Real Production Networks Research Articles

CESNET-TLS-Year22: A year-spanning TLS network traffic dataset from backbone lines.

The modern approach for network traffic classification (TC), which is an important part of operating and securing networks, is to use machine learning (ML) models that are able to learn intricate relationships between traffic characteristics and communicating applications. A crucial prerequisite is having representative datasets. However, datasets collected from real production networks are not being published in sufficient numbers. Thus, this paper presents a novel dataset, CESNET-TLS-Year22, that captures the evolution of TLS traffic in an ISP network over a year. The dataset contains 180 web service labels and standard TC features, such as packet sequences. The unique year-long time span enables comprehensive evaluation of TC models and assessment of their robustness in the face of the ever-changing environment of production networks.

Bandwidth Reservation Strategies for Scheduling Maximization in Dedicated Networks

Bandwidth reservation has been increasingly used in high-performance networks to provide quality of service for various applications ranging from real-time multimedia communication in early years to big data transfer more recently. In this paper, we consider multiple bandwidth reservation requests in a batch awaiting to be scheduled in a dedicated network, and formulate two scheduling maximization problems: 1) maximize the amount of data to be transferred and 2) maximize the number of requests to be scheduled. We prove both problems are NP-complete and very difficult to approximate. We then design two heuristic algorithms and evaluate their performance against a scheduling algorithm widely used in real production networks through extensive simulation-based experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed heuristic algorithms achieve significantly better overall scheduling performance than the existing algorithm.

Experimenting ResourceonDemand Strategies for Green WLANs

WLAN becomes a necessary facility for exible Internet provisioning in enterprise networks. Usually this connection provisioning is designed to handle a peak load with high density of Access Points (APs) to guarantee a desired level of quality of service (QoS). This design approach however leads to energy inefficiency due to the daily demand variability. In fact the off-peak period of the daily behavior is usually quite long and hence some resources consume power without any beneficiary activity. Resource-on-demand (RoD) provisioning is among foreseeable solutions that satisfy both energy efficiency as well as QoS constraints. That is the network capacity is dynamically dimensioned to demand while extra resource goes to low energy consumption mode to save energy. In dense WLAN scenarios, extra APs are turned off during low load until required due to increase in demand. Some theoretical analysis of RoD has been proposed by related works, but experiments on real production networks are still needed in order to investigate the practical issues related to RoD strategies. This paper addresses some of these issues through an experimental activity performed on RoD strategies. Two strategies, namely association-based and traffic-based policies, are implemented in one part of Politecnico di Torino Campus WLAN. Results from our testbed show that RoD strategies are effective and energy saving up to 70% is possible.

Study on the Deployment of Virtual Campus Network Supporting IPv4/IPv6 Dual Stack

Demand for virtualization has been developing gradually in current campus network construction. To eliminate the complexity of network topology and the instability brought about by loops and so on, the virtualization of several physical devices into one single logical device is needed; while the same physical network is also required to be virtualized into several isolated service networks. At the same time, these networks shall support the deployment of the next generation network protocol IPv6. Based on experiments and researches among variant equipment from several enterprises in labs and real production network, this paper proposes solutions for campus network construction and deployment which can satisfy the aforementioned requirements.

Interdomain VPLS and deployment experiences

The main objective of emergent standard Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) is the interconnection of users located at different geographic locations as if they were in the same local area network. In this sense, the investigations and tests that have been done are mainly focused on point-to-point interconnection scenarios using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), as there have been few tests done up until now in academic and research networks with multipoint scenarios and they have been done mainly within the same domain, but not between different domains. In this paper, we describe the process to put in production VPLS service for testing purposes in an interprovider environment, doing initial tests on a real scenario. With it, one hopes to verify its behaviour in a real production network, analysing the benefits that can be provided to the customers, especially with respect to advanced applications and distributed computing, as it is the case in Grid applications.

Evaluation of Advanced TCP Stacks on Fast Long-Distance Production Networks

With the growing needs of data intensive science, such as high energy physics, and the need to share data between multiple remote computer and data centers worldwide, the necessity for high network performance to replicate large volumes (TBytes) of data between remote sites in Europe, Japan and the U.S. is imperative. Currently, most production bulk-data replication on the network utilizes multiple parallel standard (Reno based) TCP streams. Optimizing the window sizes and number of parallel stream is time consuming, complex, and varies (in some cases hour by hour) depending on network configurations and loads. We therefore evaluated new advanced TCP stacks that do not require multiple parallel streams while giving good performances on high speed long-distance network paths. In this paper, we report measurements made on real production networks with various TCP implementations on paths with different Round Trip Times (RTT) using both optimal and sub-optimal window sizes.We compared the New Reno TCP with the following stacks: HS-TCP, Fast TCP, S-TCP, HSTCP-LP, H-TCP and Bic-TCP. The analysis will compare and report on the stacks in terms of achievable throughput, impact on RTT, intra- and inter-protocol fairness, stability, as well as the impact of reverse traffic.We also report on some tentative results from tests made on unloaded 10 Gbps paths during SuperComputing 2003.

Electronic Commerce and the Future for SMEs in a Global Market-Place: Networking and Public Policies

This paper explores three inter-related issues: globalisation; the role of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs); and electronic commerce (e-commerce). A central question is whether e-commerce offers advantages to SMEs that may facilitate their access to global markets and help them overcome the disadvantages they face vis-a-vis large transnational corporations (TNCs)? The paper starts by briefly considering the extent of globalisation and its relationship to free trade. We then go on to consider recent developments in e-commerce, focusing on the key issue of e-payment systems. Differences in the requirements of large and smaller firms are identified, and we identify a number of key issues concerning access of smaller firms to e-payment systems and the (virtual) market place, and outline their implications for regulatory policy. Our analysis highlights the importance of network externalities, and institutional factors affecting trust and the relationships amongst different economic actors. This leads to a consideration of networking and public policies more broadly. One of the central conclusions of our analysis is that there are important synergies between e-commerce (virtual) networks and (real) production networks. This suggests that policy makers and smaller firms should think in terms of extending existing, and catalysing new, real production networks to incorporate e-payment systems for networks of firms in order to facilitate their access to virtual markets.