Multiple Network Domains Research Articles

NGSON: features, state of the art, and realization

There have been several efforts to provide service-aware technologies in the networks, such as the service-oriented architecture and service delivery platform. These technologies were integrated with service overlay network (SON) infrastructure to support control and delivery of services over multiple network domains. However, SON has limitations in handling the increasing needs of a ubiquitous and dynamic environment of users and services. To provide better quality of experience to users in this ubiquitous and dynamic environment, next-generation SON (NGSON) was introduced to support context-aware, dynamically adaptive, and selforganizing capabilities in SON. In this article, we present an overall description of the concept of NGSON, and provide a comprehensive review of the recent standardization activities related to NGSON. By visiting our experiences in designing and developing a prototype for NGSON, the challenges and opportunities of NGSON are described.

A collaborative network middleware project by Lambda Station, TeraPaths, and Phoebus

The TeraPaths, Lambda Station, and Phoebus projects, funded by the US Department of Energy, have successfully developed network middleware services that establish on-demand and manage true end-to-end, Quality-of-Service (QoS) aware, virtual network paths across multiple administrative network domains, select network paths and gracefully reroute traffic over these dynamic paths, and streamline traffic between packet and circuit networks using transparent gateways. These services improve network QoS and performance for applications, playing a critical role in the effective use of emerging dynamic circuit network services. They provide interfaces to applications, such as dCache SRM, translate network service requests into network device configurations, and coordinate with each other to setup up end-to-end network paths. The End Site Control Plane Subsystem (ESCPS) builds upon the success of the three projects by combining their individual capabilities into the next generation of network middleware. ESCPS addresses challenges such as cross-domain control plane signalling and interoperability, authentication and authorization in a Grid environment, topology discovery, and dynamic status tracking. The new network middleware will take full advantage of the perfSONAR monitoring infrastructure and the Inter-Domain Control plane efforts and will be deployed and fully vetted in the Large Hadron Collider data movement environment.

Grid Network Service-Web Services Interface Version 2 Achieving Scalable Reservation of Network Resources Across Multiple Network Domains via Management Plane

Platforms of hosting services are expected to provide a virtual private computing infrastructure with guaranteed levels of performance to support each reservation request sent by a client. To enhance the performance of the computing infrastructure in responding to reservation requests, the platforms are required to reserve, coordinate, and control globally distributed computing and network resources across multiple domains. This paper proposes Grid Network Service — Web Services Interface version 2 (GNS-WSI2). GNS-WSI2 is a resource-reservation messaging protocol that establishes a client-server relationship. A server is a kind of management system in the management plane, and it allocates available network resources within its own domain in response to each reservation request from a client. GNS-WSI2 has the ability to reserve network resources rapidly and reliably over multiple network domains. This paper also presents the results of feasibility tests on a transpacific testbed that validate GNS-WSI2 in terms of the scalable reservation of network resources over multiple network domains. In the tests, two computing infrastructures over multiple network domains are dynamically provided for scientific computing and remote-visualization applications. The applications are successfully executed on the provided infrastructures.

A path finding implementation for multi-layer networks

The goal of the OptIPuter project is to tightly couple research applications with dynamically allocated paths. Since OptIPuter is a multi-disciplinary project, the paths through the network often span multiple network domains, and the applications are challenged to find valid network connections through these domains. The challenge arises if the different network domains use different technologies. In this case, we have a multi-layer path finding problem. We will show that there are situations where algorithms as used in single layer networks, such as BGP, SS7 and OSPF-TE, cannot find the shortest path. A shortest path in a multi-layer network can contain loops, and a segment of a shortest path may not be a shortest path in itself. To solve this problem, both a multi-layer network representation as well as new path finding algorithms need to be developed. An additional challenge is to make a generic path finding algorithm that is technology-independent, and does not need to be modified as new technologies emerge. We show that it is possible to create solutions for all three problems. Using RDF-based techniques, we model multi-layer networks and describe incompatibilities for the path finding algorithm in technology-independent way. We also present a path finding algorithm that is able to use this information to find valid paths.

Collaborative Detection of DDoS Attacks over Multiple Network Domains

This paper presents a new distributed approach to detecting DDoS (distributed denial of services) flooding attacks at the traffic-flow level The new defense system is suitable for efficient implementation over the core networks operated by Internet service providers (ISPs). At the early stage of a DDoS attack, some traffic fluctuations are detectable at Internet routers or at the gateways of edge networks. We develop a distributed change-point detection (DCD) architecture using change aggregation trees (CAT). The idea is to detect abrupt traffic changes across multiple network domains at the earliest time. Early detection of DDoS attacks minimizes the floe cling damages to the victim systems serviced by the provider. The system is built over attack-transit routers, which work together cooperatively. Each ISP domain has a CAT server to aggregate the flooding alerts reported by the routers. CAT domain servers collaborate among themselves to make the final decision. To resolve policy conflicts at different ISP domains, a new secure infrastructure protocol (SIP) is developed to establish mutual trust or consensus. We simulated the DCD system up to 16 network domains on the Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research (DETER) testbed, a 220-node PC cluster for Internet emulation experiments at the University of Southern California (USC) Information Science Institute. Experimental results show that four network domains are sufficient to yield a 98 percent detection accuracy with only 1 percent false-positive alarms. Based on a 2006 Internet report on autonomous system (AS) domain distribution, we prove that this DDoS defense system can scale well to cover 84 AS domains. This security coverage is wide enough to safeguard most ISP core networks from real-life DDoS flooding attacks.

Efficient and adaptive epidemic-style protocols for reliable and scalable multicast

Epidemic-style (gossip-based) techniques have recently emerged as a class of scalable and reliable protocols for peer-to-peer multicast dissemination in large process groups. However, popular implementations of epidemic-style dissemination suffer from two major drawbacks: 1) Network overhead: when deployed on a WAN-wide or VPN-wide scale, they generate a large number of packets that transit across the boundaries of multiple network domains (e.g., LANs, subnets, ASs), causing an overload on core network elements such as bridges, routers, and associated links. 2) Lack of adaptivity: they impose the same load on process group members and the network even under reduced failure rates (viz., packet losses, process failures). In this paper, we describe two protocols to address these problems: 1) a hierarchical gossiping protocol and 2) an adaptive dissemination framework (for multicasts) that allows use of any gossiping primitive within it. These protocols work within a virtual peer-to-peer hierarchy called the leaf box hierarchy. Processes can be allocated in a topologically aware manner to the leaf boxes of this structure, so that protocols 1 and 2 produce low traffic across domain boundaries in the network and induce minimal overhead when there are no failures

Social Networks and General Trust

In The Structure of Trust (1998), Toshio Yamagishi argues that those who trust strangers are not gullible but are able to deal with social uncertainty and opportunity costs by trusting others. His argument is called the “emancipation theory of trust.” He proved it by using mainly the methods of experimental psychology; however, some of the subsequent social researches do not support his theory. The likely explanations for the results of later researches are that Toshio Yamagishi's theory is inadequate to be applicable to actual social situations beyond laboratory situations, and that the models used in the positive researches do not formalize the theory well. In this paper, I formalize the relationship between the social environment and the level of general trust of individuals by using a mathematical model that includes network analysis and catastrophe theory. I then propose a theoretical hypothesis that synthesizes the emancipation theory of trust and some criticisms on the theory.The model I propose is a cusp catastrophe model that shows how the level of general trust varies according to the individual's ego network and whole network properties, wherein a higher level of general trust is consistent with close committed relations, supposing that the individual belongs to multiple network domains that can include both open and close relations. Thus, I propose a comprehensive framework to theorize the inconsistent results of psychological experiments and social researches.

Service naming in large-scale and multi-domain networks

The increasing availability of high-performance network resources creates a rich breeding ground for widely-distributed applications that span multiple network domains or administrative domains. Such applications provide services that can be accessed by remote users. Discovery and management of these systems require the ability to name the provided services. In light of these requirements, we distill a set of criteria for comparison of naming schemes: readability, extensibility, namespace size, naming authority, name resolution architecture, name persistence, and standardization. Based on these criteria, we summarize and compare a representative set of existing naming and name resolution approaches. We analyze the approaches based on our criteria, and select a number of candidate technologies for the design of a naming and name resolution mechanism suitable to a multi-domain, Internet-scale environment.

DINCast: a hop efficient dynamic multicast infrastructure for P2P computing

Efficient communications among computers participating in peer-to-peer (P2P) computing remains a problem when they are geographically distributed across multiple network domains. In this paper, we propose DINCast to support group communications required in P2P computing. DINCast is built on top of an existing P2P multicast tree and results in a hop efficient dynamic multicast infrastructure. We show that DINCast is able to reduce communications delay compared with the original tree-based multicast. DINCast is also advantageous since it can achieve load balance and data persistency.

DINCast: a hop efficient dynamic multicast infrastructure for P2P computing

Efficient communications among computers participating in peer-to-peer (P2P) computing remains a problem when they are geographically distributed across multiple network domains. In this paper, we propose DINCast to support group communications required in P2P computing. DINCast is built on top of an existing P2P multicast tree and results in a hop efficient dynamic multicast infrastructure. We show that DINCast is able to reduce communications delay compared with the original tree-based multicast. DINCast is also advantageous since it can achieve load balance and data persistency.

A random early demotion and promotion marker for assured services

The differentiated services (DiffServ) model, proposed to evolve the current best-effort Internet to a quality-of-service-aware Internet, provides packet level service differentiation on a per-hop basis. The end-to-end service differentiation may be provided by extending the per-hop behavior over multiple network domains through service level agreements between domains. The edge routers of each of the domains monitor the aggregate flow of the incoming packets and demote packets when the aggregate incoming traffic exceeds the negotiated interdomain service agreement. A demoted packet may encounter other edge routers on its path that have sufficient resources to route the packet with its original marking. In this paper, we propose a random early demotion and promotion (REDP) technique that works at the aggregate traffic level and allows (1) fair demotion of packets belonging to different flows, and (2) easy and fair detection and promotion of the demoted packets. Using early and random decisions on packets REDP ensures fairness in promotion and demotion. It uses a three color marking mechanism, reserving one color fur differentiating between a demoted packet and a packet with the original out-of-profile marking. We experiment with the proposed REDP scheme using the ns2 simulator for both TCP and UDP streams. The results demonstrate the fairness of REDP scheme in demoting and promoting packets. Furthermore, we show a variety of results that demonstrates that REDP provides better assured services compared to the previously proposed RIO scheme with or without the provision of promotion.

Inter-operator OSS Interface for Delivering Pan-European ATM VP Service

The provision of ATM virtual paths across multiple network domains requires interaction between the operational support systems (OSS) used by the different network operators to manage those networks. This paper describes the interfaces needed between such OSS to support performance and accounting management. It also describes an approach to ensuring those interfaces are secure. The results may be suitable for operational deployment and applicable with further development for other ATM services such as virtual circuits and switched services.

The political economy of congestion charges and settlements in packet networks

Abstract This paper examines the case for usage-based pricing in the Internet by extending earlier work on congestion pricing in a single network to the case of multiple, competing carriers. A settlements problem arises in this context because of the need to allocate revenues among the carriers. The settlements and pricing problems are closely related. After deriving the optimal congestion prices, we discuss alternative settlements mechanisms and identify a number of the technical and strategic issues that require further research before practical implementation of usage pricing in a multiple domain network is feasible.