Network Simulation Environment Research Articles

An Efficient and Secure Data Forwarding Mechanism for Opportunistic IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) is a heterogeneous network of interconnected things where users, smart devices and wireless technologies, collude for providing services. It is expected that a great deal of devices will get connected to the Internet in the near future. Opportunistic networks(OppNet) are a class of disruption tolerant networks characterized by uncertain topology and intermittent connectivity between the nodes. Opportunistic Internet of Things(OppIoT) is an amalgamation of the OppNet and IoT exploiting the communication between the IoT devices and the communities formed by humans. The data is exposed to a wide unfamiliar audience and the message delivery is dependent on the residual battery of the node, as most of the energy is spent on node discovery and message transmission. In such a scenario where a huge number of devices are accommodated, a scalable, adaptable, inter-operable, energy-efficient and secure network architecture is required. This paper proposes a novel defense mechanism against black hole and packet fabrication attacks for OppIoT, GFRSA, A Green Forwarding ratio and RSA (Rivest, Shamir and Adleman) based secure routing protocol. The selection of the next hop is based on node’s forwarding behavior, current energy level and its predicted message delivery probability. For further enhancing the security provided by the protocol, the messages are encrypted using asymmetric cryptography before transmission. Simulations performed using opportunistic network environment (ONE) simulator convey that GFRSA provides message security, saves energy and outperforms the existing protocols, LPRF-MC (Location Prediction-based Forwarding for Routing using Markov Chain) and RSASec (Asymmetric RSA-based security approach) in terms of correct packet delivery by 27.37%, message delivery probability is higher by 34.51%, number of messages dropped are reduced by 15.17% and the residual node energy is higher by 14.08%.

SACT: A New Model of Covert Communication Based on SDN.

Anonymous tracking technology of network watermarking is limited by the deployment of tracking devices in traditional network structure, resulting in poor scalability and reusability. Software Defined Network (SDN) boasts more freedom thanks to its separation of the control plane from the data plane. In this paper, a new anonymous communication tracking model SDN-based Anonymous Communication Tracking (SACT) is proposed, which introduces network watermarking into SDN and combines IP time hidden channel and symbol expansion technology. In addition, we introduce a hopping protection mechanism to improve the anti detection ability of the watermark as well. The experimental results show that in a variety of simulated network environments, SACT achieves excellent detection rate and bit error rate, thus it is sufficient to determine the communication relationship between the two parties. Meanwhile, SACT solves the deployment problem of anonymous tracking and improves the availability and scalability of covert communication.

Energy- and performance-aware load-balancing in vehicular fog computing

An IoT-enabled cluster of automobiles provides a rich source of computational resources, in addition to facilitating efficient collaboration with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. This is enabled by vehicular fog computing where vehicles are used as fog nodes and provide cloud-like services to the Internet of things (IoT) and are further integrated with the traditional cloud to collaboratively complete the tasks. However, efficient load management in vehicular fog computing is a challenging task due to the dynamic nature of the vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET). In this context, we propose a cluster-enabled capacity-based load-balancing approach to perform energy- and performance-aware vehicular fog distributed computing for efficiently processing the IoT jobs. The paper proposes a dynamic clustering approach that takes into account the position, speed, and direction of vehicles to form their clusters that act as the pool of computing resources. The paper also proposes a mechanism for identifying a vehicle's departure time from the cluster, which allows predicting the future position of the vehicle within the dynamic network. Furthermore, the paper provides a capacity-based load-distribution mechanism for performing load-balancing at the intra- as well as the inter-cluster level of the vehicular fog network. The simulation results are obtained using the state-of-the-art NS2 network simulation environment. The results show that the proposed scheme achieves balanced network energy consumption, reduced network delay, and improved network utilization.

BOLA: Near-Optimal Bitrate Adaptation for Online Videos

Modern video players employ complex algorithms to adapt the bitrate of the video that is shown to the user. Bitrate adaptation requires a tradeoff between reducing the probability that the video freezes (rebuffers) and enhancing the quality of the video. A bitrate that is too high leads to frequent rebuffering, while a bitrate that is too low leads to poor video quality. Video providers segment videos into short segments and encode each segment at multiple bitrates. The video player adaptively chooses the bitrate of each segment to download, possibly choosing different bitrates for successive segments. We formulate bitrate adaptation as a utility-maximization problem and devise an online control algorithm called BOLA that uses Lyapunov optimization to minimize rebuffering and maximize video quality. We prove that BOLA achieves a time-average utility that is within an additive term O(1/V) of the optimal value, for a control parameter V related to the video buffer size. Further, unlike prior work, BOLA does not require prediction of available network bandwidth. We empirically validate BOLA in a simulated network environment using a collection of network traces. We show that BOLA achieves near-optimal utility and in many cases significantly higher utility than current state-of-the-art algorithms. Our work has immediate impact on real-world video players and for the evolving DASH standard for video transmission. We also implemented an updated version of BOLA that is now part of the standard reference player dash.js and is used in production by several video providers such as Akamai, BBC, CBS, and Orange.

Uma Abordagem para Mitigar Ataque Blackhole em Redes Tolerantes a Atrasos e Desconexões utilizando Múltiplos Caminhos

As redes tolerantes a atrasos e desconexões (Delay Tolerant Networks – DTNs) são redes que não precisam de infraestrutura e utilizam da locomoção dos seus nós para se comunicar. Todavia, ataques do tipo Buracos Negros (do inglês, Blackhole) consistem em uma ameaça para o funcionamento destas redes ao descartar pacotes de usuários legítimos. Na literatura há esforços para solucionar o ataque blackhole em DTNs. No entanto, as formas implementadas consomem uma grande quantidade de recursos da rede, pois funcionam por meio da geração de cópias da mensagem. Neste contexto, este trabalho apresenta uma abordagem de mitigação que se utiliza da Mojette e múltiplos caminhos para fragmentar, enviar e recuperar o dado e sem o alto desgaste da rede. A abordagem foi desenvolvida utilizando a IDE (Integrated Development Environment) Eclipse em conjunto com o simulador de ambiente de rede oportunista The ONE (The Opportunistic Network Environment Simulator). Nesse ambiente foram desenvolvidos dois cenários com diferentes situações, a fim de realizar três simulações, visando a avaliar a abordagem que tem como objetivos transmitir e recuperar o pacote ainda que existam descartes. Os resultados obtidos por meio das simulações revelam que a abordagem apresenta uma taxa de remontagem de no mínimo 75%, ainda que a taxa de pacotes perdidos seja de 62,50%.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Efficient data sensing with group key management for intelligent automation system by one-way key derivation in wireless networks

Over the last century, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has given major advances in several distinguishable fields. In addition, it has also evolved many features such as high device heterogeneity, high scale and supporting multiple applications. In WSN, Key management is employed (involves) as a significant component of network security, especially in multi-cast based applications and services. Group key management has a vital role in multi-cast secure communication with huge number of group members. Group key must always be updated dynamically to all groups in the network and keys to be redistributed currently to active members only. Consequently, a secret key called session key for a group of members is stored in key trees that are shared efficiently between them, in order to achieve secure group communication. The key trees are used to encrypt with other keys and data are transmitted to ensure security. Logical key hierarchy (LKH) is a hierarchical structure of multiple keys to provide a scalable and secrecy for group communication. This research work proposes a new hierarchical group key management (HGKM) using multiple logical key trees for dynamic groups in order to enhance the Quality of Service of the network. Among the multiple logical trees, primary tree can be selected by tree selection algorithm. In WSN, there are high numbers of members joining or leaving the group at any time, resulting with rekeying process becoming too large. This leads to degraded efficiency of tree-based key management system. Further, communication overhead of rekeying process can be mitigated by one-way key derivation method which integrates with multiple logical key trees. In this method, tree server does not need to be encrypted. Rather, it involves in sending a new key to members who are capable of derive their own keys in same way the server does. This results with a need for less number of encrypted keys for each rekeying process within the group tree. The fixed interval time is called batch time, which is applied in each rekeying process after nodes join or leave the group. The proposed approach can improve the bandwidth utilization effectively. The proposed HGKM method is implemented in Network Simulator (NS-2) environment and obtained results are compared with existing two methods such as LKH and multiple logical tree key management (MLT-KM). QOS of proposed approach is evaluated in terms of Bandwidth Efficiency.

Adaptive Group-based QoS Aware Link State Proactive Multipath Routing for Large-Scale MANETs (GMP-OLSR)

Objectives: To propose a group-based QoS aware proactive multipath routing based on OLSR protocol. Methodology: This work proposes a group-based proactive multipath routing based on the OLSR protocol, which is designed to be adaptive for a big crowded Mobile Ad-hoc Network to satisfy the desire for real-time multimedia applications. This approach will restrict mobile nodes to be participated in the cluster head selection process based on the mobility and energy of a node. It uses a grouping strategy to manage the network topology and performing route maintenance, and preserve multiple prioritized routes with the support of Quality of Service (QoS) aware computation. Findings: The study evaluated the performance of the proposed group-based QoS aware multipath Optimal Link State Routing (GMP-OLSR) routing through the OMNET++ network simulation environment. Within different network density, the proposed approach offered a significant reduction in end to end delay, overhead and an increment in data packet delivery ratio Applications: Using an appropriate groupbased QoS aware multipath routing strategy for mobile ad hoc networks provides better performance and improves the services of mobile applications. Keywords: MANET, GMP-OLSR, Clustering, Multipath Routing, QoS Aware Routing.

Multiattribute‐based routing for lifetime maximization in opportunistic mobile social networks

SummaryWith the advancement in wireless technology and portable devices, smart phones have become one of the belongings of human being. People share their data online, but it has limitations due to transmission range and mobility. Yet opportunistic mobile social network enables users to share data online even if there is no connected path between source and destination. The widespread use of mobile phones equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth, and several other components and contact opportunities among humans bridge the gap between internet available and nonavailable area. In this paper, we have proposed a new routing approach which utilizes both spatial and temporal attributes of user such as probability to meet a particular location and remaining intercontact time between two nodes to select better relay nodes. Generally, users visit different locations such as sports stadium and mall, with varying probability. Users with similar interest form group, and each user has different intercontact time with other users according to their point of interest and visiting pattern. By utilizing multiattributes, different forwarding strategies have been devised for both inter and intragroup routing. The proposed work “point of interest (PoI)‐based routing” is implemented in Opportunistic Network Environment simulator, and the performance is analysed in terms of delivery rate, latency, overhead, goodput, and energy consumed. The simulation results show that PoI diminishes 23% of overhead and yields 24% improvement in goodput over the state‐of‐the‐art protocol. Thus, the simulation results reveal that our proposed work provides the balance between routing performance and resource consumption.

An effective performance of dynamic and ad-hoc on-demand routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks under NS environment

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a popular emerging wireless network and plays vital role to maintain the routing demands in wireless network. AODV and DYMO are on-demand routing protocols that was designed to meet various needs of MANET such as security, mobility, flexibility etc. IETF listed on-demand routing protocols in a varying speed of nodes, mobility, and performance metrics. In this paper, we discussed behaviour of the two main on-demand routing protocols in network simulation environment, while sending packets from source to destination under free space and two ray propagation models by varying packet rate. We analysed the performance metrics of MANET in the following heading; average jitter, average end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, and throughput are compared with percentage of nodes packet drops.

An effective performance of dynamic and ad-hoc on-demand routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks under NS environment

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a popular emerging wireless network and plays vital role to maintain the routing demands in wireless network. AODV and DYMO are on-demand routing protocols that was designed to meet various needs of MANET such as security, mobility, flexibility etc. IETF listed on-demand routing protocols in a varying speed of nodes, mobility, and performance metrics. In this paper, we discussed behaviour of the two main on-demand routing protocols in network simulation environment, while sending packets from source to destination under free space and two ray propagation models by varying packet rate. We analysed the performance metrics of MANET in the following heading; average jitter, average end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, and throughput are compared with percentage of nodes packet drops.

Performance Evaluation of Social Routing Protocols Based on the Effect of Delivery Ratio and Average Hop Count in Delay-tolerant Networks (DTN)

Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are part of Opportunistic networks. In the case of opportunistic networks, the joined node of a network can have zero or partial knowledge about other nodes in a network. For this reason, the evident information towards the nodes in the existing network is most difficult to collect for forwarding the message. The application of Opportunistic networks is where have a high tolerance for long delays, high error rate, etc. DTNs are also sparse dynamic Ad-hoc networks were source to destination path does not present all-time for successfully message transmission. As DTN has no end-to-end path for message transmission source to destination node so, the routing design is so sophisticated. The social-based routing protocol is developed to improve the routing mechanism by focusing on social behavior and the interaction with the nodes of a network. Consequently, the performance analysis of existing several DTN routing protocols represents a significant role in designing or developing a new routing protocol for a specific scenario. This article investigates the execution of ordinary routing protocols of DTNs such as Epidemic, Binary Spray and Wait (BSNW), including two social-based routing protocols such as Scorp and dLife using Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) simulator. The performance of these routing protocols is measured based on delivery ratio and average hop count with inevitable simulation settings. From the simulation result, it is condensed that for higher delivery ratio, BSNW is best, and for average hop count, dLife is the best routing protocol.

Performance Evaluation of Social Routing Protocols Based on the Effect of Delivery Ratio and Average Hop Count in Delay-tolerant Networks (DTN)

Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are part of Opportunistic networks. In the case of opportunistic networks, the joined node of a network can have zero or partial knowledge about other nodes in a network. For this reason, the evident information towards the nodes in the existing network is most difficult to collect for forwarding the message. The application of Opportunistic networks is where have a high tolerance for long delays, high error rate, etc. DTNs are also sparse dynamic Ad-hoc networks were source to destination path does not present all-time for successfully message transmission. As DTN has no end-to-end path for message transmission source to destination node so, the routing design is so sophisticated. The social-based routing protocol is developed to improve the routing mechanism by focusing on social behavior and the interaction with the nodes of a network. Consequently, the performance analysis of existing several DTN routing protocols represents a significant role in designing or developing a new routing protocol for a specific scenario. This article investigates the execution of ordinary routing protocols of DTNs such as Epidemic, Binary Spray and Wait (BSNW), including two social-based routing protocols such as Scorp and dLife using Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) simulator. The performance of these routing protocols is measured based on delivery ratio and average hop count with inevitable simulation settings. From the simulation result, it is condensed that for higher delivery ratio, BSNW is best, and for average hop count, dLife is the best routing protocol.

T_CAFE: A Trust based Security approach for Opportunistic IoT

Internet of things (IoT) is a revolution of the internet where a group of computing devices, sensors, machines or people, having unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over the network without human intervention, are interconnected. Opportunistic networks (OppNets) are a type of disruption-tolerant networks, where network topology is not fixed and the devices are connected intermittently. Opportunistic IOT (OppIoT) is a blend of OppNets and IoT networks, where the data are shared among IoT devices and human communities exploiting the opportunistic contact nature of humans. The data is usually transmitted in a broadcast manner, exposing it to all the members of the network. Thus, securing the data transmitted is of utmost importance in OppIoT. This article proposes a trust-based schemE (called T_CAFE ) for securing the network against several attacks like sybil, bad mouthing, good mouthing, black hole and packet fabrication attacks. Using the opportunistic network environment simulator for performing simulations, it is found that the proposed T_CAFE protocol enhances the network security and outperforms routing protocols such as SHBPR, RSASec and ATDTN in terms of legitimate packet delivery, higher probability of message delivery, lower count of dropped messages and lower value of latency in packet delivery.

Routing Protocols for the Aircraft AD HOC Networks

The communication between the aircraft-to-aircraft and aircraft-to-ground can be established with the support of Aircraft Ad hoc Networks (AANET). Routing in the aircraft ad hoc networks is a challenging task due to its unique attributes such as very high mobility of the aircraft nodes and dynamic topology. Few research works had developed routing environment and protocols for the dynamic topology based AANET. This paper analyses the developments of the routing protocols for the aircraft ad hoc networks. This paper extensively discusses the routing protocols and comparative analyses of the performance metrics namely throughput, packet delivery ratio, end to end delay, routing overhead, and number of handoffs. Further, this work deliberates the aircraft ad hoc networks simulation environment, aircraft’s velocity, different radio propagation models of aircraft simulation model. Various challenges and issues of routing protocols are extensively analyzed and compared with existing methodologies in this paper.

Enhancing challenge-based collaborative intrusion detection networks against insider attacks using blockchain

Due to the rapid growth of computer networks, intrusions have become more complicated and devastating. As an important solution, collaborative intrusion detection networks or systems (CIDNs or CIDSs) are considered and adopted by many organizations to identify cyberattacks. Insider attack is one major threat to such defensive mechanisms. In the literature, challenge-based trust management scheme can help safeguard CIDNs against insider attacks. However, previous studies identified that challenge-based CIDNs may still suffer from advanced insider attacks, like passive message fingerprint attack (PMFA). Motivated by the recent blockchain research, in this work, we propose a blockchain-based approach to help enhance the robustness of challenge-based CIDNs against advanced insider attacks like PMFA, through integrating a type of blockchain-based trust. In the evaluation, we examine our approach in both simulated and real network environments. The results demonstrate that our approach is effective in defeating advanced insider attacks like PMFA and enhancing the robustness of challenge-based CIDNs, as compared with the original scheme.

Modeling and topology design for free-space optical networks

To date, free-space optical (FSO) networks play an important role in current network construction to support large-capacity transmission, where randomly distributed FSO terminals desire to exchange a tremendous amount of information over atmospheric turbulence channels. However, in the presence of atmospheric turbulence and misalignment fading channels, FSO network topology can be dynamic and disconnected. To mitigate the impact of dynamic network environments, appropriate higher-layer protocols should be designed. We explore a practical terrestrial mobile ad-hoc FSO network based on the bundle protocol of disruption-tolerant network, and the theoretical cross-layer system model between physical layer and network layer is derived. To design the topology, at the bundle layer, the distributed routing scheme centrality and probability (CAP) is proposed, where contact probability, sociocentric measure, and message replication strategy are considered simultaneously, and the joint forwarding decision rule is given. Simulation results on the opportunistic networking environment simulator are presented, which show that CAP can be better compared with the conventional end-to-end protocol-based routing scheme.

Scalable and Secure Internet of Things Connectivity

The Internet of things (IoT) technology, which is currently considered the new growth engine of the fourth industrial revolution, affects our daily life and has been applied to various industrial fields. Studies on overcoming the limitations of scalability and stability in a centralized IoT operating environment by employing distributed blockchain technology have been actively conducted. However, the nature of IoT that ensures connectivity with multiple objects at any time and any place increases security threats. Further, it extends the influence of the cyber world into the physical domain, resulting in serious damage to human life and property. Therefore, we aim to study a method to increase the security of IoT devices and effectively extend them simultaneously. To this end, we analyze the authentication methods and limitations of traditional IoT devices and examine cases for improving IoT environments by using blockchain technology. Accordingly, we propose a framework that allows IoT devices to be securely connected and extended to other devices by automatically evaluating security using blockchain technology and the whitelist. The method proposed in this paper restricts the extension of devices vulnerable to security risks by imposing penalties and allows only devices with high security to be securely and quickly authenticated and extended without user intervention. In this study, we applied the proposed method to IoT network simulation environments and observed that the number of devices vulnerable to security was reduced by 48.5% compared with traditional IoT environments.

Scalability and Performance of the AMWA IS-04 and IS-05 NMOS Specifications for Networked Media

The use of IP networks for professional AV media is becoming prevalent within the broadcast industry with standards such as SMPTE ST 2110 now available for streaming uncompressed video, audio, and ancillary data. To allow full interoperability between different manufacturers’ equipment, common methods for discovery, registration, and connection management of media devices are essential. The Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) has been developing the Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS) for this purpose, leading to the publication of interface specifications, including IS-04 for discovery/registration of NMOS Nodes and IS-05 for management of connections between Nodes. These use RESTful application programming interfaces (APIs) to communicate between applications and devices and are gaining widespread adoption. A key requirement within the industry is that these APIs scale successfully in the very large installations typical of real-world deployments. To help address this, Sony has been leading an AMWA NMOS Scalability study to test these protocols for installations comprising thousands of media devices. This paper describes our test methodology using a simulated network environment, provides several experimental results, discusses their implications, identifies best practices for deployment, and suggests whether further API enhancements may be beneficial.

Analysis of Delay-Tolerant Routing Protocols using the Impact of Mobility Models

Intermittently connected mobile networks are sparsely connected wireless ad-hoc networks where there is no end-to-end path from a source device to a destination. Generally, these paths do not exist. Hence, these devices use intermittent path using the concept of the store-and-forward mechanism to successfully do the communication. These networks are featured by long delay, dissimilar data rates, and larger error rates. Hence, we see the analysis of several delay-tolerant routing protocols, e.g., epidemic, spray-and-wait, prophet, maxprop, rapid, and spray-and-focus using opportunistic network environment simulator. At first, the investigations of the above considered routing protocols are done across three mobility models namely random direction, random walk, and shortest path map based movement mobility model for node impact only. Then, we evaluate these routing protocols against the impact of message copy, buffer, and time-to-live using shortest path map considering the result of node impact. We use three metrics and the result shows that spray-and-focus deserves good performance for showing higher delivery, lower latency, and lower overhead among all routing techniques while epidemic the poor.

An Optimized Probabilistic Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) Routing Protocol Based on Scheduling Mechanism for Internet of Things (IoT).

Many applications of Internet of Things (IoT) have been implemented based on unreliable wireless or mobile networks like the delay tolerant network (DTN). Therefore, it is an important issue for IoT applications to achieve efficient data transmission in DTN. In order to improve delivery rate and optimize delivery delay with low overhead in DTN for IoT applications, we propose a new routing protocol, called Scheduling-Probabilistic Routing Protocol using History of Encounters and Transitivity (PROPHET). In this protocol, we calculate the delivery predictability according to the encountering frequency among nodes. Two scheduling mechanisms are proposed to extend the traditional PROPHET protocol and improve performance in both storage and transmission in DTN. In order to evaluate the proposed routing protocol, we perform simulations and compare it with other routing protocols in an Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) simulator. The results demonstrate that the proposed Scheduling-PROPHET can achieve better performances in several key aspects compared with the existing protocols.