Network Interface Card Research Articles

Using Hash Table to Extract Real-Time Online Network Traffic Features for Hardware IDS

ABSTRACT This work introduces an efficient algorithm for extracting set of features from raw network traffic. Network traffic is captured directly from a Network Interface Card (NIC). The proposed algorithm is used to build an efficient real-time Network Based Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems (NBIDPS). NBIDPS rely on network traffic as their primary data source, so there is a great need for a reliable, fast algorithm to extract required features for hardware intrusion detection system from available network traffic. It minimizes search time for extracting statistical features from connection records stored in connection queues to memory references. NBIDPS need to implement this algorithm in a high bit rate network such as a gigabit network, ten gigabit or higher.

Data Coherency in Distributed Shared Memory

We present a new model for distributed shared memory systems, based on remote data accesses. Such features are offered by network interface cards that allow one-sided operations, remote direct memory access and OS bypass. This model leads to new interpretations of distributed algorithms allowing us to propose an innovative detection technique of race conditions only based on logical clocks. Indeed, the presence of (data) races in a parallel program makes it hard to reason about and is usually considered as a bug.

VHDL Implementation of 8-Bit ALU

In this paper VHDL implementation of 8-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is presented. The design was implemented using VHDL Xilinx Synthesis tool ISE 13.1 and targeted for Spartan device. ALU was designed to perform arithmetic operations such as addition and subtraction using 8-bit fast adder, logical operations such as AND, OR, XOR and NOT operations, 1's and 2's complement operations and compare. ALU consist of two input registers to hold the data during operation, one output register to hold the result of operation, 8-bit fast adder with 2's complement circuit to perform subtraction and logic gates to perform logical operation. The maximum propagation delay is 13.588ns and power dissipation is 38mW. The ALU was designed for controller used in network interface card.

EKG Signals, Blanket Warmers, And Fluid Warmers

What can cause the loss of the electrocardiogram (EKG) signal from hardwired bedsides and also telemetry units?There are several possibilities. You can narrow things down by first connecting a simulator to the electrode leads and see what the signal looks like. Obviously, the main trunk cable and the leads can cause loss of signal. This is probably the most common problem. Another culprit could be the lead patches, an issue that some clinicians are reluctant to believe. It is possible to have one bad patch out of an entire pack, and it's possible to have a couple of dried-out patches as a result of an old pack and a new one being combined. Ask the clinical staff about changing the patches. Once you determine the device is functioning, you should consider the patient—yes, the patient. It is possible that the patient is deteriorating enough that the monitor can no longer pick up the signal. It is also possible that there's a problem with the contact between patient and patch. Things like hair, lotion, and dry skin can contribute to bad patch adhesion. One thing that might also help is cleaning the skin, removing anything that might impede contact. Use a dry washcloth to wipe the area where the patch will be applied until the skin “blushes” and then connect the electrode.If a wireless telemetry pack is involved, it is possible to have an access point that is causing drop out. If your hospital information technology (IT) department manages the wireless, I'd suggest building a relationship with them and learning what tools are available to troubleshoot the wireless system. Let's face it: Biomeds are in daily contact with the nursing staff. Therefore, a biomed will most likely be called when there's a signal loss, even if it is an entire hall that does not work. So why not have the tools you need and be able to troubleshoot, to an extent, your immediate wireless area? I have on occasion seen a bedside that has a signal and a central station that has a less than desirable signal. This could be a network cabling issue or a bad network interface card (NIC). It depends how your system is designed. I have had the problem with both the CAT 5 cable and the NIC.How would someone know at what temperature a blanket warming cabinet and a fluid warming cabinet should be set?A common misconception is that The Joint Commission (TJC) has a standard for the temperature setting on fluid warmers and blanket warmers. That is a myth. TJC does, however, have a guideline requiring hospitals to have written plans concerning the effective, and safe operation of medical equipment, (EC 6.10 and 6.20).The ECRI Institute recommends that blanket warmers be set at 130 degrees F and fluid warmers be set no higher than 110 degrees F. It is important to note that ECRI recommends storing fluids and blankets separately, with each unit having its own temperature control. In recent years, there have been studies on adjusting blankets to a higher temperature. Most studies have found that blankets can be heated to 200 degrees F without causing any patient harm. After considering the amount of heat lost in the time it takes to put the blanket on the patient, it's apparent that instances of patient discomfort, let alone harm, would be rare. Most injuries have occurred because of IV fluids being heated too high and patients getting burned through them. Because of this and as a patient safety advocate, I always recommend storing fluids and blankets separately. I have never had a manager or nurse disagree when this is explained.

Effect of Selfish Behavior on Power Consumption in Mobile Ad Hoc Network

A multi hop mobile ad hoc network is a peer to peer network of wireless nodes where nodes are required to perform routing activity to provide end to end connectivity among nodes. As mobile nodes are constrained by battery power and bandwidth, some nodes may behave selfishly and deny forwarding packets for other nodes, even though they expect other nodes to forward packets to keep network connected. We simulate two selfish behaviors on top of Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol: the first, selfish nodes do not forward data or control packets (routing packets) for other nodes and the second, selfish nodes turn off their network interface card when they have nothing to communicate. We compare the energy saving to the selfish nodes for both the misbehaviors and show that the second selfish behavior saves more energy. This is important result because most of the cooperation enforcement mechanisms in literature, except PCOM [2], address the first selfish behavior. Also, the second selfish behavior can be easily done by layman users without any protocol level changes. Secondly, with our simulation study we find that in dense mobile ad hoc networks where route breakages are frequent, routing control packets consume significant fraction of node energy and selfish behavior by certain number of nodes reduce the overall routing overhead in network which in turn result in energy saving for both, well behaving nodes and selfish nodes.

A Passive Solution to the CPU Resource Discovery Problem in Cluster Grid Networks

We present the details of a novel method for passive resource discovery in cluster grid environments, where resources constantly utilize internode communication. Our method offers the ability to nonintrusively identify resources that have available CPU cycles; this is critical for lowering queue wait times in large cluster grid networks. The benefits include: 1) low message complexity, which facilitates low latency in distributed networks, 2) scalability, which provides support for very large networks, and 3) low maintainability, since no additional software is needed on compute resources. Using a 50-node (multicore) test bed (DETERlab), we demonstrate the feasibility of our method with experiments utilizing TCP, UDP, and ICMP network traffic. We use a simple but powerful technique that monitors the frequency of network packets emitted from the Network Interface Card (NIC) of local resources. We observed the correlation between CPU load and the timely response of network traffic. A highly utilized CPU will have numerous, active processes which require context switching. The latency associated with numerous context switches manifests as a delay signature within the packet transmission process. Our method detects that delay signature to determine the utilization of network resources. Results show that our method can consistently and accurately identify nodes with available CPU cycles (<;70 percent CPU utilization) through analysis of existing network traffic, including network traffic that has passed through a switch (noncongested). Also, in situations where there is no existing network traffic for nodes, ICMP ping replies can be used to ascertain this resource information.

Analysis of WLAN’s received signal strength indication for indoor location fingerprinting

An indoor positioning system that uses a location fingerprinting technique based on the received signal strength of a wireless local area network is an enabler for indoor location-aware computing. Data analysis of the received signal strength indication is very essential for understanding the underlying location-dependent features and patterns of location fingerprints. This knowledge can assist a system designer in accurately modeling a positioning system, improving positioning performance, and efficiently designing such a system. This study investigates extensively through measurements, the features of the received signal strength indication reported by IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network interface cards. The results of the statistical data analysis help in identifying a number of phenomena that affect the precision and accuracy of indoor positioning systems.

Reducing Power Consumption for Mobile Platforms via Adaptive Traffic Coalescing

Battery life remains to be a critical competitive metric for today's mobile platforms that offer ubiquitous connectivity through their wireless communication interfaces. With most usage models being driven by always-on communication activities, e.g, Internet video streaming, web browsing, etc., it is imperative to understand the impact of network activities on the overall platform power, and optimize power consumption for such activities. As shown by our investigation, various real-world network-driven workloads exhibit bursty and random behavior, which motivates our work on regulating and coalescing incoming packets to reduce platform wake events. To understand the performance impact of packet coalescing, we conduct an extensive investigation to study how coalescing may affect the throughput and user experience. Armed with the deep understandings, we propose, implement and evaluate an Adaptive Traffic Coalescing (ATC) scheme that monitors the incoming traffic at the Network Interface Card (NIC), and adaptively coalesces the packets for a limited duration in the NIC buffer, thus requiring no network or eco-system support. The proposed ATC scheme effectively reduces platform wake events, and enables the platform to enter and stay in the low-power state longer for energy efficiency. We have implemented the scheme in commercial wireless NICs. Using various mobile platforms, we evaluate the power savings and performance impact of the proposed ATC scheme. Experiments show that ATC achieves significant power saving for major platform components, around 20% for real-world Internet workloads, without impacting performance and user experience.

Throughput and PER estimates harnessing link-layer measurements for indoor 802.11n WLAN

The research work reported in this paper investigates if a Markov chain can model the throughput and packet error rate (PER) performance of off-the-shelf IEEE 802.11n wireless LAN network interface cards (NICs). We draw together uplink -downlink information from the NIC with a Markov chain to examine the performance of 802.11n within an indoor environment. Site measurements and point-estimates are taken and compared with the model predictions. Errors of less than 4% were recorded for the Markov model estimates while point-estimates recorded average errors of 9% both compared to site-measured throughput.

The “Always Best Packet Switching” architecture for SIP-based mobile multimedia services

This paper presents a distributed architecture for the provision of seamless and responsive mobile multimedia services. This architecture allows its user applications to use concurrently all the wireless network interface cards (NICs) a mobile terminal is equipped with. In particular, as mobile multimedia services are usually implemented using the UDP protocol, our architecture enables the transmission of each UDP datagram through the “most suitable” (e.g. most responsive, least loaded) NIC among those available at the time a datagram is transmitted. We term this operating mode of our architecture Always Best Packet Switching (ABPS). ABPS enables the use of policies for load balancing and recovery purposes. In essence, the architecture we propose consists of the following two principal components: (i) a fixed proxy server, which acts as a relay for the mobile node and enables communications from/to this node regardless of possible firewalls and NAT systems, and (ii) a proxy client running in the mobile node responsible for maintaining a multi-path tunnel, constructed out of all the node's NICs, with the above mentioned fixed proxy server. We show how the architecture supports multimedia applications based on the SIP and RTP/RTCP protocols, and avoids the typical delays introduced by the two way message/response handshake of the SIP signaling protocol. Experimental results originated from the implementation of a VoIP application on top of the architecture we propose show the effectiveness of our approach.

An Initial Evaluation of Energy Efficient Ethernet

In September 2010, the Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az) standard was officially approved. This new standard introduces a low power mode for the most common Ethernet physical layer standards and is expected to provide large energy savings. In this letter, for the first time, Network Interface Cards (NICs) that implement Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) are used to measure energy savings with real traffic. The data presented will be useful to better estimate the energy savings that can be achieved when EEE is deployed. Existing analysis of EEE based on simulations predict a large overhead due to mode transitions between active and low power modes. The experimental results confirm that transition overheads can be significant, leading to almost full energy consumption even at low utilization levels. Therefore traffic patterns will play a key role in the energy savings achieved by EEE as it becomes deployed in the field.

Improved parallelism and scheduling in multi-core software routers

Recent technological advances in commodity server architectures, with multiple multi-core CPUs, integrated memory controllers, high-speed interconnects, and enhanced network interface cards, provide substantial computational capacity, and thus an attractive platform for packet forwarding. However, to exploit this available capacity, we need a suitable software platform that allows effective parallel packet processing and resource management. In this paper, we at first introduce an improved forwarding architecture for software routers that enhances parallelism by exploiting hardware classification and multi-queue support, already available in recent commodity network interface cards. After evaluating the original scheduling algorithm of the widely-used Click modular router, we propose solutions for extending this scheduler for improved fairness, throughput, and more precise resource management. To illustrate the potential benefits of our proposal, we implement and evaluate a few key elements of our overall design. Finally, we discuss how our improved forwarding architecture and resource management might be applied in virtualized software routers.

Ultrahigh-Definition Video Transmission and Extremely Green Optical Networks for Future

The Internet traffic is essentially increasing because the contents are more associated with video, a higher definition video, rather than just text or picture. In fact, next-generation television (TV) standards are being explored toward the so-called 8-k definition, or ultrahigh-definition TV (UHDTV) that requires a bandwidth more than 70 Gb/s for real-time transmission. In the long run, chunks of such video data will eventually prevail over the network, and this trend would ensure a persistent traffic growth for the next decades to come. However, we will point out that the present IP-based technology cannot scale to the increasing traffic for the future mostly due to energy-consumption limits and will become a grave bottleneck for the sustainable growth of the traffic. We will then argue that the only promising solution for this would be the utilization of optical circuit switching, potentially having a few digits better energy efficiency than the present IP-router-based network. As specific implications, we are proposing the concept of the dynamic optical-path network (DOPN). We discuss how to scale the DOPN to the WAN, and show that an extremely green optical network for video-related services is possible at a clean-slate level. Then, we argue that DOPN will be first applied to LANs for broadcasting stations where a technology for scalable network interface cards are essential to accommodate the real-time UHDTV transmissions. Finally, we will briefly introduce our recent demonstration of UHDTV video transmissions using the optical time-division multiplexing based on integratable ultrafast optical devices only.

Improving IPS by network processors

Many present applications usually require high communication throughputs. Multiprocessor nodes and multicore architectures, as well as programmable NICs (Network Interface Cards) provide new opportunities to take advantage of the available multigigabits per second link bandwidths. Nevertheless, to achieve adequate communication performance levels efficient parallel processing of network tasks and interfaces should be considered. In this paper, we leverage network processors as heterogeneous microarchitectures with several cores that implement multithreading and are suited for packet processing, to investigate on the use of parallel processing to accelerate the network interface, and thus the network applications developed above it. More specifically, we have implemented an intrusion prevention system (IPS) with such a network processor. We describe the IPS we have developed that after its offloaded implementation allows faster packet processing of both normal and corrupted traffic. The benefits from placing the IPS close to the network, by using specialized network processors, give many times lower latency and higher bandwidth available to the legitimate traffic.

Why Can Some Advanced Ethernet NICs Cause Packet Reordering?

Intel Ethernet Flow Director is an advanced network interface card (NIC) technology. It provides the benefits of parallel receive processing in multiprocessing environments and can automatically steer incoming network data to the same core on which its application process resides. However, our analysis and experiments show that Flow Director cannot guarantee in-order packet delivery in multiprocessing environments. Packet reordering causes various negative impacts. E.g., TCP performs poorly with severe packet reordering. In this paper, we use a simplified model to analyze why Flow Director can cause packet reordering. Our experiments verify our analysis.

Distributed Multi-Interface Multichannel Random Access Using Convex Optimization

The aggregate capacity of wireless ad hoc networks can be increased substantially if each node is equipped with multiple network interface cards (NICs) and each NIC operates on a distinct frequency channel. Most of the recently proposed channel assignment algorithms are based on combinatorial techniques. Combinatorial channel assignment schemes may sometimes result in computationally complicated algorithms as well as inefficient utilization of the available frequency spectrum. In this paper, we analytically model channel and interface assignment problems as tractable continuous optimization problems within the framework of network utility maximization (NUM). In particular, the link data rate models for both single-channel reception and multichannel reception scenarios are derived. The assignment of both nonoverlapped and partially overlapped channels is also considered. We then propose two distributed multi-interface multichannel random access (DMMRA) algorithms for single-channel reception and multichannel reception scenarios. The DMMRA algorithms are fast, distributed, and easy to implement. Each algorithm solves the formulated NUM problem for each scenario. DMMRA requires each node to only iteratively solve a local, myopic, and convex optimization problem. Convergence and optimality properties of our algorithms are studied analytically. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithms significantly outperform utility-optimal combinatorial channel assignment algorithms in terms of both achieved network utility and throughput.

Dynamic Scheduling of Skippable Periodic Tasks With Energy Efficiency In Weakly Hard Real-Time System

Energy consumption is a critical design issue in real-time systems, especially in battery- operated systems. Maintaining high performance, while extending the battery life between charges is an interesting challenge for system designers. Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) allows a processor to dynamically change speed and voltage at run time, thereby saving energy by spreading run cycles into idle time. Knowing when to use full power and when not, requires the cooperation of the operating system scheduler. Usually, higher processor voltage and frequency leads to higher system throughput while energy reduction can be obtained using lower voltage and frequency. Instead of lowering processor voltage and frequency as much as possible, energy efficient real-time scheduling adjusts voltage and frequency according to some optimization criteria, such as low energy consumption or high throughput, while it meets the timing constraints of the real-time tasks. As the quantity and functional complexity of battery powered portable devices continues to raise, energy efficient design of such devices has become increasingly important. Many real-time scheduling algorithms have been developed recently to reduce energy consumption in the portable devices that use DVS capable processors. Extensive power aware scheduling techniques have been published for energy reduction, but most of them have been focused solely on reducing the processor energy consumption. While the processor is one of the major power hungry units in the system, other peripherals such as network interface card, memory banks, disks also consume significant amount of power. Dynamic Power Down (DPD) technique is used to reduce energy consumption by shutting down the processing unit and peripheral devices, when the system is idle. Three algorithms namely Red Tasks Only (RTO), Blue When Possible (BWP) and Red as Late as Possible (RLP) are proposed in the literature to schedule the real-time tasks in Weakly-hard real-time systems. This paper proposes optimal slack management algorithms to make the above existing weakly hard real-time scheduling algorithms energy efficient using DVS and DPD techniques.

Terabit Ethernet: Access and Core Switching Using Time-Space Carrier Sensing

We propose an Ethernet architecture for local access and switching of Internet traffic. To achieve Terabit or Petabit switching, both time (high transmission speed) and space (multistage interconnection network) technologies are required. The Ethernet is both time and space carrier sensed, extending CSMA/CD to a time-space protocol called CSMA/TS. We call the space-time transmission medium Terabit Ethernet (TbE). We focus on the 3-stage Clos network, treating the first stage as an access switch and the second stage as the core switch. Space time carrier sensing allows routing in the TbE by the Network Interface Card (NIC). The advantages are scalability, lower cost, and most importantly, reduced delay end-to-end. Simple analysis is given for evaluating throughput for the access switch, as well as for 2-stage and 3-stage TbE networks.

Cross-Layer Optimization of Radio Sleep Intervals to Increase Thin Client Energy Efficiency

Thin client computing trades local processing for network bandwidth consumption by offloading application logic to remote servers. User input and display updates are exchanged between client and server through a thin client protocol. This thin client protocol traffic can lead to a significantly higher power consumption of the radio interface of the wireless device. In this contribution, we present a cross-layer algorithm that exploits thin client protocol layer information to determine intervals where no traffic from the server is expected. During these intervals, the wireless network interface card (WNIC) is instructed to enter the energy conserving sleep mode. Using this algorithm for a remote text editor, WNIC energy consumption reductions of 21-52% can be achieved.

Upstream bandwidth optimization of thin client protocols through latency‐aware adaptive user event buffering

AbstractThin client computing trades local processing for network bandwidth by off‐loading application logic to remote servers. User input and display updates are exchanged between client and server through a thin client protocol. In a wireless device context, it is important to achieve bandwidth efficient thin client protocols because bandwidth availability is limited and the power consumption of the wireless network interface card is directly related to the amount of data that is sent and received. This paper presents and evaluates a novel client‐based mechanism which is transparent to the server to reduce upstream bandwidth consumption. Typically, thin client protocols encode user input as a series of small packets, resulting in a major packetization overhead. By buffering user events at the thin client protocol layer, this overhead can be reduced. However, buffering strategies might result in increased response delays for the user. Therefore, models of the upstream bandwidth and the user perceived responsiveness of pull thin client protocols are presented and validated. These models are used in an adaptive framework, which determines the appropriate buffering time to minimize the bandwidth as much as possible without degrading the responsiveness. For lower network roundtrip times and users actively generating input, it is shown how bandwidth savings up to 78% can be achieved while keeping the average user perceived responsiveness below 150 ms. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.