The current project proposal, named Secure Fieldwork Networks (SeFiN) represents a continuation of the previous Inter-domain Ad-hoc Routing project. During the first phase, a solution and a prototype for creating emergency networks have been made. The existing prototype adopts a highly flexible cross layer routing protocol that allows, among other things, the network bootstrap and the management of its services using role and device based policies. A special dynamic addressing scheme, known as DNCP (the Dynamic Network Configuration Protocol), has been developed to ensure unique addresses that are distributed and allocated with support to network merging and splitting, as is the case in such highly dynamic environments.
This project aims to develop automatic decision-making techniques and tools for appropriate resource allocation and control in cloud computing systems, involving research and development activities, based on server and network virtualization technology.
Develop techniques and tools for specifying and implementing network services with self-management (autonomic) capabilities. These services will be specified through high-level objectives by the network administrator or business manager, involving research and development activities, based on objective and service modeling technology, exploring the concepts of process orchestration and web technology.
Project to develop techniques for policy negotiation between computer networks and the implementation of a mechanism for policy separation and management at different levels, independent of the network technologies used.
The IPTV application class is expected to dominate the so-called NGN (Next Generation Internet) networks. In this context, video services include the main categories of Video on Demand (VoD), Live Stream, and User Generated Content. The success of sites like YouTube and MySpace confirms the growing interest in user-generated content. Interactive multimedia services and high-quality applications are expected to become widely used in the near future. Despite its great popularity, video distribution over the Internet can be considered a significant challenge. Network characteristics that affect video applications, such as high bit rate, packet loss, end-to-end delays, network congestion, and synchronization, need to be adequately addressed to provide a satisfactory level of user experience (QoE). Although various technologies for video distribution have been proposed since the 1990s, video service has never been widely provided on the Internet. IP Multicasting, proposed by Deering, began to be studied as a promising technology by academia and industry. However, the difficulty of implementing multicast at the network layer and its high cost, in addition to Internet Service Providers’ challenges with pricing, contributed to this service never being widely available. Another important aspect to consider in research is traffic locality. Recent studies show that the use of P2P applications is shifting the cost of data distribution from content providers to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and end users. This master’s thesis project aims to combine the characteristics of CDN networks and the P2P approach to distribution.
This project aims to perform measurements and traffic analysis in access networks and in the backbone of broadband Internet service providers.
Ambient Networks represent a new communication paradigm that enables the cooperation of heterogeneous networks belonging to different operators or technology domains. This new paradigm enables a wide range of user and business scenarios that will utilize communications beyond the fixed, 3G, and IP-based technologies currently available. The key concept in ambient networks to enable this communication is composition. In this process, networks organize themselves to determine how they can communicate and how users will access the networks involved. The process is automatic and should offer a simple, effective, and efficient user experience. Because ambient networks can compose and decompose rapidly, topology and traffic patterns can change rapidly. Given the naturally heterogeneous environment of an ambient network, routing is more challenging than the routing used on the Internet today. New protocols must be created to address this new paradigm and enable efficient and effective packet forwarding within and between networks. Therefore, it is important to understand the influences that composition and decomposition processes can have on routing decisions, as well as to verify the changes in the performance of routing algorithms that may be brought about by the rules imposed by composition. Likewise, we must analyze the constraints that may be applied to composition if some of its requirements cannot be supported by the routing layer. Basically, the project activities involve reviewing bibliographic research in the area to define the requirements that must be met by routing protocols; specifying the necessary adaptations to already designed protocols and defining the influence of composition on routing; integrating routing with the composition process.
This project is being developed through a partnership between the Networks and Telecommunications Research Group (GPRT) of the Computer Science Center (CIn) of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and ERICSSON Brazil (EDB). The last two decades have been marked by a true revolution in wireless communications. Significant advances have been achieved primarily through the introduction of different technologies and the emergence of ubiquitous wireless devices such as laptops, PDAs, and cell phones. However, interoperability between devices with different capabilities and technologies creates new challenges for the development of efficient and adaptive routing solutions. The increasing amount and complexity of information that routing solutions need to consider to cope with changes in network state and/or user requirements is well known and little explored. Therefore, the next stage in the evolution of such networks will be to support the federation of different ad hoc networks (MANETs). This problem is known as inter-domain routing in MANETs. The ability to communicate spontaneously (ad hoc) between different groups is critical in certain operations. In public safety or disaster scenarios, for example, communication between police, medical personnel, firefighters, and other groups is necessary and paramount..
This is a research and development project in the IPTV area, aiming at the Optimization of Video Content Distribution in IP networks, based on the technologies of Cache Strategies, Virtualization and xDSL Access Networks..
This technical-scientific cooperation project involves research and development activities that will evaluate a network composed of several access subnets, possibly using different technologies, capable of automatically selecting the best access network for a user covered by more than one of its access subnets. This concept assumes that the user has a terminal with multiple wireless interfaces that can be activated according to the service requested by the user from the network. The term ABC Network has been translated as “Best Access Network.” Automatic selection of the access subnet is performed by an “access selection algorithm” that can be based on user information (profile), the desired service, and the characteristics of the access subnets.
The technical-scientific cooperation project, involving research and development activities of the PBMAN framework for policy-based management for environmental networks, using peer-to-peer (p2p) technology. The project involves the specification and implementation of a framework prototype..
This project is developed through a partnership between the Networks and Telecommunications Research Group (GPRT) of the Informatics Center (CIn) of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and ERICSSON Brazil (EDB). Recent threats to network security have stimulated the development of new mechanisms to protect IP networks from unwanted access or unauthorized changes to their components.
In recent years, Internet traffic characterization has become an essential activity for managing Internet service provider networks. Although there are efforts to analyze and measure traffic in broadband access networks, these studies have limitations, failures in the correct identification of applications, and little understanding of the behavior of users of these services..
This project focused on optimizing xDSL networks, considering the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for transporting triple-play (3P) services over xDSL networks in the presence of noise. A study of xDSL network security was also included. The xDSL standards covered in this project were ADSL2 and ADSL2+. Regarding QoS, the xDSL Quality of Service requirements at the physical level for transporting 3P services were investigated, comparing the desired values with those obtained in the laboratory. The main experiments considered video and data transmission in the presence of a special type of noise, REIN (Repetitive Impulsive Noise). Using the data obtained, the impact of REIN on video and UDP was analyzed, as well as the effectiveness of noise protection mechanisms available in DSL, such as INP (Impulse Noise Protection). Furthermore, a metric correlation and quality estimation study was performed for video streaming transmitted in the xDSL testbed. This correlation and estimation required intensive theoretical, mathematical, and statistical research. Regarding security, specific research was carried out on certain categories of attacks and vulnerabilities in layers 2 and 3.
The concept of Ambient Networks defines that the elements participating in the network must be able to connect using any available communication means and must be discoverable by any other elements with the least possible manual intervention by network users. This concept is well defined and explains the process of network communication through composition. In this process, networks organize themselves to determine how they can communicate and how users will access the networks involved. The process is automatic and should offer a simple, effective, and efficient user experience. However, composition is a high-level operation that depends on several lower-level operations to be effective. Among these operations is the correct and efficient routing of data packets that will travel within and between networks. Routing protocols for ambient networks are more complex because they must consider not only the addresses of network elements but also the services being offered. These services can change location dynamically, and the routes defined for them must adapt to this change and provide—within the limitations that may arise due to mobility—the same level of service offered. Basically, the project activities are related to the bibliographical research survey in the area to define the requirements that must be met by the routing protocols; specification of the routing protocols, validation and verification; and the creation of prototypes to test their functioning.
One of the proposals for so-called Advanced Networks is the ability to offer quality of service to applications that require it. The main performance metrics found in quality-of-service networks are delay, jitter, and bandwidth. In particular, real-time applications, such as action games, videoconferencing, and shared virtual reality, have well-defined requirements for efficient operation on a computer network like the Internet. For applications like action games and shared virtual reality, mechanisms such as synchronization and motion prediction are crucial for information consistency and application traffic reduction. Several dead reckoning and synchronization techniques have already been developed by the scientific community, and some have been incorporated into the QoSWare middleware for various analyses and comparisons. This feature will allow for the evaluation of several aspects, including the effective reduction of motion prediction error for these applications in QoS-enabled networks. One of the objectives of this proposal is to extend the already developed middleware to include the following: comparison of other prediction algorithms; implementation of QoS communication and negotiation with the Internet Service Provider (ISP); testing QoSWare with a virtual reality application; and implementation of packet priority/selectivity for the same application, for example, in chat-based games, where game packets should have higher priority than text packets.
Sensor networks are recent applications of ad hoc networks, which can be defined as networks that lack a fixed topology and are formed dynamically as devices communicate via a wireless link. The main advantages of sensor networks are ease of installation, the low cost of sensors that allows for coverage over a large area, and fault tolerance. Sensors can be simply dropped from an airplane to monitor a region, or distributed within a factory without any prior planning. Once the network is operational, even if one sensor fails, other nearby sensors will capture similar information. However, some limitations pose challenges to the design of this type of network and motivate the development of scientific research in this area. Limitations such as limited bandwidth, high error rates, and medium access control are inherent to the wireless transmission medium and affect the information transmission process within the network. Another major challenge is the battery life of the sensors, since they are not connected to any power source and due to their small, low-cost characteristics. The main justification for this project is the diverse applications that can be developed with advances in sensor network technology, specifically the use of sensors in industrial production environments to monitor critical environmental aspects such as temperature, airborne chemical concentrations, the presence of people in certain areas, equipment wear, and so on. However, to enable the development of practical applications, research challenges must be studied and addressed. This is the primary motivation for developing this project.
The objective of this Project consisted in the development of a prototype to control and monitor the interventions in the transmission lines of the CHESF electrical system.
The objectives of the ABC project are based on the premise that, in the future, wireless systems will consist of multiple access networks using different technologies, integrated to form a single network offering diverse services to users. The concept of “Always Best Connected” networks (hence the acronym ABC) defines a network formed by different wireless access technologies (subsystems), possibly with overlapping coverage, allowing users to access their desired services through the access subsystem that best suits their needs. When a user is covered by more than one subsystem, the network must automatically determine which of these subsystems best serves the user according to some defined criterion. Thus, in Best Access Networks (the term we have adopted for “Always Best Connected Networks”), the user always obtains access to the network in the best possible way. In this context, the definition of what constitutes “best” is based on a set of information and parameters determined by the operator (network owner) and the user. The ABC project aims to investigate efficient algorithms to select the best available subsystem for the user, considering the set of constraints imposed by the operator and the user..
The PBMAN project aims to specify a framework and implement a proof-of-concept prototype for Ambient Networks, based on the concepts of Policy-Based Network Management (PBM) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology. Specifically, PBMAN implements an infrastructure for publishing and retrieving policies for ambient networks, capable of governing user access to resources in a 4th generation environment with a very high degree of mobility and dynamism, and that provides authorized users with instant access to the desired resources. The operation of ambient networks, based primarily on the concept of network composition, is closely related to network management and can be transformed into reality by the use of PBM and P2P, which provide scalability, robustness, and self-configuration.
The Project is part of the CHESF Research and Development – R&D program, 2001/2002 cycle – Generation Segment, approved by ANEEL.