
Gonca Gursun, Ibrahim Matta, and Karim Mattar. Revisiting A Soft-State Approach to Managing Reliable Transport Connections. In Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Protocols for Future, Large-Scale and Diverse Network Transports (PFLDNeT), Lancester, PA, November 2010.
Abstract: We revisit the problem of connection management for reliable transport as part of our clean-slate Recursive InterNet Architecture (RINA). At one extreme, a pure soft-state (SS) approach (as in Delta-t) safely removes the state of a connection at the sender and receiver once the state timers expire without the need for explicit removal messages. And new connections are established without an explicit handshaking phase. On the other hand, a hybrid hard-state/soft-state (HS+SS) approach (as in TCP) uses both explicit handshaking as well as more limited timer-based management of the connection’s state. In this paper, we consider the worst-case scenario of reliable single-message communication. Using simulation, we evaluate various approaches in terms of correctness (with respect to data loss and duplication) and robustness to bad network conditions (high message loss rate and variable channel delays). Our results show that the SS approach is more robust, and has lower message overhead and higher goodput. Thus, SS presents the best choice for reliable applications, especially those operating over bandwidth-constrained, error-prone networks. This result also suggests that within a clean-slate transport architecture, explicit connection messages for data reliability are not needed, and so a simple common packet interface based on Delta-t—rather than TCP vs. T/TCP vs. UDP, etc.— can be provided to support both transactional and bulk, reliable and unreliable (unacknowledged) applications.
Luca Chiaraviglio and Ibrahim Matta. GreenCoop: Cooperative Green Routing with Energy-efficient Servers. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Energy-Efficient Computing and Networking, University of Passau, Germany, April 2010.
Abstract: Energy-efficient communication has recently become a key challenge for both researchers and industries. In this paper, we propose a new model in which a Content Provider and an Internet Service Provider cooperate to reduce the total power consumption. We solve the problem optimally and compare it with a classic formulation, whose aim is to minimize user delay. Results, although preliminary, show that power savings can be huge: up to 71% on real ISP topologies. We also show how the degree of cooperation impacts overall power consumption. Finally, we consider the impact of the Content Provider location on the total power savings.
Sam Epstein, Karim Mattar, and Ibrahim Matta. Principles of Safe Policy Routing Dynamics. In Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP’09), Princeton, NJ, October 2009.
Abstract: We introduce the Dynamic Policy Routing (DPR) model that captures the propagation of route updates under arbitrary changes in topology or path preferences. DPR introduces the notion of causation chains where the route flap at one node causes a flap at the next node along the chain. Using DPR, we model the Gao-Rexford (economic) guidelines that guarantee the safety (i.e., convergence) of policy routing. We establish three principles of safe policy routing dynamics. The non-interference principle provides insight into which ASes can directly induce route changes in one another. The single cycle principle and the multi-tiered cycle principle provide insight into how cycles of routing updates can manifest in any network. We develop InterferenceBeat, a distributed algorithm that propagates a small token along causation chains to check adherence to these principles. To enhance the diagnosis power of InterferenceBeat, we model four violations of the Gao-Rexford guidelines (e.g., transiting between peers) and characterize the resulting dynamics.
Karim Mattar, Ibrahim Matta, John Day, Vatche Ishakian, and Gonca Gursun. Declarative Transport: A Customizable Transport Service for the Future Internet. In Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Networking Meets Databases (NetDB 2009), co-located with SOSP 2009, Big Sky, MT, October 2009.
Abstract: We argue that in a clean-slate architecture, transport state is an integral part of the network state, which includes information for routing, monitoring, resource allocation, etc. Given the myriad of transport policies needed to support advanced functions such as in-network caching, in-network fair allocation, and proxying, these policies should be made programmable. We outline how flexible and generic transport policies can be specified in a declarative language to realize a transport service where distributed transport state is shared and manipulated using recursive queries.
[GuirguisTharpBestavrosMatta:icn09]
Mina Guirguis, Joshua Tharp, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Assessment of Vulnerability of Content Adaptation Mechanisms to RoQ Attacks. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Networks, Gosier, Guadeloupe/France, March 2009.
Abstract: Current computing systems employ different mechanisms to deal with overload conditions. Of those widely deployed are content adaptation mechanisms whereby the quality level of the content is adapted dynamically to mitigate overload conditions. Serving degraded content reduces strain on resources and enables them to cater for a larger set of clients. To that end, this paper studies adversarial exploits of dynamic content adaptation mechanisms to a new instantiation of Reduction of Quality (RoQ) attacks. The RoQ attack pattern is orchestrated to cause different forms of damage such as longer response time for legitimate clients, degraded content being served and underutilization of resources. We assess the impact of RoQ attacks via the potency metric which reflects the tradeoffs between the damage inflicted and the cost in mounting the attack. We validate our results through numerical analysis as well as real Internet experiments.
John Day, Ibrahim Matta, and Karim Mattar. “Networking is IPC”: A Guiding Principle to a Better Internet. In Proceedings of ReArch’08 – Re-Architecting the Internet, Madrid, SPAIN, December 2008. Co-located with ACM CoNEXT 2008.
Abstract: This position paper outlines a new network architecture that is based on the fundamental principle that networking is inter-process communication (IPC). In this model, application processes (APes) communicate via an IPC facility. The IPC processes that make up this facility provide a protocol that implements an IPC mechanism, and a protocol for managing distributed IPC (routing, security and other management tasks). Our architecture is recursive in that the IPC processes can themselves be APes requesting services from lower IPC facilities. We present the repeating patterns and structures in our architecture, and show how the proposed model would cope with the challenges faced by today’s Internet (and that of the future).
[GuirguisBestavrosMattaZhang:infocom07]
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, Ibrahim Matta, and Yuting Zhang. Reduction of Quality (RoQ) Attacks on Dynamic Load Balancers: Vulnerability Assessment and Design Tradeoffs. In Proceedings of IEEE Infocom, Anchorage, Alaska, May 2007.
Abstract: One key adaptation mechanism often deployed in networking and computing systems is dynamic load balancing. The goal from employing dynamic load balancers is to ensure that the offered load would be judiciously distributed across resources to optimize the overall performance. To that end, this paper discovers and studies new instances of Reduction of Quality (RoQ) attacks that target the dynamic operation of load balancers. Our exposition is focused on a number of load balancing policies that are either employed in current commercial products or have been proposed in literature for future deployment. Through queuing theory analysis, numerical solutions, simulations and Internet experiments, we are able to assess the impact of RoQ attacks through the potency metric. We identify the key factors, such as feedback delay and averaging parameters, that expose the trade-offs between resilience and susceptibility to RoQ attacks. These factors could be used to harden load balancers against RoQ attacks. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to study adversarial exploits on the dynamic operation of load balancers.
Selma Yilmaz and Ibrahim Matta. An Adaptive Management Approach to Resolving Policy Conflicts. In Proceedings of IFIP Networking 2007, Atlanta, Georgia, May 2007.
Abstract: The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the current inter-domain routing protocol used to exchange reachability information among Autonomous Systems (ASes) in the Internet. BGP supports policy-based routing which allows each AS to independently define a set of local policies regarding which routes to accept and advertise from/to other networks, as well as which route the AS prefers when more than one route becomes available. However, independently chosen local policies may cause global conflicts, which result in protocol divergence. We propose a new algorithm, called Adaptive Policy Management (APM), to resolve policy conflicts in a distributed manner. Akin to distributed feedback control systems, each AS independently classifies the state of the network as either conflict-free or potentially conflicting by observing its local history only (namely, route flaps). Based on the degree of measured conflicts, each AS dynamically adjusts its own path preferences—increasing its preference for observably stable paths over flapping paths. The convergence analysis of APM derives from the sub-stability property of chosen paths. APM and other competing solutions are simulated in SSFNet for different performance metrics.
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, Ibrahim Matta, and Yuting Zhang. Adversarial Exploits of End-Systems Adaptation Dynamics. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (Elsevier), 67(3):318–335, March 2007.
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. On the Impact of Low-Rate Attacks. In Proceedings of the 41st IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC’06), Istanbul, Turkey, June 2006.
Abstract: Recent research have exposed new breeds of attacks that are capable of denying service or inflicting significant damage for TCP flows, without sustaining the attack traffic. Such attacks are often referred to as low-rate attacks and they stand in sharp contrast against traditional Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that can completely shut off TCP flows by flooding an Internet link. In this paper, we study the impact of these new breeds of attacks and the extent to which defense mechanisms are capable of mitigating the attack’s impact. Through adopting a simple discrete-time model with a single TCP flow and a non-oblivious adversary, we were able to expose new variants of these low-rate attacks that could potentially have high attack potency per attack burst. Our analysis is focused towards worst-case scenarios, thus our results should be regarded as upper bounds on the impact of low-rate attacks rather than a real assessment under a specific attack scenario.
Azer Bestavros, Adam Bradley, Assaf Kfoury, and Ibrahim Matta. Typed Abstraction of Complex Network Compositions. In Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP’05), Boston, MA, November 2005.
Abstract: The heterogeneity and open nature of network systems make analysis of compositions of components quite challenging, making the design and implementation of robust network services largely inaccessible to the average programmer. We propose the development of a novel type system and practical type spaces which reflect simplified representations of the results and conclusions which can be derived from complex compositional theories in more accessible ways, essentially allowing the system architect or programmer to be exposed only to the inputs and output of compositional analysis without having to be familiar with the ins and outs of its internals. Toward this end we present the TRAFFIC (Typed Representation and Analysis of Flows For Interoperability Checks) framework, a simple flow-composition and typing language with corresponding type system. We then discuss and demonstrate the expressive power of a type space for TRAFFIC derived from the network calculus, allowing us to reason about and infer such properties as data arrival, transit, and loss rates in large composite network applications.
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Exogeneous-Loss Aware Traffic Management in Overlay Networks: Toward Global Fairness. Computer Networks Journal (Elsevier COMNET), Volume 50 Issue 13, September 2006. (Accepted September 2005)
Abstract: For a given TCP flow, exogenous losses are those occurring on links other than the flow’s bottleneck link. Exogenous losses are typically viewed as introducing undesirable “noise” into TCP’s feedback control loop, leading to inefficient network utilization and potentially severe global unfairness. This has prompted much research on mechanisms for hiding such losses from end-points. In this paper, we show that low levels of exogenous losses are surprisingly beneficial in that they improve stability and convergence, without sacrificing efficiency. Based on this, we argue that exogenous-loss awareness should be taken into account in overlay traffic management techniques that aim to achieve global fairness. To that end, we propose an eXogenous-loss aware Queue Management (XQM) approach that actively accounts for and leverages exogenous losses on overlay paths. We envision the incorporation of XQM functionality in Overlay Traffic Managers (OTMs). We use an equation based approach to derive the quiescent loss rate for a connection based on the connection’s profile and its global fair share. In contrast to other techniques, XQM ensures that a connection sees its quiescent loss rate, not only by complementing already existing exogenous losses, but also by actively hiding exogenous losses, if necessary, to achieve global fairness. We establish the advantages of exogenous-loss-aware OTMs using extensive simulations in which we contrast the performance of XQM to that of a host of traditional exogenous-loss unaware techniques.
[GuirguisBestavrosMatta:infocom05]
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Reduction of Quality (RoQ) Attacks on Internet End-Systems. In Proceedings of IEEE Infocom, Miami, Florida, March 2005.
Abstract: Current computing systems depend on adaptation mechanisms to ensure that they remain in quiescent operating regions. These regions are often defined using efficiency, fairness, and stability properties. To that end, traditional research works in scalable server architectures and protocols have focused on promoting these properties by proposing even more sophisticated adaptation mechanisms, without the proper attention to security implications. In this paper, we exemplify such security implications by exposing the vulnerabilities of admission control mechanisms that are widely deployed in Internet end systems to Reduction of Quality (RoQ) attacks. RoQ attacks target the transients of a system’s adaptive behavior as opposed to its limited steady-state capacity. We show that a well orchestrated RoQ attack on an end-system admission control policy could introduce significant inefficiencies that could potentially deprive an Internet end-system from much of its capacity, or significantly reduce its service quality, while evading detection by consuming an unsuspicious, small fraction of that system’s hijacked capacity. We develop a control theoretic model for assessing the impact of RoQ attacks on an end-system’s admission controller. We quantify the damage inflicted by an attacker through deriving appropriate metrics. We validate our findings through real Internet experiments performed in our lab.
Dhiman Barman, Georgios Smaragdakis, and Ibrahim Matta. The Effect of Router Buffer Size on HighSpeed TCP Performance. In Proceedings of Global Internet and Next Generation Networks Symposium, IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (Globecom’04) , Dallas, TX, December 2004.
Abstract: We study the effect of the IP router buffer size on the throughput of HighSpeed TCP (HSTCP). We are motivated by the fact that in high speed routers, the buffer size is important as such a large buffer size might be a constraint. We first derive an analytical model for HighSpeed TCP and we show that for small buffer size equal to 10% of the bandwidth-delay product, HighSpeed TCP can achieve more than 90% of the bottleneck capacity. We also show that setting the buffer size equal to 20% can increase the utilization of HighSpeed TCP up to 98%. On the contrary, setting the buffer size to less than 10% of the bandwidth-delay product can decrease HighSpeed TCP’s throughput significantly. We also study the performance effects under both DropTail and RED AQM. Analytical results obtained using a fixed-point approach are compared to those obtained by simulation.
[DiamantVeytserMattaX:camad04]
Gali Diamant, Leonid Veytser, Ibrahim Matta, Azer Bestavros, Mina Guirguis, Liang Guo, Yuting Zhang, and Sean Chen. itmBench: Generalized API for Internet Traffic Managers. In Proceedings of the 10th IEEE Workshop on Computer-Aided Modeling, Analysis and Design of Communication Links and Networks (CAMAD ’04), Dallas, TX (in conjunction with Globecom 2004), December 2004.
Abstract: Internet Traffic Managers (ITMs) are special machines placed at strategic places in the Internet. itmBench is an interface that allows users (e.g. network managers, service providers, or experimental researchers) to register different traffic control functionalities to run on one ITM or an overlay of ITMs. Thus itmBench offers a tool that is extensible and powerful yet easy to maintain. ITM traffic control applications could be developed either using a kernel API so they run in kernel space, or using a user-space API so they run in user space. We demonstrate the flexibility of itmBench by showing the implementation of both a kernel module that provides a differentiated network service, and a user-space module that provides an overlay routing service. Our itmBench Linux-based prototype is free software and can be obtained from http://www.cs.bu.edu/groups/itm/.
[GuirguisBestavrosMatta:icenco04]
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Routing Tradeoffs inside a d-dimensional Torus with applicability to CAN. In Proceedings of the First International Computer Engineering Conference (ICENCO 2004), Cairo, Egypt, December 2004.
Abstract: Overlay networks have evolved as powerful systems enabling the development of new applications ranging from simple file sharing applications to more complex applications for managing Internet traffic. Content Addressable Network (CAN) [1] is one such network where nodes (peers) are organized in a d-dimensional torus. Nodes maintain state for their immediate neighbors and a request is routed inside the network through the neighbor that is closest to the destination. This process is repeated until the request reaches its destination. In this paper, we consider routing tradeoffs between space and time; Space in terms of state maintained at each node and time in terms of the average path length experienced as requests get routed inside the network. Our findings motivate the importance for nodes to maintain state, not just for their immediate neighbors, but also for a few Long Range Nodes (LRNs). These LRNs will allow longer jumps inside the space, reducing the average path length. We evaluate the effect of having these long jumps through comparing different setups that store the same amount of state. Based on this, we propose a new dynamical scheme where nodes update their LRNs in order to adapt to the nature of requests. This has significant implication when some nodes become popular in hot-spot zones. We validate our findings through simulations.
Selma Yilmaz and Ibrahim Matta. A Randomized Solution to BGP Divergence. In Proceedings of the 2nd IASTED International Conference on Communication and Computer Networks (CCN’04), Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 2004.
Abstract: The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an interdomain routing protocol that allows each Autonomous System (AS) to define its own routing policies independently and use them to select the best routes. By means of policies, ASes are able to prevent some traffic from accessing their resources, or direct their traffic to a preferred route. However, this flexibility comes at the expense of a possibility of divergence behavior because of mutually conflicting policies. Since BGP is not guaranteed to converge even in the absence of network topology changes, it is not safe. In this paper, we propose a randomized approach to providing safety in BGP. The proposed algorithm dynamically detects policy conflicts, and tries to eliminate the conflict by changing the local preference of the paths involved. Both the detection and elimination of policy conflicts are performed locally, i.e. by using only local information. Randomization is introduced to prevent synchronous updates of the local preferences of the paths involved in the same conflict.
[GuirguisBestavrosMatta:ccn04]
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Bandwidth Stealing via Link Targeted RoQ Attacks. In Proceedings of the 2nd IASTED International Conference on Communication and Computer Networks (CCN’04), Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 2004.
Abstract: We expose an adversarial attack scheme that aims to steal bandwidth for the benefit of a particular set of flows through lunching a distributed interference attack streams on competing flows. The extent to which the interference attack streams were successful in reducing or denying bandwidth from competing flows determines the amount of bandwidth stolen. Given such a goal, our exposed scheme stands in sharp contrast to sustained high-rate Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks targeted directly at a specific resource or a set of flows. We demonstrate two schemes for the construction of an interference attack stream that would evade detection, and thus challenging counter-DoS techniques. Our results show the vulnerability of the current Internet to those new forms of attacks that could be easily mounted with a few number of zombie clients. We validate our findings through simple analysis, simulations and real Internet experiments.
[GuirguisBestavrosMatta:icnp04]
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Exploiting the Transients of Adaptation for RoQ Attacks on Internet Resources. In Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP’04), Berlin, Germany, October 2004.
Abstract: In this paper, we expose an unorthodox adversarial attack that exploits the transients of a system’s adaptive behavior, as opposed to its limited steady-state capacity. We show that a well orchestrated attack could introduce significant inefficiencies that could potentially deprive a network element from much of its capacity, or significantly reduce its service quality, while evading detection by consuming an unsuspicious, small fraction of that element’s hijacked capacity. This type of attack stands in sharp contrast to traditional brute-force, sustained high-rate DoS attacks, as well as recently proposed attacks that exploit specific protocol settings such as TCP timeouts. We exemplify what we term as Reduction of Quality (RoQ) attacks by exposing the vulnerabilities of common adaptation mechanisms. We develop control-theoretic models and associated metrics to quantify these vulnerabilities. We present numerical and simulation results, which we validate with observations from real Internet experiments. Our findings motivate the need for the development of adaptation mechanisms that are resilient to these new forms of attacks.
[GuirguisBestavrosMatta:sigcomm04]
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Adaptation=Vulnerability: Under RoQ Attacks. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2004, Portland, Oregon, September 2004. Poster.
[BestavrosBradleyKfouryMatta:ccr04]
Azer Bestavros, Adam Bradley, Assaf Kfoury, and Ibrahim Matta. Safe Compositional Specification of Networking Systems. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 34(3):21–33, July 2004.
Abstract: The science of network service composition has emerged as one of the grand themes of networking research as a direct result of the complexity and sophistication of emerging networked systems and applications. By service composition we mean that the performance and correctness properties local to the various constituent components of a service can be readily composed into global (end-to-end) properties without re-analyzing any of the constituent components in isolation, or as part of the whole composite service. The set of laws that govern such composition is what will constitute that new science of composition. The heterogeneity and open nature of network systems make composition quite challenging, and thus programming network services has been largely inaccessible to the average user. We identify (and outline) a research agenda in which we aim to develop a specification language that is expressive enough to describe different components of a network service, and that will include type hierarchies inspired by type systems in general programming languages that enable the safe composition of software components. We envision this new science of composition to be built upon several theories, possibly including control theory, network calculus, scheduling theory, and game theory. In essence, different theories may provide different languages by which certain properties of system components can be expressed and composed into larger systems. We then seek to lift these lower-level specifications to a higher level by abstracting away details that are irrelevant for safe composition at the higher level, thus making theories scalable and useful to the average user. In this paper we focus on services built upon an overlay traffic management architecture, and we use control theory and QoS theory as example theories from which we lift up compositional specifications.
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, Ibrahim Matta, Niky Riga, Gali Diamant, and Yuting Zhang. Providing Soft Bandwidth Guarantees Using Elastic TCP-based Tunnels. In Proceedings of ISCC ‘2004: The Ninth IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, Alexandria, Egypt, June 2004.
Abstract: The best-effort nature of the Internet poses a significant obstacle to the deployment of many applications that require guaranteed bandwidth. In this paper, we present a novel approach that enables two edge/border routers—which we call Internet Traffic Managers (ITM)—to use an adaptive number of TCP connections to set up a tunnel of desirable bandwidth between them. The number of TCP connections that comprise this tunnel is elastic in the sense that it increases/decreases in tandem with competing cross traffic to maintain a target bandwidth. An origin ITM would then schedule incoming packets from an application requiring guaranteed bandwidth over that elastic tunnel. Unlike many proposed solutions that aim to deliver soft QoS guarantees, our elastic-tunnel approach does not require any support from core routers (as with IntServ and DiffServ); it is scalable in the sense that core routers do not have to maintain per-flow state (as with IntServ); and it is readily deployable within a single ISP or across multiple ISPs. To evaluate our approach, we develop a flow-level control-theoretic model to study the transient behavior of established elastic TCP-based tunnels. The model captures the effect of cross-traffic connections on our bandwidth allocation policies. Through extensive simulations, we confirm the effectiveness of our approach in providing soft bandwidth guarantees.
[MedinaSalamatianTaftMatta:bucs-2004-011]
Alberto Medina, Kave Salamatian, Nina Taft, Ibrahim Matta, Yolanda Tsang, and Christophe Diot. A Two-step Statistical Approach for Inferring Network Traffic Demands. Technical Report BU-CS-2004-011, Boston University, Computer Science Department, Boston, MA 02215, March 2004. Revises Technical Report BUCS-2003-003.
Abstract: Accurate knowledge of traffic demands in a communication network enables or enhances a variety of traffic engineering and network management tasks of paramount importance for operational networks. Directly measuring a complete set of these demands is prohibitively expensive because of the huge amounts of data that must be collected and the performance impact that such measurements would impose on the regular behavior of the network. As a consequence, we must rely on statistical techniques to produce estimates of actual traffic demands from partial information. The performance of such techniques is however limited due to their reliance on limited information and the high amount of computations they incur, which limits their convergence behavior. In this paper we study a two-step approach for inferring network traffic demands. First we elaborate and evaluate a modeling approach for generating good starting points to be fed to iterative statistical inference techniques. We call these starting points informed priors since they are obtained using actual network information such as packet traces and SNMP link counts. Second we provide a very fast variant of the EM algorithm which extends its computation range, increasing its accuracy and decreasing its dependence on the quality of the starting point. Finally, we evaluate and compare alternative mechanisms for generating starting points and the convergence characteristics of our EM algorithm against a recently proposed Weighted Least Squares approach.
Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. XQM: eXogenous-loss aware Queue Management. In Proceedings of ICNP 2003: The 11th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, Atlanta, Georgia, November 2003. Poster.
Abstract: We postulate that exogenous losses–which are typically regarded as introducing undesirable “noise” that needs to be filtered out or hidden from end points–can be surprisingly beneficial. In this paper we evaluate the effects of exogenous losses on transmission control loops, focusing primarily on efficiency and convergence to fairness properties. By analytically capturing the effects of exogenous losses, we are able to characterize the transient behavior of TCP. Our numerical results suggest that “noise” resulting from exogenous losses should not be filtered out blindly, and that a careful examination of the parameter space leads to better strategies regarding the treatment of exogenous losses inside the network. Specifically, we show that while low levels of exogenous losses do help connections converge to their fair share, higher levels of losses lead to inefficient network utilization. We draw the line between these two cases by determining whether or not it is advantageous to hide, or more interestingly introduce, exogenous losses. Our proposed approach is based on classifying the effects of exogenous losses into long-term and short-term effects. Such classification informs the extent to which we control exogenous losses, so as to operate in an efficient and fair region. We validate our results through simulations.
[LakhinaByersCrovellaMatta:jsac03]
Anukool Lakhina, John Byers, Mark Crovella, and Ibrahim Matta. On the Geographic Location of Internet Resources. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication (J-SAC)—Special Issue on Internet and WWW Measurement, Mapping, and Modeling, 21(6), August 2003.
Abstract: One relatively unexplored question about the Internet’s physical structure concerns the geographical location of its components: routers, links and autonomous systems (ASes). We study this question using two large inventories of Internet routers and links, collected by different methods and about two years apart. We first map each router to its geographical location using two different state-of-the-art tools. We then study the relationship between router location and population density; between geographic distance and link density; and between the size and geographic extent of ASes. Our findings are consistent across the two datasets and both mapping methods. First, as expected, router density per person varies widely over different economic regions; however, in economically homogeneous regions, router density shows a strong superlinear relationship to population density. Second, the probability that two routers are directly connected is strongly dependent on distance; our data is consistent with a model in which a majority (up to 75-95%) of link formation is based on geographical distance (as in the Waxman topology generation method). Finally, we find that ASes show high variability in geographic size, which is correlated with other measures of AS size (degree and number of interfaces). Among small to medium ASes, ASes show wide variability in their geographic dispersal; however, all ASes exceeding a certain threshold in size are maximally dispersed geographically. These findings have many implications for the next generation of topology generators, which we envisage as producing router-level graphs annotated with attributes such as link latencies, AS identifiers and geographical locations.
Shudong Jin, Liang Guo, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. A Spectrum of TCP-friendly Window-based Congestion Control Algorithms. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 11(3), June 2003.
Abstract: The increased diversity of Internet application requirements has spurred recent interests in transport protocols with flexible transmission controls. In window-based congestion control schemes, increase rules determine how to probe available bandwidth, whereas decrease rules determine how to back off when losses due to congestion are detected. The parameterization of these control rules is done so as to ensure that the resulting protocol is TCP-friendly in terms of the relationship between throughput and loss rate. In this paper, we define a new spectrum of window-based congestion control algorithms that are TCP-friendly as well as TCP-compatible under RED. Contrary to previous memory-less controls, our algorithms utilize history information in their control rules. Our proposed algorithms have two salient features: (1) They enable a wider region of TCP-friendliness, and thus more flexibility in trading off among smoothness, aggressiveness, and responsiveness; and (2) they ensure a faster convergence to fairness under a wide range of system conditions. SIMD is one instance of this spectrum of algorithms, in which the congestion window is increased super-linearly with time since the detection of the last loss. Compared to recently proposed TCP-friendly AIMD and binomial algorithms, we demonstrate the superiority of SIMD in: (1) adapting to sudden increases in available bandwidth, while maintaining competitive smoothness and responsiveness; and (2) rapidly converging to fairness and efficiency.
Marwan Krunz and Ibrahim Matta. Analytical Investigation of the Bias Effect in Variance-Type Estimators for Inference of Long-Range Dependence. Computer Networks — Special Issue on Advances in Modeling and Engineering of Long-Range Dependent Traffic, 40(3):445–458, October 2002.
Abstract: Since the publication of the Bellcore measurements in the early nineties, long-range dependence (LRD) has been in the center of a continuous debate within the teletraffic community. While researchers largely acknowledge the significance of the LRD phenomenon, they still disagree on two issues: (1) the utility of LRD models in buffer dimensioning and bandwidth allocation, and (2) the ability of commonly used statistical tools to differentiate between true LRD and other potential interpretations of it (e.g., non-stationarity). This paper is related to the second issue. More specifically, our objective is to analytically demonstrate the limitations of variance-type indicators of LRD. Our work is not meant to advocate a particular modeling philosophy (be it LRD or SRD), but rather to emphasize the potential misidentification caused by the inherent bias in variance-type estimators. Such misidentification could lead one to wrongly conclude the presence of an LRD structure in a sequence that is known to be SRD. Our approach is based on deriving simple analytical expressions for the slope of the aggregated variance in three autocorrelated traffic models: a class of SRD (but non-Markovian) M/G/1 processes, the discrete autoregressive of order one model (SRD Markovian), and the fractional ARIMA process (LRD). Our main result is that a variance-type estimator often indicates, falsely, the existence of an LRD structure (i.e., H > 0.5) in synthetically generated traces from the two SRD models. The bias in this estimator, however, diminishes monotonically with the length of the trace. We provide some guidelines on selecting the minimum trace length so that the bias is negligible. We also contrast the VT estimator with three other estimation techniques.
Liang Guo and Ibrahim Matta. Differentiated Control of Web Traffic: A Numerical Analysis. In Proceedings of SPIE ITCOM’2002: Scalability and Traffic Control in IP Networks, Boston, MA, August 2002.
Abstract: Internet measurements show that the size distribution of Web-based transactions is usually very skewed; a few large requests constitute most of the total traffic. Motivated by the advantages of scheduling algorithms which favor short jobs, we propose to perform differentiated control over Web-based transactions to give preferential service to short web requests. The control is realized through service semantics provided by Internet Traffic Managers, a Diffserv-like architecture. To evaluate the performance of such a control system, it is necessary to have a fast but accurate analytical method. To this end, we model the Internet as a time-shared system and propose a numerical approach which utilizes Kleinrock’s conservation law to solve the model. The numerical results are shown to match well those obtained by packet-level simulation, which runs orders of magnitude slower than our numerical method.
Liang Guo and Ibrahim Matta. Scheduling Flows with Unknown Sizes: An Approximate Analysis. In Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS’02, Marina Del Rey, CA, June 2002. Poster.
Abstract: Previous studies have shown that giving preferential treatment to short jobs helps reduce the average system response time, especially when the job size distribution possesses the heavy-tailed property. Since it has been shown that the TCP flow length distribution also has the same property, it is natural to let short TCP flows enjoy better service inside the network. Analyzing such discriminatory system requires modification to traditional job scheduling models since usually network traffic managers do not have detailed knowledge about individual flows such as their lengths. The Multi-Level (ML) queue, proposed by Kleinrock, can be used to characterize such system. In an ML queueing system, the priority of a flow is reduced as the flow stays longer. We present an approximate analysis of the ML queueing system to obtain a closed-form solution of the average system response time function. We show that the response time of short flows can be significantly reduced without penalizing long flows.
Real-Time, QoS & P2P Management
- [EspositoMattaBeraMichiardi:comnet2011]
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Flavio Esposito, Ibrahim Matta, Debajyoti Bera, and Pietro Michiardi. On the Impact of Seed Scheduling in Peer-to-peer Networks. Computer Networks, 55(15):3303–3317, October 2011.
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Abstract: In a content distribution (file sharing) scenario, the initial phase is delicate due to the lack of global knowledge and the dynamics of the overlay. An unwise piece dissemination in this phase can cause delays in reaching steady state, thus increasing file download times. After showing that finding the scheduling strategy for optimal dissemination is computationally hard, even when the offline knowledge of the overlay is given, we devise a new class of scheduling algorithms at the seed (source peer with full content), based on a proportional fair approach, and we implement them on a real file sharing client. In addition to simulation results, we validated on our own file sharing client (BUTorrent) that our solution improves up to 25% the average downloading time of a standard file sharing protocol. Moreover, we give theoretical upper bounds on the improvements that our scheduling strategies may achieve.
Flavio Esposito, Ibrahim Matta, Pietro Michiardi, Nobuyuki Mitsutake, and Damiano Carra. Seed Scheduling for Peer-to-Peer Networks. In Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (IEEE NCA09), Cambridge, MA, July 2009.
Abstract: The initial phase in a content distribution (file sharing) scenario is delicate due to the lack of global knowledge and the dynamics of the overlay. An unwise distribution of the pieces in this phase can cause delays in reaching steady state, thus increasing file download times. We devise a scheduling algorithm at the seed (source peer with full content), based on a proportional fair approach, and we implement it on a real file sharing client. In dynamic overlays, our solution improves by up to 25% the average downloading time of a standard protocol ala BitTorrent.
Nikolaos Laoutaris, Georgios Smaragdakis, Azer Bestavros, Ibrahim Matta, and Ioannis Stavrakakis. Distributed Selfish Caching. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 18(10), October 2007.
Abstract: Although cooperation generally increases the amount of resources available to a community of nodes, thus improving individual and collective performance, it also allows for the appearance of potential mistreatment problems through the exposition of one node’s resources to others. We study such concerns by considering a group of independent, rational, self-aware nodes that cooperate using on-line caching algorithms, where the exposed resource is the storage at each node. Motivated by content networking applications — including web caching, CDNs, and P2P — this paper extends our previous work on the off-line version of the problem, which was conducted under a game-theoretic framework, and limited to object replication. We identify and investigate two causes of mistreatment: (1) cache state interactions (due to the cooperative servicing of requests) and (2) the adoption of a common scheme for cache management policies. Using analytic models, numerical solutions of these models, as well as simulation experiments, we show that on-line cooperation schemes using caching are fairly robust to mistreatment caused by state interactions. To appear in a substantial manner, the interaction through the exchange of miss-streams has to be very intense, making it feasible for the mistreated nodes to detect and react to exploitation. This robustness ceases to exist when nodes fetch and store objects in response to remote requests, i.e., when they operate as Level-2 caches (or proxies) for other nodes. Regarding mistreatment due to a common scheme, we show that this can easily take place when the “outlier” characteristics of some of the nodes get overlooked. This finding underscores the importance of allowing cooperative caching nodes the flexibility of choosing from a diverse set of schemes to fit the peculiarities of individual nodes. To that end, we outline an emulation-based framework for the development of mistreatment-resilient distributed selfish caching schemes.
Georgios Smaragdakis, Nikolaos Laoutaris, Azer Bestavros, Ibrahim Matta, and Ioannis Stavrakakis. Mistreatment-Resilient Distributed Caching. Computer Networks Journal (Elsevier COMNET), 51(11), August 2007.
Abstract: The distributed partitioning of autonomous, self-aware nodes into cooperative groups, within which scarce resources could be effectively shared for the benefit of the group, is increasingly emerging as a hallmark of many newly-proposed overlay and peer-to-peer applications. Distributed caching protocols in which group members cooperate to satisfy local requests for objects is a canonical example of such applications. In recent work of ours we identified mistreatment as a potentially serious problem for nodes participating in such cooperative caching arrangements. Mistreatment materializes when a node’s access cost for fetching objects worsens as a result of cooperation. To that end, we outlined an emulation-based framework for the development of mistreatment-resilient distributed selfish caching schemes. Under this framework, a node opts to participate in the group only if its individual access cost is less than the one achieved while in isolation. In this paper, we argue against the use of such static all-or-nothing approaches which force an individual node to either join or not join a cooperative group. Instead, we advocate the use of a smoother approach, whereby the level of cooperation is tied to the benefit that a node begets from joining a group. To that end, we propose a distributed and easily deployable feedback-control scheme which mitigates mistreatment. Under our proposed adaptive scheme, a node independently emulates its performance as if it were acting in a greedy local manner and then adapts its caching policy in the direction of reducing its measured access cost below its emulated greedy local cost. Using control-theoretic analysis, we show that our proposed scheme converges to the minimal access cost, and indeed outperforms any static scheme. We also show that our scheme results in insignificant degradation to the performance of the caching group under typical operating scenaria.
Georgios Smaragdakis, Nikolaos Laoutaris, Ibrahim Matta, Azer Bestavros, and Ioannis Stavrakakis. A Feedback Control Approach to Mitigating Mistreatment in Distributed Caching Groups. In Proceedings of IFIP Networking 2006, Coimbra, Portugal, May 2006.
Abstract: We consider distributed collaborative caching groups where individual members are autonomous and self-aware. Such groups have been emerging in many new overlay and peer-to-peer applications. In a recent work of ours, we considered distributed caching protocols where group members (nodes) cooperate to satisfy requests for information objects either locally or remotely from the group, or otherwise from the origin server. In such setting, we identified the problem of a node being mistreated, i.e., its access cost for fetching information objects becoming worse with cooperation than without. We identified two causes of mistreatment: (1) the use of a common caching scheme which controls whether a node should not rely on other nodes in the group by keeping its own local copy of the object once retrieved from the group; and (2) the state interaction that can take place when the miss-request streams from other nodes in the group are allowed to affect the state of the local replacement algorithm. We also showed that both these issues ca n be addressed by introducing two simple additional parameters that affect the caching behavior (the reliance and the interaction parameters). In this paper, we argue against a static rule-of-thumb policy of setting these parameters since the performance, in terms of average object access cost, depends on a multitude of system parameters (namely, group size, cache sizes, demand skewness, and distances). We then propose a feedback control approach to mitigating mistreatment in distributed caching groups. In our approach, a node independently emulates its performance as if it were acting selfishly and then adapts its reliance and interaction parameters in the direction of reducing its measured access cost below its emulated selfish cost. To ensure good convergence and stability properties, we use a (Proportional-Integral-Differential) PID-style controller. Our simulation results show that our controller adapts to the minimal access cost and outperforms static-parameter schemes.
Yuting Zhang, Azer Bestavros, Mina Guirguis, Ibrahim Matta, and Richard West. Friendly Virtual Machines: Leveraging a Feedback-Control Model for Application Adaptation. In Proceedings of the 2005 ACM/USENIX Conference on Virtual Execution Environments, Chicago, Illinois, June 2005.
Abstract: With the increased use of “Virtual Machines” (VMs) as vehicles that isolate applications running on the same host, it is necessary to devise techniques that enable multiple VMs to share underlying resources both fairly and efficiently. To that end, one common approach is to deploy complex resource management techniques in the hosting infrastructure. Alternately, in this paper, we advocate the use of self-adaptation in the VMs themselves based on feedback about resource usage and availability. Consequently, we define a “Friendly” VM (FVM) to be a virtual machine that adjusts its demand for system resources, so that they are both efficiently and fairly allocated to competing FVMs. Such properties are ensured using one of many provably convergent control rules, such as AIMD. By adopting this distributed application-based approach to resource management, it is not necessary to make assumptions about the underlying resources nor about the requirements of FVMs competing for these resources. To demonstrate the elegance and simplicity of our approach, we present a prototype implementation of our FVM framework in User-Mode Linux (UML)—an implementation that consists of less than 500 lines of code changes to UML. We present an analytic, control-theoretic model of FVM adaptation, which establishes convergence and fairness properties. These properties are also backed up with experimental results using our prototype FVM implementation.
[SharmaBestavrosMatta:infocom05]
Abhishek Sharma, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. dPAM: A Distributed Prefetching Protocol for Scalable Asynchronous Multicast in P2P Systems. In Proceedings of IEEE Infocom, Miami, Florida, March 2005.
Abstract: We leverage the buffering capabilities of end-systems to achieve scalable, asynchronous delivery of streams in a peer-to-peer environment. Unlike existing cache-and-relay schemes, we propose a distributed prefetching protocol where peers prefetch and store portions of the streaming media ahead of their playout time, thus not only turning themselves to possible sources for other peers but their prefetched data can allow them to overcome the departure of their source-peer. This stands in sharp contrast to existing cache-and-relay schemes where the departure of the source-peer forces its peer children to go the original server, thus disrupting their service and increasing server and network load. Through mathematical analysis and simulations, we show the effectiveness of maintaining such asynchronous multicasts from several source-peers to other children peers, and the efficacy of prefetching in the face of peer departures. We confirm the scalability of our dPAM protocol as it is shown to significantly reduce server load.
Abhishek Sharma, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Performance Evaluation of Distributed Prefetching for Asynchronous Multicast in P2P Networks. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Web Content Caching and Distribution, Bejing, China, October 2004.
Abstract: We consider the problem of delivering real-time, near real-time and stored streaming media to a large number of asynchronous clients. This problem has been studied in the context of asynchronous multicast and peer-to-peer content distribution. In this paper we evaluate through extensive simulations the performance of the distributed prefetching protocol, dPAM [TR-BU-CS-2004-026], proposed for scalable, asynchronous multicast in P2P systems. We show that the prefetch-and-relay strategy of dPAM can reduce the server bandwidth requirement quite significantly, compared to the previously proposed cache-and-relay strategy, even when the group of clients downloading a stream changes quite frequently due to client departures.
Kanishka Gupta, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Context-aware Real-time Scheduling. In Proceedings of the IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS 2004), Toronto, Canada, May 2004. Work-in-progress Session.
Liang Guo and Ibrahim Matta. Search Space Reduction in QoS Routing. Computer Networks, 41(1), January 2003.
Abstract: To provide real-time service or engineer constrained-based paths, networks require the underlying routing algorithm to be able to find low-cost paths that satisfy given Quality-of-Service (QoS) constraints. However, the problem of constrained shortest (least-cost) path routing is known to be NP-hard, and some heuristics have been proposed to find a near-optimal solution. However, these heuristics either impose relationships among the link metrics to reduce the complexity of the problem which may limit the general applicability of the heuristic, or are too costly in terms of execution time to be applicable to large networks. In this paper, we focus on solving the delay-constrained minimum-cost path problem, and present a fast algorithm to find a near-optimal solution. This algorithm, called DCCR (for Delay-Cost-Constrained Routing), is a variant of the k-shortest path algorithm. DCCR uses a new adaptive path weight function together with an additional constraint imposed on the path cost, to restrict the search space. Thus, DCCR can return a near-optimal solution in a very short time. Furthermore, we use a variant of the Lagrangian relaxation method proposed by Handler and Zang to further reduce the search space by using a tighter bound on path cost. This makes our algorithm more accurate and even faster. We call this improved algorithm SSR+DCCR (for Search Space Reduction+DCCR). Through extensive simulations, we confirm that SSR+DCCR performs very well compared to the optimal but very expensive solution.
Selma Yilmaz and Ibrahim Matta. On the Scalability-Performance Tradeoffs in MPLS and IP Routing. In Proceedings of SPIE ITCOM’2002: Scalability and Traffic Control in IP Networks, Boston, MA, August 2002.
Abstract: MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) has recently emerged to facilitate the engineering of network traffic. This can be achieved by directing packet flows over paths that satisfy multiple requirements. MPLS has been regarded as an enhancement to traditional IP routing, which has the following problems: (1) all packets with the same IP destination address have to follow the same path through the network; and (2) paths have often been computed based on static and single link metrics. These problems may cause traffic concentration, and thus degradation in quality of service. In this paper, we investigate by simulations a range of routing solutions and examine the tradeoff between scalability and performance. At one extreme, IP packet routing using dynamic link metrics provides a stateless solution but may lead to routing oscillations. At the other extreme, we consider a recently proposed Profile-based Routing (PBR), which uses knowledge of potential ingress-egress pairs as well as the traffic profile among them. Minimum Interference Routing (MIRA) is another recently proposed MPLS-based scheme, which only exploits knowledge of potential ingress-egress pairs but not their traffic profile. MIRA and the more conventional widest-shortest path (WSP) routing represent alternative MPLS-based approaches on the spectrum of routing solutions. We compare these solutions in terms of utility, bandwidth acceptance ratio as well as their scalability (routing state and computational overhead) and load balancing capability. While the simplest of the per-flow algorithms we consider, the performance of WSP is close to dynamic per-packet routing, without the potential instabilities of dynamic routing.