Network End Users Research Articles

An Overview of Privacy Dimensions on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)

The rapid advancements in technology have given rise to groundbreaking solutions and practical applications in the field of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). These advancements have had a profound impact on the structures of numerous industrial organizations. The IIoT, a seamless integration of the physical and digital realms with minimal human intervention, has ushered in radical changes in the economy and modern business practices. At the heart of the IIoT lies its ability to gather and analyze vast volumes of data, which is then harnessed by artificial intelligence systems to perform intelligent tasks such as optimizing networked units’ performance, identifying and correcting errors, and implementing proactive maintenance measures. However, implementing IIoT systems is fraught with difficulties, notably in terms of security and privacy. IIoT implementations are susceptible to sophisticated security attacks at various levels of networking and communication architecture. The complex and often heterogeneous nature of these systems makes it difficult to ensure availability, confidentiality, and integrity, raising concerns about mistrust in network operations, privacy breaches, and potential loss of critical, personal, and sensitive information of the network's end-users. To address these issues, this study aims to investigate the privacy requirements of an IIoT ecosystem as outlined by industry standards. It provides a comprehensive overview of the IIoT, its advantages, disadvantages, challenges, and the imperative need for industrial privacy. The research methodology encompasses a thorough literature review to gather existing knowledge and insights on the subject. Additionally, it explores how the IIoT is transforming the manufacturing industry and enhancing industrial processes, incorporating case studies and real-world examples to illustrate its practical applications and impact. Also, the research endeavors to offer actionable recommendations on implementing privacy-enhancing measures and establishing a secure IIoT ecosystem.

Wavelet Generalized Regression Neural Network Approach for Robust Field Strength Prediction

Accurate predictive field strength and coverage modelling during and after cellular network planning process is one key factor that contribute to a successful and robust wireless communication network performance. Accurate field strength coverage prediction will provide realistic idea about the level of field strength and link quality in the entire coverage service areas. It will also assist in close-fitting fringe areas that are likely to be imparted negatively by interference, and cell edge/contour areas with poor signal coverage. Therefore, opting for a suitable predictive field strength system model that will enable superb cellular network planning environment will be of a great succor to the radio network planner and stakeholders, including the network end users as well. This work presents spatial electric field strength prediction engaging hybrid wavelet-neural modelling approach. The proposed is called Wavelet-GRNN. To accomplish this task, the spatial field strength data is first routed through a wavelet-based decomposition process employing three decomposition levels. The decomposed field strength constituents are then utilised as input data to GRNN neural network model where relevant extracted information is captured and trained for robust predictive learning. In the third phase of the model, the outputs from the GRNN predictor are combined with wavelet coefficients to form the final predicted output. The degree of prediction accuracy using the Wavelet-GRNN model over other prediction techniques are also statistically quantified and provided using six different first order statistics.

Integrating industrial waste heat recovery into sustainable smart energy systems

To achieve the EU climate and energy objectives, a transition towards a future sustainable energy system is needed. The integration of the huge potential for industrial waste heat recovery into smart energy system represents a main opportunity to accomplish these goals. To successfully implement this strategy, all the several stakeholders' conflicting objectives should be considered. In this paper an evolutionary multi-objective optimization model is developed to perform a sustainability evaluation of an energy system involving an industrial facility as the waste heat source and the neighbourhood as district heating network end users. An Italian case study of heat recovery from a steel casting facility shows how the model allows to properly select the district heating network set of users to fully exploit the available waste energy. Design directions such as the thermal energy storage capacity can be also provided. Moreover, the model enables the analysis of the trade-off between the stakeholders’ different perspectives, allowing to identify possible win-win solutions for both the industrial sector and the citizenship.

Joint UE Location Energy-Efficient Resource Management in Integrated Satellite and Terrestrial Networks

Integrated satellite and terrestrial networks can be used to solve communication problems in natural disasters, forestry monitoring and control, and military communication. Unlike traditional communication methods, integrated networks are effective solutions because of their advantages in communication, remote sensing, monitoring, navigation, and all-weather seamless coverage. Monitoring, urban management, and other aspects will also have a wide range of applications. This study first builds an integrated network overlay model, and divides the satellite network into two categories: terrestrial network end users and satellite network end users. The energy efficiency, throughput, and signal-to-noise ratio (SINR) are deduced and analyzed. In this paper, we discuss the influence of various factors, such as transmit power, number of users, size of the protected area, and terminal position, on energy efficiency and SINR. A satellite-sharing scheme with a combination of the user location and an exclusion zone with high energy efficiency and anti-jamming capability is proposed to provide better communication quality for end users in integrated satellite and terrestrial networks.

A Novel Approach to Enhance the Efficiency of Distributed Cooperative Caching in SWNETs

This project helps to improve Performance of Distributed Cooperative Caching by choosing appropriate object replacement algorithms in the Social wireless networks (SWNET). E-Object caching in such SWNETs are shown to be able to minimize the Object provisioning and maintenance cost which is based on the pricing and service dependences among different stakeholders including network communication service providers, Object providers (Server) and End users. Here we consider replacement of objects with respect to two dimensions. One is Frequency and another is Recency (freshness) factor of object requests. The efficiency of the algorithm lies in choosing which items to discard to make room for the new ones. So we use the concept of knapsack problem with respect to frequency and freshness of the objects. So nodes maintain their cache memories with more frequent and latest objects.

Vocational College Campus Network Terminal Access Control Scheme

With the development and application of campus network technology in vocational colleges,campus network security has become a major issue for end users and network managers face.Terminal access control as one of the important means of active network security management,by strengthening the active defense of the end user,ensure the enforcement of campus network security policy,realize the network management of campus network end users sophisticated controls,the effective protection of the campus network in higher vocational colleges to network security.

Lemons on the Edge of the Internet: Technological Convergence and Misleading Advertising in the Provision of Internet Access Services

This article investigates the causes, consequences, and possible remedies to the problem of misleading advertising in the provision of broadband Internet access services. Network performance measurements from OECD countries between 2007 and 2012 document a significant increase in the variability of broadband infrastructure quality, which helps explain growing demand for technologies and policies that counteract information asymmetries between network operators and end users. A cross-country analysis documents the negative association between quality uncertainty and variations in digital infrastructure quality. The analysis suggests public policies and business models that promote market transparency can enhance the efficiency of the broadband access market on the edge of the Internet and stimulate incentives for the diffusion of next generation platforms.

Assessing Access Network Market Power

Interconnection agreements in the telecommunications industry have always been constrained by regulation, but Internet interconnection has not received the same level of scrutiny. Recent debates regarding proposed mergers, network neutrality, Internet peering, and last mile competition have generated much discussion about whether Internet interconnection regulation is warranted.Concerns about network market power are not limited to those network providers at the top of the Internet hierarchy. In recent years, the concerns have actually shifted from the backbone providers at the core of the Internet to the access networks at the edge. Limited access network competition can not only impact consumer pricing or increase the likelihood of harmful discrimination, it can also lead to unfair interconnection practices. Recent interconnection disputes have generated questions about whether the concentration in access networks impacts the ability of other network providers to deliver traffic to those end users. This concern is not restricted to interconnection between access networks and upstream networks. Due to the emergence of “hyper giants” who are responsible for a large percentage of Internet traffic, it extends to the relationships between access networks and pure play CDNs as well as access networks and large content providers. In order to determine whether regulation is necessary, policymakers need appropriate metrics to help gauge a network provider’s market power. The metrics used to assess backbone network market power may not be as relevant for access networks. Ideally, policymakers would have access to Internet interconnection agreements as these reflect a network’s bargaining power. Unfortunately these are not typically publicly available. Policymakers must instead rely on proxy metrics and inferred interconnection relationships. This paper proposes a new metric, access variance, for assessing access network market power. This metric is defined as the diversity of feasible paths into an access network and can provide a useful assessment of access network’s ability to control access to its end users.Content delivery networks (CDNs) may provide some visibility into an access network's access variance. A CDN will typically distribute requests from an access network's end users across multiple deployments depending on factors such as performance and cost. While some of these deployments may be located within the access network, other deployments may be in upstream networks that have interconnection agreements with the access network. This access variance can help ascertain the diversity of access methods other than establishing an interconnection agreement directly with the access network. The paper provides an empirical example analyzing whether a CDN has alternative options for reaching an access network’s end users. The example focuses on France as the French ISPs have publicly stated their intention to limit CDN access if they are not compensated according to their terms. By analyzing the CDN traffic flows in France, we can determine the extent of the French ISPs’ ability to restrict access. If a CDN is either unable to deliver content to an access network’s end users or is only able to deliver content to those users from its deployments within the access network, this may suggest that the access network is able to control access to its subscribers. The analysis involves identifying the DNS nameservers associated with the French ISPs and issuing requests for CDN content from those nameservers. The resulting server IP addresses are recorded and analyzed to map the CDN deployments responding to those requests. In this analysis, the CDN deployments within the access networks served less than 50% of the requests originating from the access networks’ on-network nameservers. This suggests that there are viable alternatives to establishing interconnection agreements directly with the access networks.

Dealing with Energy-QoE Trade-Offs in Mobile Video

Scalable video coding allows an efficient provision of video services at different quality levels with different energy demands. According to the specific type of service and network scenario, end users and/or operators may decide to choose among different energy versus quality combinations. In order to deal with the resulting trade-off, in this paper we analyze the number of video layers that are worth to be received taking into account the energy constraints. A single-objective optimization is proposed based on dynamically selecting the number of layers, which is able to minimize the energy consumption with the constraint of a minimal quality threshold to be reached. However, this approach cannot reflect the fact that the same increment of energy consumption may result in different increments of visual quality. Thus, a multiobjective optimization is proposed and a utility function is defined in order to weight the energy consumption and the visual quality criteria. Finally, since the optimization solving mechanism is computationally expensive to be implemented in mobile devices, a heuristic algorithm is proposed. This way, significant energy consumption reduction will be achieved while keeping reasonable quality levels.

Application of MIH for the lightweight deployment of LTE-advanced systems through mobile relaying

In a conventional cellular network end users connect directly to a Base Station (BS). Mobile relaying allows establishing an indirect two-hop link between the end user, called Mobile Node (MN), and the BS through a Mobile Relay (MR). This spreads out the cell coverage and increases the cell-edge throughput hence improving fairness among nodes. This article is focused on a Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) cellular network where MNs and MRs are connected through a Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) ad-hoc connection. It is proposed the use of Media Independent Handover (MIH) signaling to define an efficient dynamic routing mechanism for MR in this framework. The proposed mechanism, called MIH-Driven Relay Selection Mechanism (MIDRES), detects which is the best direct or indirect link with the BS based on information collected using MIH messages. The MNs or MRs send MIH messages when experiencing bad channel conditions, that is detected thanks to predefined thresholds. Then, the BS starts a polling process, again supported by MIH signaling, and performs optimal route selection either through the LTE-A radio interface or through a WiFi ad-hoc interface. This article examines the implementation of this mechanism and obtains the optimal thresholds that maximize operational performance. Moreover, the potential benefit of this LTE-compliant mobile relaying solution is evaluated using a calibrated simulation tool. The results show significant savings in cost of network deployment.

CASHeW: Cluster-based Adaptive Scheme for Multimedia Delivery in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Multimedia streaming over heterogeneous wireless networks has attracted significant interest in recent years from both telecom network operators and end users. However, the heterogeneity of the wireless network makes it very difficult to synchronize real-time multimedia streaming to different types of end-user devices across different wireless networks. In addition, with different delay and packet loss across different networks, multimedia delivery over the heterogeneous wireless networks cannot provide good quality streaming video. This paper proposes CASHeW--a novel cluster-based design with an in-built feedback-based adaptive mechanism that results in a higher video perceived quality in two-hop heterogeneous wireless network environments. CASHeW employs a proxy-client-server mechanism between the base station (BS) and the end-user; and importantly uses a quality-oriented adaptive scheme for efficient multimedia delivery. Simulation-based tests indicate that the performance of CASHeW not only outperforms transport layer adaptive delivery protocols like the TCP-Friendly Rate Control Protocol (TFRCP) and Loss Delay Adaptation (LDA+), but also is better than that of medium access control (MAC) layer protocols such as the Receiver Based Auto Rate (RBAR) and Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) in terms of average perceived quality, average bit rate and loss rate.

A summary of the hornet project: a next-generation metropolitan area network

Metropolitan area networks are currently undergoing an evolution aimed at more efficiently transport of data-oriented traffic. However, the incoming generation of metro networks is based on conventional technology, which prevents them scaling cost-effectively to ultrahigh capacities. We have developed a new architecture and set of protocols for the next generation of metro networks. The architecture, named HORNET (hybrid optoelectronic ring network), is a packet-over-wavelength-division multiplexing ring network that utilizes fast-tunable packet transmitters and wavelength routing to enable it to scale cost-effectively to ultrahigh capacities. A control-channel-based media access control (MAC) protocol enables the network nodes to share the bandwidth of the network while preventing collisions. The MAC protocol is designed to transport variable-sized packets and to provide fairness control to all network end users. The efficiency and the fairness of the MAC protocol is demonstrated with custom-designed simulations. The implementation of the MAC protocol and the survivability of the network have been demonstrated in a laboratory experimental testbed. The article summarizes the accomplishments of the HORNET project, including the design, analysis, and demonstration of a metro architecture and a set of protocols. The HORNET architecture is an excellent candidate for next-generation high-capacity metro networks.

Wireless data networking, standards, and applications

Mobile communications is now so pervasive that, in some countries, mobile phones outnumber landline phones. Penetration rates of over 50% have been reached in many markets. This paper is focused on the standards, network platforms, and applications that are driving this phenomenon in terms of how these elements are providing new capabilities and services for network operators and end users. We review the wireless standards that support high-speed packet internetworking for efficient delivery of voice, Internet, and multimedia content. We also describe wireless networking solutions that use novel and highly advanced hardware and software systems. Lastly, we detail new network elements that enhance the range of services that both traditional service providers and new applications service providers can offer over Internet-ready wireless networks.

Introduction strategies for ATM broadband networks in a European context

The aim of the European Community's RACE programme has been the introduction of integrated broadband communication services throughout the Community by 1995. Project R1022 is tasked with demonstrating the feasibility of a broadband network based on the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM). The paper considers the alternative ways of introducing ATM broadband networks into the existing European communications structure in a cost-effective manner which offers advantages to network operators and end users.

Traffic administration and engineering of a corporate wide area network

The development of a traffic engineering and administration software system for use in administering a private AT&T corporate wide area network (CWAN) is described. The traffic administration system discussed is intended to aid network administrators in periodically, e.g., weekly, engineering the CWAN. The objective of this ongoing engineering process is to minimize network facilities and equipment expenditures while providing acceptable performance levels to network end users proactively. The CWAN network is described, and the CWAN network management and traffic administration approach used during the network deployment and in the mature network is reviewed. Also described is the CWAN traffic administration system (CTAS), an automated system that implements this CWAN traffic engineering and administration approach.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>