Overlay Network Research Articles

BDS+: An Inter-Datacenter Data Replication System With Dynamic Bandwidth Separation

Many important cloud services require replicating massive data from one datacenter (DC) to multiple DCs. While the performance of pair-wise inter-DC data transfers has been much improved, prior solutions are insufficient to optimize bulk-data multicast, as they fail to explore the rich inter-DC overlay paths that exist in geo-distributed DCs, as well as the remaining bandwidth reserved for online traffic under fixed bandwidth separation scheme. To take advantage of these opportunities, we present BDS+, a near-optimal network system for large-scale inter-DC data replication. BDS+ is an application-level multicast overlay network with a fully centralized architecture, allowing a central controller to maintain an up-to-date global view of data delivery status of intermediate servers, in order to fully utilize the available overlay paths. Furthermore, in each overlay path, it leverages dynamic bandwidth separation to make use of the remaining available bandwidth reserved for online traffic. By constantly estimating online traffic demand and rescheduling bulk-data transfers accordingly, BDS+ can further speed up the massive data multicast. Through a pilot deployment in one of the largest online service providers and large-scale real-trace simulations, we show that BDS+ can achieve 3- 5× speedup over the provider's existing system and several well-known overlay routing baselines of static bandwidth separation. Moreover, dynamic bandwidth separation can further reduce the completion time of bulk data transfers by 1.2 to 1.3 times.

A Conceptual Architecture in Decentralizing Computing, Storage, and Networking Aspect of IoT Infrastructure

Since the inception of the Internet of Things (IoT), we have adopted centralized architecture for decades. With the vastly growing number of IoT devices and gateways, this architecture struggles to cope with the high demands of state-of-the-art IoT services, which require scalable and responsive infrastructure. In response, decentralization becomes a considerable interest among IoT adopters. Following a similar trajectory, this paper introduces an IoT architecture re-work that enables three spheres of IoT workflows (i.e., computing, storage, and networking) to be run in a distributed manner. In particular, we employ the blockchain and smart contract to provide a secure computing platform. The distributed storage network maintains the saving of IoT raw data and application data. The software-defined networking (SDN) controllers and SDN switches exist in the architecture to provide connectivity across multiple IoT domains. We envision all of those services in the form of separate yet integrated peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay networks, which IoT actors such as IoT domain owners, IoT users, Internet Service Provider (ISP), and government can cultivate. We also present several IoT workflow examples showing how IoT developers can adapt to this new proposed architecture. Based on the presented workflows, the IoT computing can be performed in a trusted and privacy-preserving manner, the IoT storage can be made robust and verifiable, and finally, we can react to the network events automatically and quickly. Our discussions in this paper can be beneficial for many people ranging from academia, industries, and investors that are interested in the future of IoT in general.

Two-Layer Network Caching for Different Service Requirements

Network caching is a technique used to speed-up user access to frequently requested contents in complex data networks. This paper presents a two-layer overlay network caching system for content distribution. It is used to define some caching scenarios with increasing complexity, which refers to real situations, including mobile 5G connectivity. For each scenario our aim is to maximize the hit ratio, which leads to the formulation of NP-complete optimization problems. The heuristic solutions proposed are based on the theory of the maximization of monotone submodular functions under matroid constraints. After the determination of the approximation ratio of the greedy heuristic algorithms proposed, a numerical performance analysis is shown. This analysis includes a comparison with the Least-Frequently Used (LFU) eviction strategy adapted to the analyzed systems. Results show very good performance, under the hypotheses of either known or unknown popularity of contents.

Identifying the module structure of swarms using a new framework of network-based time series clustering

Swarm is a collective motion phenomenon whose dynamic mechanism and cooperation structure could be identified based on observations. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) is a special artificial swarm with unique rules and structures. Therefore, corresponding identification methods need to be developed. One critical identification problem is distinguishing the swarm’s cooperation structure, which is usually clustered and grouped to achieve stability of behaviors and low communication cost. This paper proposes a framework of Overlay Network Integrated Time series clustering (ONIT) to identify the UAV swarm structures based on trajectories. The framework consists of Snapshot, Net Growth and Net Split. It can fuse with most distance functions in time series clustering, achieving high accuracy, update ability, and fault tolerance with various datasets. We create point-based and sliding window-based snapshots, allowing the framework compatible with more methods. In particular, the Dynamic Time Wrapping (DTW) correspondence in point-based snapshots shows the high scalability of the framework, and the Euclidean Distance (ED) correspondence shows that the framework can still significantly improve the accuracy while maintaining the simplicity of calculation. The test results show that the fused ONIT-clustering algorithms, especially the point-based ones, outperform original time series clustering methods separately in simulation datasets of UAV swarms and UCR repository by 28% and 27%. In summary, the proposed framework is a flexible and scalable time series clustering method that can solve various time series clustering problems especially the trajectory clustering of the UAV swarm and has great potential for general time series analysis.

Overlay Networks with Jamming and Energy Harvesting: Security Analysis

Overlay Networks with Jamming and Energy Harvesting: Security Analysis

Towards software defined low maintenance structured peer-to-peer overlays

Structured Peer-to-Peer (P2P) overlay networks are scalable and efficient networks. This efficiency comes at a cost as there is a need for regular maintenance of an overlay structure to handle the continuous churn of peers. This results in huge overhead in terms of maintenance traffic generated by peers. This problem becomes more critical when logical overlay topology differs from actual physical network topology, a common phenomenon in P2P overlay networks. In this paper, we present a novel approach to designing a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) based P2P overlays with the help of Software Defined Networks (SDN) concepts. SDN is an upcoming technology that provides enough flexibility in deciding application-specific network policies and rules dynamically. In our approach, we have attempted to bring the overlay topology closer to actual physical topology and reduce the maintenance traffic as much as possible. We have also tested our work on a hybrid network consisting of both virtual and physical switches. The experimental results suggest and establish the applicability of our approach.

Deploying an NFV-Based Experimentation Scenario for 5G Solutions in Underserved Areas.

Presently, a significant part of the world population does not have Internet access. The fifth-generation cellular network technology evolution (5G) is focused on reducing latency, increasing the available bandwidth, and enhancing network performance. However, researchers and companies have not invested enough effort into the deployment of the Internet in remote/rural/undeveloped areas for different techno-economic reasons. This article presents the result of a collaboration between Brazil and the European Union, introducing the steps designed to create a fully operational experimentation scenario with the main purpose of integrating the different achievements of the H2020 5G-RANGE project so that they can be trialed together into a 5G networking use case. The scenario encompasses (i) a novel radio access network that targets a bandwidth of 100 Mb/s in a cell radius of 50 km, and (ii) a network of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAV). This set of SUAVs is NFV-enabled, on top of which Virtual Network Functions (VNF) can be automatically deployed to support occasional network communications beyond the boundaries of the 5G-RANGE radio cells. The whole deployment implies the use of a virtual private overlay network enabling the preliminary validation of the scenario components from their respective remote locations, and simplifying their subsequent integration into a single local demonstrator, the configuration of the required GRE/IPSec tunnels, the integration of the new 5G-RANGE physical, MAC and network layer components and the overall validation with voice and data services.

Construction and maintenance of P2P overlays for live streaming

Construction and maintenance of P2P overlays for live streaming

Uncovering research streams on agri-food supply chain management: A bibliometric study

This study carried out a bibliometric analysis to critically review the evolution of the agri-food supply chain (AFSC) research field over the period of 2008–2019. A set of 1236 articles was analyzed from the Web of Science database. Besides using different analytical scientometric tools (topic mapping, co-citation, co-authorship and overlay visualization networks), this study identified frequently-used keywords, new and hot research topics and frequently-studied supply chain management (SCM) practices. Frequently used keywords are food supply chain, food waste, sustainability, food safety, SCM, food industry, and food security. New research themes include contract, blockchain, internet of things, resilience, and short food supply chain, a topic that demands further research especially due to the international COVID-19 pandemic and the need of farmers to be closer to the consumers. Hot research topics, that is, subjects that have been studied in highly cited papers were also identified include life cycle assessment, environmental impact, packaging, water use, food waste prevention, food waste generation, blockchain and carbon footprint. Among SCM practices, this study observed that risk and sustainable SCM are frequently used keywords. Procurement and reverse logistics were observed in fewer studies. SCM, food waste, food quality, GHG emissions and risk management are sustainable SCM practices frequently observed.

A scalable and low latency probe-based scheduler for data analytics frameworks

Today’s data analytics frameworks divide jobs into many parallel tasks such that each task operates on a small partition of data in order to execute jobs with low latency. Such frameworks often rely on probe-based distributed schedulers to tackle the challenge of reducing the associated overhead. Unfortunately, the existing solutions do not perform efficiently under workload fluctuations and heterogeneous job durations. This is due to a problem called Head-of-Line blocking, i.e., short tasks are enqueued at workers behind longer tasks. To overcome this problem, we propose Peacock (Khelghatdoust and Gramoli, 0000) [25] a new fully distributed probe-based scheduling method. Unlike the existing methods, Peacock introduces a novel probe rotation technique. Workers form a ring overlay network and rotate probes using elastic queues of workers. It is augmented by a novel starvation-free probe reordering algorithm executed by workers. We evaluate Peacock against two existing state-of-the-art probe based solutions through a trace driven simulation of up to 20,000 workers and a distributed experiment of 100 workers in Apache Spark under Google, Cloudera, and Yahoo! traces. The performance results indicate that Peacock outperforms the state-of-the-art in all cluster sizes and loads. Our distributed experiments confirm our simulation results.

Integration of 5G Experimentation Infrastructures into a Multi-Site NFV Ecosystem.

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has been regarded as one of the key enablers for the 5th Generation of mobile networks, or 5G. This paradigm allows to reduce the dependence on specialized hardware to deploy telecommunications and vertical services. To this purpose, it relies on virtualization techniques to softwarize network functions, simplifying their development and reducing deployment time and costs. In this context, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Telefónica, and IMDEA Networks Institute have developed an NFV ecosystem inside 5TONIC, an open network innovation center focused on 5G technologies, enabling the creation of complex, close to reality experimentation scenarios across a distributed set of NFV infrastructures, which can be made available by stakeholders at different geographic locations. This article presents the protocol that has been defined to incorporate new remote NFV sites into the multi-site NFV ecosystem based on 5TONIC, describing the requirements for both the existing and the newly incorporated infrastructures, their connectivity through an overlay network architecture, and the steps necessary for the inclusion of new sites. The protocol is exemplified through the incorporation of an external site to the 5TONIC NFV ecosystem. Afterwards, the protocol details the verification steps required to validate a successful site integration. These include the deployment of a multi-site vertical service using a remote NFV infrastructure with Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAVs). This serves to showcase the potential of the protocol to enable distributed experimentation scenarios.

Integration of 5G Experimentation Infrastructures into a Multi-Site NFV Ecosystem

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has been regarded as one of the key enablers for the 5th Generation of mobile networks, or 5G. This paradigm allows to reduce the dependence on specialized hardware to deploy telecommunications and vertical services. To this purpose, it relies on virtualization techniques to softwarize network functions, simplifying their development and reducing deployment time and costs. In this context, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Telefónica, and IMDEA Networks Institute have developed an NFV ecosystem inside 5TONIC, an open network innovation center focused on 5G technologies, enabling the creation of complex, close to reality experimentation scenarios across a distributed set of NFV infrastructures, which can be made available by stakeholders at different geographic locations. This article presents the protocol that has been defined to incorporate new remote NFV sites into the multi-site NFV ecosystem based on 5TONIC, describing the requirements for both the existing and the newly incorporated infrastructures, their connectivity through an overlay network architecture, and the steps necessary for the inclusion of new sites. The protocol is exemplified through the incorporation of an external site to the 5TONIC NFV ecosystem. Afterwards, the protocol details the verification steps required to validate a successful site integration. These include the deployment of a multi-site vertical service using a remote NFV infrastructure with Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAVs). This serves to showcase the potential of the protocol to enable distributed experimentation scenarios.

A Runtime-Enabled P4 Extension to the Open vSwitch Packet Processing Pipeline

A hypervisor switch, such as Open vSwitch (OVS), plays a key role in the virtualized data centers implementing overlay networking to provide network isolation. The hypervisor switch is running on each compute node as a software application and switches packets between virtual machines. Software switches frequently require upgrading and customization of network protocol's stack to introduce novel or domain-specific networking techniques. However, it is still difficult to extend OVS to support new network features as it requires mastery of network protocol design, programming expertise, and familiarity with the complex codebase of OVS. Moreover, there is currently no solution that enables the deployment of network features recompilation of OVS. In this article, we present P4rt-OVS, an original extension of OVS that enables runtime programming of protocol-independent and stateful packet processing pipelines. It extends the forwarding model of OVS with the userspace Berkeley Packet Filter (uBPF), bringing a new extensibility mechanism. Moreover, P4rt-OVS comes with a P4-to-uBPF compiler, which allows developers to write data plane programs in the high-level P4 language, compile them to the BPF bytecode and inject them to the OVS packet processing pipeline at runtime. Our design results in a hybrid approach that provides P4 programmability without sacrificing the well-known features of OVS. We provide thorough performance results, including end-to-end performance tests, microbenchmarks and a performance test of an exemplary network application (Broadband Network Gateway). The performance evaluation shows that P4rt-OVS does not introduce significant processing overhead, yet enables runtime protocol extensions and stateful packet processing. Moreover, we discuss features of P4rt-OVS and provide programming guidelines to help developers achieve the best performance of P4 programs for P4rt-OVS.

Abstract PO009: Increased DACH1 mutation frequency in a Kentucky hospital uterine cancer population

Abstract Purpose: DACH1 is a transcriptional repressor and tumor suppressor gene frequently mutated in breast, bladder, and prostate cancer. Most studied in breast carcinoma, DACH1 expression was reduced or lost in invasive breast cancer patients, and its expression was inversely related to tumor diameter, stage, and nodal metastasis, and directly associated with increased survival time. While less studied in uterine cancer, nearly all normal endometrial samples show nuclear expression of DACH1, with DACH1 expression lost in more than half of uterine cancers. Loss of DACH1 expression has been associated with higher surgical stage, positive peritoneal cytology, and lymph node positivity in uterine cancer. In this study, the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) Avatar database was used to determine the frequency of DACH1 mutations in our Kentucky hospital population with uterine cancer. Experimental Design: Clinical and genomic data were collected for 65 patients with uterine cancer from Markey Cancer Center (MCC) through Total Cancer Care (TCC) ®. TCC is a prospective cohort study with whole-exome tumor sequencing, RNA sequencing, germline sequencing, and lifetime follow-up. The clinical attributes, whole-exome sequencing, RNA sequencing, microsatellite instability, and tumor mutational burden were compared by DACH1 status. EdgeR was used to perform normalization, expression modeling, and difference testing. The network analysis was performed using Qiagen’s Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) system for core analysis of the RNA sequencing data and overlaid with the Global Molecular Network Overlay in the IPA knowledge base. The Cancer Genome Atlas Project (TCGA) PanCancer Atlas dataset was used for comparison through cBioPortal.org, utilizing endometrial cancer and carcinosarcoma subgroups for analysis totaling 586 patients. Results: Uterine cancer patients at MCC had an increased frequency of DACH1 mutations (12/65 patients, 18.5%) compared to the TCGA uterine cancer population (25/586 patients, 3.8%) with p-value = 1.04E-05. DACH1 mutations were associated with increased tumor mutation count in both TCGA (median 65 vs. 8972, p-value =7.35e-09) and MCC population (490 vs. 2160, p-value = 6E-04). DACH1 mutated patients had a higher tumor mutation burden compared to DACH1 wild-type (24 vs. 6.02, p-value = 4.288E-05). DACH1 mutations showed significant gene co-occurrence patterns with POLE, MLH1, and PMS2. Conclusions: DACH1 mutations are prevalent in Kentucky patients with uterine cancer. These mutations are associated with high tumor mutational burden and co-occur with genome destabilizing gene mutations. These findings suggest DACH1 could be a candidate biomarker for future trials with immunotherapy, particularly in uterine cancers, and may help explain the differences seen in uterine cancer incidence and mortality in Kentucky. Citation Format: McKayla Riggs, Nan Lin, Chi Wang, Dava Piecoro, Rachel Miller, Oliver Hampton, Mahadev Rao, Frederick Ueland, Jill Kolesar. Increased DACH1 mutation frequency in a Kentucky hospital uterine cancer population [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Virtual Special Conference: Endometrial Cancer: New Biology Driving Research and Treatment; 2020 Nov 9-10. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2021;27(3_Suppl):Abstract nr PO009.

Spartan: Sparse Robust Addressable Networks

A Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network is a dynamic collection of nodes that connect with each other via virtual overlay links built upon an underlying network (usually, the Internet). P2P networks are highly dynamic and can experience very heavy churn, i.e., a large number of nodes join/leave the network continuously. Thus, building and maintaining a stable overlay network is an important problem that has been studied extensively for two decades.In this paper, we present our P2P overlay network called Sparse Robust Addressable Network (Spartan). Spartan can be quickly and efficiently built in a fully distributed fashion within O(logn) rounds. Furthermore, the Spartan overlay structure can be maintained, again, in a fully distributed manner despite adversarially controlled churn (i.e., nodes joining and leaving) and significant variation in the number of nodes. Moreover, new nodes can join a committee within O(1) rounds and leaving nodes can leave without any notice.The number of nodes in the network lies in [n,fn] for any fixed f≥1. Up to ϵn nodes (for some small but fixed ϵ>0) can be adversarially added/deleted within any period of P rounds for some P∈O(loglogn). Despite such uncertainty in the network, Spartan maintains Θ(n∕logn) committees that are stable and addressable collections of Θ(logn) nodes each for polynomial(n) rounds with high probability.Spartan’s committees are also capable of performing sustained computation and passing messages between each other. Thus, any protocol designed for static networks can be simulated on Spartan with minimal overhead. This makes Spartan an ideal platform for developing applications. We experimentally show that Spartan will remain robust as long as each committee, on average, contains 24 nodes for networks of size up to 10240.

A Survey on Video Streaming in Multipath and Multihomed Overlay Networks

The focus of this survey is to study the protocols, mechanisms, and the latest standards proposed in the literature for improving the performance and quality of video content in multipath and multihomed overlay networks. Multipath is a broader term, but in the context of this survey, we define multipath as enhancing network routing technique by using various paths that are not necessarily completely disjoint. Multipath can furnish a variety of advantages such as reliability,connection persistence, increased perceived throughput and load balancing. On the other hand, multihoming is the ability to use multiple network interfaces when connecting to the Internet to increase reliability, resilience, and performance. Most existing surveys are specialized in one specific domain area related to multipath or multihoming. This study covers the research proposals at the different layers/sublayers of an overlay network from transport to the application and extends to cover the latest technologies like machine learning, Fog and Mobile Edge computing, VR 360 video, and the Internet of Multimedia Things (IoMT). As such, our work tries to be as comprehensive as possible to relate multipath and multihoming research solutions for video streaming to the current and emerging video streaming technologies.

Impact of Artificial Noise on Security Capability of Energy Harvesting Overlay Networks

Artificial noise, energy harvesting, and overlay communications can assure design metrics of modern wireless networks such as data security, energy efficiency, and spectrum utilization efficiency. This paper studies impact of artificial noise on security capability of energy harvesting overlay networks in which the cognitive transmitter capable of self‐powering its operation by harvesting radio frequency energy and self‐securing its communications against eavesdroppers by generating artificial noise amplifies and forwards the signal of the primary transmitter as well as transmits its individual signal concurrently. To quantify this impact, the current paper firstly suggests accurate expressions of crucial security performance indicators. Then, computer simulations are supplied to corroborate these expressions. Finally, numerous results are demonstrated to expose insights into this impact from which optimum specifications are determined. Notably, primary/cognitive communications can be secured at distinct degrees by flexibly controlling multiple specifications of the suggested system model.

Multi-Information Hybrid Network Spreading Model Based on Competition Consciousness

In fact, information is not transmitted in a single message, but rather multiple messages are transmitted simultaneously and interact with each other as they are transmitted. Based on this phenomenon, a multi-information overlay network model that differs from the traditional network structure is first constructed on the basis of two classical network models, BA scale-free and WS Small World. When multiple messages are transmitted simultaneously, the competitive nature of the message affects the transmission process to some extent, and therefore a sense of competition for the message is introduced into the classical SIS model of infectious disease. Simulation experiments have shown that a sense of competition enhances or inhibits the spread of information to varying degrees, and that information with a high sense of competition has a greater scale of spread, in line with the real-life “Matthew effect”. In addition, the sense of competition also accelerates the spread of information. Therefore, it is possible to inhibit the spread of negative information by controlling the sense of competition, so as to achieve timely warning and control of negative information.

Multicast at Edge: An Edge Network Architecture for Service-Less Crowdsourced Live Video Multicast

Using smartphones, tablets, and other portable/handheld devices, we have become more reliant on the video streaming services for entertainment and remote work. Mobile data traffic has grown eighteen folds over the past five years accounting for the majority of IP traffic. YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Twitch, DouYu and other streaming as well as video conferencing services have increased in popularity so at any given moment they serve thousands of live video streams to millions of users. The Enhanced Multimedia Broadcast Multimedia Service (eMBMS) is the standard multicast protocol for 5G networks. Cellular multicast has gained considerable attention to efficiently utilize the limited spectrum to transmit multimedia content to cellular sites with co-located viewers, lowering the cost, and maximizing the Quality of Experience (QoE). However, popular live video content providers use unicast mode for live video delivery and have limited support in the eMBMS service-oriented network architecture. In this paper, we propose an overlay network architecture to augment eMBMS to address the limitations of the standard eMBMS architecture and enable service-less multicast for crowdsourced live video providers. We propose a Virtual Network Function (VNF) service that identifies potential multicast scenarios based on user requests for a live video within a confined area. The VNF Application Server collects information, validates a potential multicast scenario, and initiates an ad-hoc multicast service on the fly. We use a real-world dataset of Facebook Live videos to evaluate the proposed architecture. The simulation results depict considerable advantages in terms of cost, efficiency, and Quality of Experience (QoE). Our results show that the proposed architecture provides significant benefits in bandwidth saving at the backhaul, transit, and RAN links.

Applying overlay networks to the smart grid and energy collectives

With the desire from prosumers and energy collectives to trade energy directly with peers, engage in dynamic changing contract relationships and decentralized energy markets, technologies such as overlay networks can be used to provide the communication layer to facilitate routing, dynamic discovery and communication between the peers. In this paper, we will show that using the properties in the smart grid, such as the physical location of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and the clustered topology of energy collectives, the efficiency of the routing in standard overlay networks can be improved by introducing a location-aware heuristic and concepts from complex network theory. The improved routing model is tested and verified by comparing a proof of concept with different network models and properties from the smart grid and energy collectives, against a standard overlay network implementation. The results show that in the context of the smart grid, routing efficiency in a decentralized communication layer can be significantly improved and the issues found in previous work can be alleviated by using concepts from complex networks.