Traditional Protocol Stack Research Articles

Low Latency TOE with Double-Queue Structure for 10Gbps Ethernet on FPGA.

The TCP protocol is a connection-oriented and reliable transport layer communication protocol which is widely used in network communication. With the rapid development and popular application of data center networks, high-throughput, low-latency, and multi-session network data processing has become an immediate need for network devices. If only a traditional software protocol stack is used for processing, it will occupy a large amount of CPU resources and affect network performance. To address the above issues, this paper proposes a double-queue storage structure for a 10G TCP/IP hardware offload engine based on FPGA. Furthermore, a TOE reception transmission delay theoretical analysis model for interaction with the application layer is proposed, so that the TOE can dynamically select the transmission channel based on the interaction results. After board-level verification, the TOE supports 1024 TCP sessions with a reception rate of 9.5 Gbps and a minimum transmission latency of 600 ns. When the TCP packet payload length is 1024 bytes, the latency performance of TOE's double-queue storage structure improves by at least 55.3% compared to other hardware implementation approaches. When compared with software implementation approaches, the latency performance of TOE is only 3.2% of the software approaches.

Cross-Layer Design Based N-ary Huffman Coding for Performance Analysis of DSDV Routing Protocol in MANETs

The implementation of the optimal Huffman coding technique for achieving proficient data compression, lower information redundancy and minimal utilization of the scarce bandwidth is essential to handle the effective processing of massive network data. In this paper, we employ cross-layer design technique among the data link, network and presentation layers of the traditional protocol stack to develop the improved DSDV routing protocol based on n-ary Huffman coding procedure. The entropy-based adaptive prefix codewords with variable length are assigned to the probability of packet successful delivery across the ad-hoc wireless network. Several coding and network efficiency parameters are deployed to assess the performance of the proposed routing scheme under three distinctive IPv4 network scenarios. These investigated network protocols include the default IPv4, multi IPv4 and dynamic IPv4 routing methodologies. Diversified simulation settings are employed with deviating network size to measure the multitude of essential wireless network characteristics incorporating the average delay, packet error rate, packet delivery fraction, data rate, ping loss rate, entropy rate, and reception cache hit. In addition, the set of key data compression/coding indicators are examined through comprehensive numerical analysis such as codeword length, source information rate, mean redundancy, and coding efficiency. Beyond, we significantly compare the performance of our developed cross-layer coded mobile routing model with several previous algorithms to validate its enhanced feasibility and superiority in terms of crucial network operation metrics such as throughput, packet drop rate, mean delay and packet delivery ratio.

A dynamic protocol stack structure for diversified QoS requirements in ad hoc network

A dynamic protocol stack (DPS) for ad hoc networks, together with a protocol stack construction scheme that is modeled as a multiconstrained knapsack problem is proposed. Compared to the traditional static protocol stack, DPS operates in a dynamic and adaptive manner and is scalable to network condition changes. In addition, a protocol construction algorithm is proposed to dynamically construct of the protocol stack each network node. Simulation results show that, the processing and forwarding performance of our scheme is close to 1 Gb/s, and the performance of our algorithm is close to that of the classical algorithms with much lower complexity.

Energy-Efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks - A Review

Energy efficiency is the kernel issue in the designing of wireless sensor network(WSN) MAC protocols. Energy efficiency is a major consideration while designing wireless sensor network nodes. Most sensor network applications require energy autonomy for the complete lifetime of the node, which may span up to several years. These energy constraints require that the system be built such that Wireless sensor networks use battery-operated computing and sensing devices. A network of these devices will collaborate for a common application such as environmental monitoring. Each component consumes minimum possible power, ensure the average successful transmission rate, decrease the data packet average waiting time, and reduce the average energy consumption. Influencing by the design principles of traditional layered protocol stack, current MAC protocol designing for wireless sensor networks (WSN) seldom takes load balance into consideration, which greatly restricts WSN lifetime. As a novel Forwarding Election-based MAC protocol, is presented to prolong WSN lifetime by means of improving energy efficiency and enhancing load balance.

ParaNets: a parallel network architecture for the future internet

The evolution of networking technologies and portable devices has led users to expect connectivity anytime and everywhere. We have reached the point of seeing networking occur underwater, via aerial devices, and across space. While researchers push the true boundaries of networking to serve a wide range of environments, there is the challenge of providing robust network connectivity beyond the boundaries of the core internet, defined by fiber optics and well-organized backbones. As the internet edges expand, the expectation is that connectivity will be as good, in terms of high bandwidth and minimal interruption, as anywhere in the core. Such an expectation contradicts the inherent nature of connectivity at the edges. Researchers have been trying to solve this problem primarily by layering more network connection opportunities using newer technologies such as WiFi, WiMax, and cellular networks. The result is not better robustness, just more of the same. The choice of which network to use is somewhat dependent on location, partially driven by economics, and ultimately decided by the user. Our goal is to create a research thrust that builds robust networking at the edge of the internet by integrating various network technologies. These technologies should ultimately enable users to more seamlessly connect to the internet. Mobile devices and the applications running on them are currently incapable of identifying various potential communication opportunities and seamlessly utilizing them in order to maximize throughput. Furthermore, these applications should be capable of utilizing these connection opportunities in parallel, be resilient to disruptions, and optimize this utilization pattern to rising cost and energy concerns. This overall objective requires fundamentally re-working the internet's connectivity model to exploit the array of networking opportunities and evolve the traditional protocol stack to a more dynamic plug-and-play stack.

Designing and deploying a building-wide cognitive radio network testbed

Wireless communication technology is constantly advancing with the primary objective being to improve the quality of service for the end user. Cognitive radio is a technology capable of advancing wireless communications to the next generation of intelligent devices. Integrating cognition into wireless applications such as dynamic spectrum access, radio resource management, wireless distributed computing, and even traditional protocol stacks has already been shown to provide benefits related to the communications quality of service. The majority of cognitive radio related research has been limited to theoretical frameworks and simulations or in a few cases, demonstrating prototype DSA devices on a small scale. In order to continue advancing in this area, larger-scale experiments that are reproducible and able to be moved beyond theoretical simulations are required. Virginia Tech has built a testbed for software-defined and cognitive radio related research for the purpose of rapid next-generation communication system prototyping using a medium scale size network of flexible wireless nodes. In this article we present the details of the development, design decision rationale, and deployment of this testbed in hopes that it will be both used by the research community, and duplicated and improved in order to further the development of the many different facets of cognitive radio research.

Impact of protocol overheads on network throughput over high-speed interconnects: measurement, analysis, and improvement

Although extremely high-speed interconnects are available today, the traditional protocol stacks such as TCP/IP and UDP/IP are not able to utilize the maximum network bandwidth due to inherent overheads in the protocol stacks. Such overheads are a big obstacle for high-performance computing applications to exploit high-speed interconnects in cluster environments. To address this issue, many researchers have been presenting analyses of protocol overheads and suggesting a number of optimization approaches to harness the TCP/IP suite over high-speed interconnects. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no study that analyzes and optimizes the protocol overheads thoroughly in an integrated manner. In this paper, we exploit a set of protocol optimization mechanisms in an integrated manner while dealing with the full spectrum of the protocol layers from the transport layer to the physical layer. To evaluate the impact of each protocol overhead, we apply the optimization mechanisms one by one and perform detailed analyses at each step. The thorough overhead measurements and analyses reveal the dependencies between protocol overheads. With our comprehensive optimizations, we show that UDP/IP can utilize more than 95% of the maximum network throughput a Myrinet-based experimental system can provide.

Enabling technologies for the ‘always best connected’ concept

Abstract‘Always Best Connected’ (ABC) is considered one of the main requirements for next generation networks. The ABC concept allows a person to have access to applications using the devices and network technologies that best suits his or her needs or profile at any time. Clearly, this requires the combination of a set of existing and new technologies, at all levels of the protocol stack, into one integrated system. In this paper, a considerable set of the technologies, that are expected to play a key role towards the ABC vision, are presented. Starting from a reference architecture, the paper describes the required enhancements at certain levels of a traditional protocol stack, as well as technologies for mobility and end‐to‐end Quality of Service (QoS) support. The paper concludes with a case study that reveals the advantages of the ABC concept.This article replaces a previously published version (Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing; 5(2): 175‐191. [DOI: 10.1002/wcm.207]). Retraction notice DOI: 10.1002/wcm.426. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Cross-layer feedback architecture for mobile device protocol stacks

Applications using traditional protocol stacks (e.g., TCP/IP) from wired networks do not function efficiently in mobile wireless environments. This is primarily due to the layered architecture and implementation of protocol stacks. One mechanism to improve the efficiency of the stack is cross-layer feedback, that is, making information from within one layer available to another layer of the stack. For example, TCP retransmissions can be reduced by making it aware of network disconnections or handoff events. We highlight the need for a cross-layer feedback architecture and identify key design goals for an architecture. We present our ECLAIR architecture, which satisfies these design goals. We describe a prototype implementation that validates ECLAIR. We also discuss other cross-layer architectures and provide a cross-layer design guide.

Exploiting NIC architectural support for enhancing IP-based protocols on high-performance networks

While a number of user-level protocols have been developed to reduce the gap between the performance capabilities of the physical network and the performance actually available, their compatibility issues with the existing sockets-based applications and IP-based infrastructure has been an area of major concern. To address these compatibility issues while maintaining a high performance, a number of researchers have been looking at alternative approaches to optimize the existing traditional protocol stacks. Broadly, previous research has broken up the overheads in the traditional protocol stack into four related aspects, namely: (i) compute requirements and contention, (ii) memory contention, (iii) I/O bus contention and (iv) system resources’ idle time. While previous research dealing with some of these aspects exists, to the best of our knowledge, there is no work which deals with all these issues in an integrated manner while maintaining backward compatibility with existing applications and infrastructure. In this paper, we address each of these issues, propose solutions for minimizing these overheads by exploiting the emerging architectural features provided by modern Network Interface Cards (NICs) and demonstrate the capabilities of these solutions using an implementation based on UDP/IP over Myrinet. Our experimental results show that with our implementation of UDP, termed as E-UDP, can achieve up to 94% of the theoretical maximum bandwidth. We also present a mathematical performance model which allows us to study the scalability of our approach for different system architectures and network speeds.

Retracted and replaced: Enabling technologies for the ‘always best connected’ concept

This article has been retracted and replaced. Retraction notice DOI: 10.1002/wcm.426 ‘Always Best Connected’ (ABC) is considered one of the main requirements for next generation networks. The ABC concept allows a person to have access to applications using the devices and network technologies that best suits his or her needs or profile at any time. Clearly, this requires the combination of a set of existing and new technologies, at all levels of the protocol stack, into one integrated system. In this paper, a considerable set of the technologies, that are expected to play a key role towards the ABC vision, are presented. Starting from a reference architecture, the paper describes the required enhancements at certain levels of a traditional protocol stack, as well as technologies for mobility and end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) support. The paper concludes with a case study that reveals the advantages of the ABC concept. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Generic Framework for Cross-Layer Optimisation in Wireless Personal Area Networks

Wireless Personal Area Networking (WPAN) is introduced as a new concept for next generation wireless systems. WPANs are short-range wireless systems operating in the direct surrounding of the user. A reference architecture for short-range wireless communications has been designed covering the end-to-end system design. Traditional protocol stack implementations based on layering do not function efficiently in wireless environments due to inefficiency, inflexibility and suboptimality of the functionalities in the different layers. Specifically in WPAN and other short-range wireless systems the performance benefits from a cross-layer design strategy, supporting adaptability and optimizing the use of resources over multiple layers of the protocol stack. In this paper we advocate cross-layer optimisation for WPAN systems and introduce a centralised control structure for interaction between different layers in master or leader devices. The control structure adapts the link characteristics to the channel state and user requirements. Allowing for the support of heterogeneous services, each with their own quality-of-service demands, in wireless environments.

An End to End Adaptable Architecture for Streaming Media over IP Networks

Wireless networks differ in bandwidth, size and access costs each requiring a set of protocol functions to enable devices to communicate efficiently. Portable multimedia devices such as PDA's and laptops will also vary greatly however all these devices will require optimal multimedia delivery. A traditional method is for sources to limit their transmission rates to accommodate lower bandwidth links, even though high-bandwidth connectivity is available to many participants. This method similar to others does not provide optimum throughput to heterogeneous clients due to its quest for a common denominator bandwidth. In addition, due to the divergence of users and applications, traditional protocol stacks are frequently enriched with additional functionality such as transport protocol functionality, synchronization and presentation coding which can lead to a performance bottleneck due to the insufficient processing power and memory of portable devices. Micro-protocols attempt to eradicate this bottleneck by optimising the protocol stack to the functionality that is actually required by the application. A side effect of this is that it allows a device such as a PDA to offer protocol functions, which would not normally be available due to its memory constraints achievable by downloading necessary micro-protocols for new environments and discarding previous micro-protocols. Multicast media groups overcome the heterogeneous client problem where clients subscribe to different quality of services in accordance with resource availability and move between groups according to bandwidth availability. Chameleon is 100% Java middleware for multimedia streaming to heterogeneous mobile clients, which allows the dynamic configuration of protocols with respect to application requirements and available network resources. We evaluate the dynamic reconfigurability of the middleware in order to demonstrate runtime adaptation. We especially concentrate on the primary quality transformation technique (PQT) of the middleware which enables clients to subscribe to media groups in accordance with available resources and network capacity.

Fighting fire with fire: using randomized gossip to combat stochastic scalability limits

AbstractThe mechanisms used to improve the reliability of distributed systems often limit performance and scalability. Focusing on one widely‐used definition of reliability, we explore the origins of this phenomenon and conclude that it reflects a tradeoff arising deep within the typical protocol stack. Specifically, we suggest that protocol designs often disregard the high cost of infrequent events. When a distributed system is scaled, both the frequency and the overall cost of such events often grow with the size of the system. This triggers an O($n^{2}$) phenomenon, which becomes visible above some threshold sizes. Our findings suggest that it would be more effective to construct large‐scale reliable systems where, unlike traditional protocol stacks, lower layers use randomized mechanisms, with probabilistic guarantees, to overcome low‐probability events. Reliability and other end‐to‐end properties are introduced closer to the application. We employ a back‐of‐the‐envelope analysis to quantify this phenomenon for a class of strongly reliable multicast problems. We construct a non‐traditional stack, as described above, that implements virtually synchronous multicast. Experimental results reveal that virtual synchrony over a non‐traditional, probabilistic stack helps break through the scalability barrier faced by traditional implementations of the protocol. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.