Showing papers presented at "Conference on Computer Communications Workshops in 2013"

Mitigate DDoS attacks in NDN by interest traceback

Abstract: Current Internet is reaching the limits of its capabilities due to its function transition from host-to-host communication to content dissemination. Named Data Networking (NDN) – an instantiation of Content-Centric Networking approach, embraces this shift by stressing the content itself, rather than where it locates. NDN tries to provide better security and privacy than current Internet does, and resilience to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is a significant issue. In this paper, we present a specific and concrete scenario of DDoS attack in NDN, where perpetrators make use of NDN’s packet forwarding rules to send out Interest packets with spoofed names as attacking packets. Afterwards, we identify the victims of NDN DDoS attacks include both the hosts and routers. But the largest victim is not the hosts, but the routers, more specifically, the Pending Interest Table (PIT) within the router. PIT brings NDN many elegant features, but it suffers from vulnerability. We propose Interest traceback as a counter measure against the studied NDN DDoS attacks, which traces back to the originator of the attacking Interest packets. At last, we assess the harmful consequences brought by these NDN DDoS attacks and evaluate the Interest traceback counter measure. Evaluation results reveal that the Interest traceback method effectively mitigates the NDN DDoS attacks studied in this paper

Multipath congestion control in content-centric networks

Abstract: Data communication across the Internet has significantly changed under the pressure of massive content delivery. Content-Centric Networking (CCN) rethinks Internet communication paradigm around named data retrieval, in contrast with the host-to-host transport model of TCP/IP. Content retrieval is natively pull-based driven by user requests, point-to-multipoint and intrinsically coupled with the availability of network storage. By leveraging the key features of CCN transport, in this paper we propose for the first time a congestion control mechanism realizing efficient multipath communication over content-centric networks. Our proposal is based on a Remote Adaptive Active Queue Management (RAAQM) at the receiver that performs a per-route control of bottleneck queues along the paths. We analyze the stability of the proposed solution and assess its performance by means of CCN packet-level simulations under random and optimal route selection.

Securing instrumented environments over content-centric networking: the case of lighting control and NDN

Abstract: Instrumented environments, such as modern building automation systems (BAS), are becoming commonplace and are increasingly interconnected with (and sometimes by) enterprise networks and the Internet. Regardless of the underlying communication platform, secure control of devices in such environments is a challenging task. The current trend is to move from proprietary communication media and protocols to IP over Ethernet. While the move towards IP represents progress, new and different Internet architectures might be better-suited for instrumented environments. In this paper, we consider security of instrumented environments in the context of Content-Centric Networking (CCN). In particular, we focus on building automation over Named-Data Networking (NDN), a prominent instance of CCN. After identifying security requirements in a specific BAS sub-domain (lighting control), we construct a concrete NDN-based security architecture, analyze its properties and report on preliminary implementation and experimental results. We believe that this work represents a useful exercise in assessing the utility of NDN in securing a communication paradigm well outside of its claimed forte of content distribution. At the same time, we provide a viable (secure and efficient) communication platform for a class of instrumented environments exemplified by lighting control.

Content based traffic engineering in software defined information centric networks

Abstract: This paper describes a content centric network architecture which uses software defined networking principles to implement efficient metadata driven services by extracting content metadata at the network layer. The ability to access content metadata transparently enables a number of new services in the network. Specific examples discussed here include: a metadata driven traffic engineering scheme which uses prior knowledge of content length to optimize content delivery, a metadata driven content firewall which is more resilient than traditional firewalls and differentiated treatment of content based on the type of content being accessed. A detailed outline of an implementation of the proposed architecture is presented along with some basic evaluation.

On the design and implementation of a wire-speed pending interest table

Abstract: Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a novel networking paradigm that aims at making network routers aware of the data they transfer. This new paradigm requires changes in the routers in order to support networking operations on content names at wire speed. NDN, one of the most popular ICN proposal, also suggests that routers should keep track of what content is requested and from which line-card’s interface, in a data structure called Pending Interest Table (PIT). In this work, we set out to understand how to design a PIT that can support wire-speed. We survey the existing literature and propose few new designs; then, we evaluate numerically the design spectrum for the PIT. Finally, we implement the most promising design on a network processor and evaluate its performance. Our preliminary results are encouraging: we successfully handle a PIT with about 1 Million entries with a wire-speed of 10 Gbps.

Topology Authentication in RPL

Abstract: The Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is a proposed standard by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Although RPL defines basic security modes, it is still subject to topology attacks. VeRA is an authentication scheme which protects against attacks, based on the version number and rank. This work presents two rank attacks which are not mitigated by VeRA. In the first attack, the adversary can decrease its rank arbitrarily. Hence, it can impersonate even the root node. In the second attack, the adversary can decrease its rank to that of any node within its access range. We present an enhancement of VeRA to mitigate the first attack. Additionally, a basic approach for mitigating the second attack is introduced.

NDN.JS: A javascript client library for named data networking

Abstract: NDN.JS is the first JavaScript implementation of a client library for Named Data Networking (NDN). It facilitates NDN experimentation and usage by enabling end nodes to interact with an NDN network without installing the CCNx code package. It is also a first step towards exploring an NDNbased Web architecture. NDN.JS is wire format compatible with CCNx and supports the basic NDN functions of content fetching and publishing using Interest/Data exchange. NDN.JS works with modern Web browsers, including some browsers on mobile devices, that support JavaScript and HTML5 WebSocket. The client communicates with existing CCN routers via a simple Websocket proxy. As a use case study, we create a Firefox Add- On over NDN.JS to enable content fetching using an ‘ndn:/’ URI scheme and identify several research issues in bringing NDN into existing browsers.

HTTPtag: a flexible on-line HTTP classification system for operational 3g networks

Abstract: The popularity of web-based services and appli- cations like YouTube and Facebook has taken HTTP back to the pole position on end-user traffic consumption. We present HTTPTag, a flexible on-line HTTP classification system based on pattern matching and tagging. HTTPTag recognizes and tracks the evolution of more than 280 HTTP applications on the fly. This applications are responsible for about 70% of the HTTP traffic in the investigated operational 3G network. HTTPTag improves the network traffic visibility of an operator, performing tasks such as top-services ranking, long-term monitoring of the application popularity, and trend analysis among others.

Thor: Energy Programmable WiFi Networks

Abstract: WiFi hotspots are increasingly deployed to relieve cellular networks from the burden generated by data-hungry mobile applications. Such deployments generally cater for the worst case scenario, which leads to over-provisioning of resources eventually resulting in a significant energy waste when little or no traffic is present. In this demo, we present an integrated energy and mobility management solution for WiFi networks. The demo combines Energino, an open real-time energy consumption monitoring toolkit with Odin a software defined networking framework for WLANs. This integration enables energy programmable WiFi networks, allowing to cluster clients around access points in an energy-efficient and performant manner.

CDroid: Towards a cloud-integrated mobile operating system

Abstract: Current offloading mechanisms for mobile energyhungry apps consider the cloud as a separate remote support to the mobile devices. We take a different approach: We present CDroid, a system residing partially on the device and partially on a cloud software clone coupled with the device, and uses the cloud-side as just-another-resource of the real device. It enhances the user-experience by improving web navigation, compressing and caching web-pages, blocking unwanted ads, and protects user data by virus scanning apps on the cloud-side prior installation on the real-device. CDroid puts the first steps towards a hybrid cloud-integrated mobile system of the future.

Questcrowd: a location-based question answering system with participation incentives

Abstract: We present QuestCrowd, a location-based system that uses crowd-sourcing to answer simple day-to-day questions. QuestCrowd supports realtime questions along with questions that can be answered using factual information by people not present at the location. Key design mechanisms that set it apart from similar location-based systems include (i) a reputation system that motivates quality contributors by rewarding high quality answers (ii) a forwarding mechanism that leverages existing social graph relations to increase participation.

Efficiently looking up non-aggregatable name prefixes by reducing prefix seeking

Abstract: Content-Centric Networking (CCN) employs a hier-archical but location independent content naming scheme. While such a location independent naming brings various benefits in-cluding efficient content delivery, mobility, and multihoming, location independent name prefixes are hard to aggregate. This poses a serious scaling issue on the efficiency of looking up con-tent names in a huge Forwarding Information Base (FIB) by longest prefix matching, which requires seeking the longest matching prefix through all candidate prefix lengths. We propose a new scheme for efficiently looking up non-aggregatable name prefixes in a large FIB. The proposed scheme is based on the ob-servation that the bottleneck of FIB lookup is the random access-es to the high-latency off-chip DRAM for prefix seeking and this can be reduced by exploiting the information on the longest matching prefix length in the previous hop.

Poster: behavior-aware probabilistic routing for wireless body area sensor networks

Abstract: Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) can provide continuous and remote monitoring of patients’ physiological history, facilitate automatic sports training, and promote interactive games. However, existing single-hop wireless communication scheme faces two major challenges: the impermeability of human body to radio waves at frequencies commonly used in WBANs, and the highly dynamic network topology resulted from human movements. In this paper, (i) a prototype of multi-hop WBAN is built to characterize the network connectivity during human movements, (ii) a probabilistic routing algorithm is proposed, and (iii) the evaluation on our prototype system shows that the proposed scheme outperforms existing routings in terms of average delivery ratio, number of hops, and end-to-end delay.

A distributed architecture for discovery and access in the internet of things

Abstract: A complete, though small-scale, end-to-end architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT) is demonstrated by means of a test-bed including: smart objects (both clients and servers) with limited capabilities and proxy devices which allow the latter to connect to a core network, where a peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay is set up and maintained for automatic discovery of resources and highly scalable access. The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is used by smart objects to enable Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications following a resource-oriented approach. Business logic and human interactions with the smart objects for aggregation and visualization, respectively, are also demonstrated, including Android mobile applications.

Demonstrating inter-testbed network virtualization in OFELIA SDN experimental facility

Abstract: OFELIA is an experimental network designed to offer a diverse OpenFlow-enabled infrastructure to allow Software Defined Networking (SDN) experimentation. OFELIA is currently composed of ten sub–testbeds (called islands), most of them in Europe and one in Brazil. An experimenter get access to a so-called slice; a subset of the testbed resources like nodes and links, including the Openflow programmable switches to carry on an experiment. A new network virtualization tool called VeRTIGO has been recently presented to extend the way isolation is achieved between slices (slicing), allowing each experimenter to instantiate an arbitrary virtual network topology on top of a physical testbed. In this paper we present preliminary results obtained by deploying and using VeRTIGO in an experiment running across several OFELIA islands, which has proven to increase flexibility to experimenters willing to play with novel SDN concepts at large scale.

On the usage patterns of multi-modal communication: Countries and evolution

Abstract: How do people use phone calls and text messages for their communication needs? Most studies so far study each mode of communication in isolation. Here, we study the interplay of multi-modal communications. We analyze more than a billion call and text records from a Chinese city and San Francisco Area between 2007 and 2011. First, we provide some definitions towards a framework for analyzing multi-modal communications. Then,we study the relationship of the two communication modes and quantify several aspects of correlation and inference. For a communicating pair, we find that the existence of texting during the weekend is the strongest indicator that the pair will communicate at other times with texts or calls. We compare the behavior between China and the U.S. and we find several similarities and differences. For example, we find evidence of an after-lunch siesta among Chinese users. Finally, we study the evolution of the two modes over time. We find that texting has taken over in sheer number of ”events” by flipping the number of calls over that of texts from 2: 1 in 2007 to 1:2 in 2011.

A user-centric approach to trust management in wi-fi networks

Abstract: This technological demonstration goes over a new trust management framework which can assist in achieving secure connections in wireless networks, without necessarily implying the use of strong security associations. The demonstration is based on open-source software, and has been developed to run on OpenWRT as well as on Android.

HOPE: home power efficiency system for a green network

Abstract: A home network represents an increasingly large portion of a household’s electrical consumption due to the increasing number of digital home devices and the increasing complexity of the underlying communication infrastructure. Limiting a home network’s power consumption is a priority for large institutions as witnessed by evolving regulation, and a priority for individual consumers wishing to reduce their electric bills. In this demonstration, we proposed a solution that aims at reducing power consumption at both the device and network level. At the device level, our system can turn the devices off when they are not in operation and quickly turn them on when they are needed. At the network level, the solution is based on a new convergence layer denoted inter-MAC, which provides a common infrastructure to the different home network paths. In particular, the inter-MAC can be used to choose a greener path. Our solution on both levels is compatible and complementary to home network energy saving.

Liquidstream II - scalable P2P overlay optimization with adaptive minimal server assistance for stable and efficient video on demand

Abstract: In recent years, a number of research efforts have focused on effective and stable P2P architectures aiming at large scale and low bandwidth cost, real time video streaming systems. In our work, we consider a BitTorrent-like VoD system and try to answer the following questions: (1) how we can dynamically manage a P2P overlay using distributed-scalable algorithms in order to exploit the available upload bandwidth of highly heterogeneous participating peers and (2) how media servers (cloud) can minimize the amount of the bandwidth they offer while ensuring uninterrupted video playback. To illustrate the success of our approach, we have developed a network level P2P VoD packet simulator for demonstrating the efficiency, scalability and stability of our work under variant and dynamic conditions.

BLMon: A Loss Differentiation Scheme for 802.11n

Abstract: An important problem in 802.11 wireless networks is to accurately differentiate between losses while incurring low overhead. Lack of loss differentiation can result in throughput degradation, which becomes increasingly severe as data rates scale up. This paper presents BLMon, a loss differentiation scheme for 802.11n networks that leverages loss patterns in aggregate frames and frame retries to distinguish between losses. BLMon achieves high accuracy, incurs low overhead and does not require any protocol changes or customized hardware support.

Prefix hopping: efficient many-to-many communication support in information centric networks

Abstract: Named Data Networking [1] has an intrinsic distributed nature, which eases decentralizing formerly centralized protocols as discussed in [12], [10]. Nevertheless, implementing fully distributed protocols for many-to-many communications remains challenging. The NDN architecture, built upon CCN [3], makes the following assumptions in order to place content as the narrow waist of the communication stack: (1) content, not machines, should be explicitly addressed and (2) data are not sent unless the receiver explicitly requested it. These assumptions require some specific considerations when multiple parties publish content under the same name, as in some many-to-many communication applications. This paper discusses the challenges arising from the implementation of many-to-many channels over NDN.We propose an algorithm, inspired by the frequency hopping algorithm used in wireless systems, named Prefix Hopping (PH) to implement high rate many-to-many channels. We show evidence that with the current state of the art, content updates can be lost when generic shared names are used, due to the fact that interest packets - i.e. data requests - can be generated at a fixed bounded rate. The results show how adopting PH is possible to arbitrarily reduce data losses at the cost of a negligible overhead. We have implemented PH and show that it results in a dramatic performance improvement.

Secondary user games with spectrum leasing market in cooperative cognitive radio networks

Abstract: Recently various cognitive radio network models are suggested and analyzed. In particular, cooperative cognitive radio network model considers cooperative relaying of secondary users in cognitive radio networks, which utilize the spectrum occupancy efficiently. However, such cooperation may not occur when secondary users have a better alternative, spectrum leasing. Therefore, in this paper, we study the impact of leasing in a network model with game-theoretic analysis. We first show the importance of the problem with a simple two-secondary-user game. Finally we extend our formulation and analysis to explicitly incorporate the effects of lease strength for a n-secondary-user game given the occupancy model of primary users.

Incorporating feedback from application layer into routing and wavelength assignment algorithms

Abstract: Preemptive Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) algorithms preempt established lightpaths in case not enough resources are available to set up a new lightpath in a Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) network. The selection of lightpaths to be preempted relies on internal decisions of the RWA algorithm. Thus, if dedicated properties of the network topology are required by the applications running on the network, these requirements have to be known to the RWA algorithm. Otherwise it might happen that by preempting a particular lightpath these requirements are violated. If, however, these requirements include parameters known only at the nodes running the application, the RWA algorithm cannot evaluate the requirements. For this reason an RWA algorithm is needed which incorporates feedback from the application layer in the preemption decisions. This work proposes a simple interface along with an algorithm for computing and selecting preemption candidates in case a lightpath cannot be established. We reason about the necessity of using information from the application layer in the RWA and present two example applications which benefit from this idea.

Demonstrating the benefit of joint application and network control within a wireless access network

Abstract: In today's access networks, the quality experienced by users of Internet applications is not always as good as possible. This is mainly due to the unawareness of the varying requirements of the services in today’s network. It cannot assess how the user experiences the service and consequently cannot adapt to the user’s demands. As a result, video streaming packets are treated in the same way as file downloads, i.e., real time services and best effort services are treated equally.

Privacy preserving distributed network outage monitoring

Abstract: Troubleshooting network outages is a complex and time-consuming process Network administrators are typically overwhelmed with large volumes of monitoring data, like NetFlow data, and are often “left alone”, fighting problems with very basic debugging tools, like ping and traceroute Distributed network traffic monitoring and intelligent correlation of data from different Internet locations are highly valuable for analysing the root cause of network outages However, correlating measurements across domains is presently largely avoided due to privacy concerns A possible solution to this problem is secure multiparty computation (MPC) In this work, we propose a distributed mechanism based on MPC for privacy-preserving correlation of traffic measurements from multiple networks, towards network outage diagnosis We first outline an MPC protocol that can be used to analyse the scope (local, global, or semi-global) and impact of network outages across multiple domains Then, we use NetFlow data from a medium-sized ISP to evaluate the performance of our protocol Our preliminary findings indicate that correlating data from several dozens of parties is feasible in real-time, with a delay of just a few seconds This underlines the scalability, and potential for real-world deployment of our scheme Finally, we apply our scheme to a known connectivity issue involving a large European Internet Exchange Point (IXP) and demonstrate that our approach enables to easily distinguish between local, global, and semi-global outages In our study, 8154% of the 3,408 reported outages were local, and 1846% affected between 2 and 5 organizations

A new MAC protocol to support mobile nodes and real-time wireless sensor network applications

Abstract: This paper proposes MAC-MR a new Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to support mobile nodes and real-time Wireless Sensor Networks.

Combining control loops and ant algorithms to optimize network lifetime

Abstract: Wireless multi-hop networks (WMHNs) are meant to be flexible, scalable, adaptable, and robust. In addition, some types of WMHNs expose properties such as self-organization or self-healing which renders them suitable for safety-critical application scenarios such as disaster management. One of the main goals in these scenarios is to provide a certain network lifetime in conjunction with a guarantee on a specific degree of resilience in order to enable communication during the required time period. In order to achieve this goal, self-organization on several layer needs to be combined. In this poster we present a solution that integrates self-organization from social bio-inspired networking and control theory.

Live evaluation of quality of experience for video streaming and web browsing

Abstract: Web browsing and Video download are two major applications of the Internet. To evaluate Quality of Experience (QoE) of these applications, we have developed two tools: (i) pytomo, a tool that executes video download and emulates playback as performed by the Flashplayer plugin. A live web interface for visualisation also gives user information about main indicators for troubleshooting. (ii) CPM, a Firefox plugin that records main events during Web page download to perform a “post-mortem” Critical Path Analysis, indicates to the end-user or Web developer which objects of a given Web page determines the overall page load time.

Delay tolerant networks as spatio-temporal networks

Abstract: The performance of routing protocols in Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) is primarily determined by the interaction patterns of the agents in the network. Recent studies on human daily life interaction patterns have reported that the interaction pattern is highly time dependent, and repetitive at a regular interval. In this study, we exploit this property of human interaction to first model the interaction patterns as a spatio-temporal network. We then design an efficient algorithm to compute foremost journeys from an arbitrary source to any destination in the network, with an ultimate goal to construct a space-time routing table.

Demo abstract: Synchronization using inhibitory and excitatory coupling: From theory to practice

Abstract: Solutions for time synchronization based on coupled oscillators operate in a self-organizing and adaptive manner and can be applied to various types of dynamic networks. In this demo, we present the actual implementation of our guaranteed self-organizing synchronization algorithm on packet based networks like wireless sensor networks as well as on iPhone devices (by using acoustic signals). The algorithm is purposed for pulse couple oscillators and exploits the interactions between them to guarantee synchronization on arbitrary network topologies. It supports the design of scalable, minimal control toter and energy efficient communication protocols for fully distributed synchronization.