A grande evolução nos sistemas de comunicação, relacionados à transmissão de conteúdo multimídia nas redes de comunicação de dados e de transmissão de TV, demanda soluções de gerência da qualidade de serviço fim-a-fim. Diante deste cenário é proposta nesse trabalho a definição, implementação e validação de uma solução para monitoramento de transmissão de mídia que permite ser aplicada em arquiteturas de redes heterogêneas. Essas redes possuem a característica de integrar diversas tecnologias de redes de comunicação de dados e de telecomunicações, envolvendo redes modernas e antigas, padronizadas e proprietárias. Este trabalho apresenta um sistema de monitoramento para transmissão de TV Digital em ambientes heterogêneos convergentes, isto é, redes que utilizam tecnologias e meios de transmissão distintos para transmissão de vários tipos de fluxos, e com foco na aplicação TV Digital. Para isso, são discutidos aspectos fundamentais para o monitoramento de fluxo de TV Digital neste tipo de rede e é feita uma análise da comunicação entre os subsistemas do ambiente. O sistema de monitoramento possui uma arquitetura definida que se baseia no protocolo RTP Real-time Transport Protocol, para suportar a transmissão de mídias, como áudio e vídeo, em redes heterogêneas. A fim de validar esta arquitetura foi implementado um protótipo, como prova de conceito, que obtém dados através da base de informações de gerência (MIB) RTP. Os resultados gerados pelo protótipo consolidam informações relativas à variação de atraso em uma interface web de gerenciamento através de monitores distribuídos pela rede. / The great evolution in the telecommunication systems related to the transmission of multimidia contents in the data communication networks and TV transmission, demands management solutions in which regards quality of end-to-end services. Taking this scenario into consideration, it is proposed in this work the definition and implementation of a solution to monitor media transmition that can be applied to heterogeneous network architectures. The feature of such networks is to integrate different data communication network technologies and telecommunication, involving legacy and modern networks, standarized and proprietary. This work presents a monitoring system for digital TV transmission in heterogeneous converging environments, that is, networks that use different technologies and transmission means for the Digital TV application. Therefore, key aspects for monitoring the digital TV flow in this kind of network are pointed out, as well as an analysis of the communication among the environment subsystems. The monitoring system has a defined architecture, based on the RTP Real-time Transport Protocol, to support the media transmission, such as audio and video, in heterogeneous networks. In order to validate this architecture, a prototype was implemented, as concept evidence, that obtains data from the management information base (MIB) RTP. The results generated by the prototype consolidate information related to the delay variation (jitter) in a management web interface through monitors distributed around the network.

A TV digital é hoje uma realidade em muitos países e no Brasil as pesquisas já estão atingindo um estágio avançando. Muita expectativa gira em torno desta tecnologia, que oferece uma ampla variedade de serviços multimídia, abrindo as portas deste modo para criativas propostas e novas possibilidades de relacionamento com o usuário final. Esta complexidade e as novas opções de serviços que podem ser oferecidos demandam, obrigatoriamente, uma arquitetura adequada de gerenciamento, capaz de controlar e otimizar os terminais desta rede bem como os serviços oferecidos pela mesma. Neste trabalho são apresentados os requisitos funcionais e não funcionais necessários para a construção de um sistema genérico de gerenciamento de set-top boxes e serviços em TV digital, baseados no estudo de pesquisas semelhantes e nas particularidades deste ambiente. Também para este sistema genérico são detalhados todos os casos de uso de interesse. Além disso, uma arquitetura híbrida é proposta para a solução deste problema, utilizando para tanto padrões abertos e considerando alguns cenários possíveis de implantação no mundo real. Nesta arquitetura, é adotado o modelo clássico de gerenciamento gerente-agente, através do uso de um servidor de gerência, responsável pelo armazenamento e análise de todos os dados de gerenciamento bem como pelo disparo de comandos e recebimento de respostas (síncronas e/ou assíncronas) dos agentes. Tanto na definição deste sistema genérico como no desenho da arquitetura final, procurou-se na medida do possível adotar a utilização de princípios clássicos de gerenciamento que já são aplicados em várias arquiteturas existentes, inclusive de mercado. Deste modo, foi possível encontrar uma solução para um problema complexo através do uso de conceitos amplamente conhecidos, o que facilita o entendimento final. / Nowadays, digital TV systems are a reality in many countries and in Brazil the research in this field is reaching an advanced stage. Much excitement is expected from this technology, which may offer a wide variety of multimedia services, opening the doors for creative proposals and new possibilities of relationships with the final user. This complexity and the new options of services that can be offered demand a suitable architecture for management, which should be able to control and optimize the set-top boxes of this network as well as of the services offered by it. In this work, the requirements for the building of a generic management system for the digital TV environment are presented, based in the study of similar research and considering the specifics involved. Besides that, a hybrid architecture based on open standards is proposed for the solution of this problem. In this architecture, it is adopted the classical manager-agent model, through the use of a management server, which is responsible for the storage and analysis of all the management data as well for the triggering of commands and receptions of answers and traps sent by the agents. The conception and design of this architecture has followed as much as possible, classic principles of network management. With this approach, it was possible to find a simple solution to a very complex problem.

Algumas palavras e definições comumente utilizadas quando se está falando de Software-Defined Networking, como programabilidade, flexibilidade, ou gerenciamento centralizado, parecem muito apropriadas ao contexto de um outro paradigma de rede: Internet of Things. Em redes domésticas já não é incomum a existência de dispositivos projetados para segurança, climatização, iluminação, monitoramento de saúde e algumas formas de automação que diferem entre si em diversos aspectos, como no modo de operar e de se comunicar. Lidar com este tipo de cenário, que pode diferir bastante daquilo que estamos acostumados na gerência de redes e serviços, fazendo uso dos recursos tradicionais como ferramentas e protocolos bem estabelecidos, pode ser difícil e, em alguns casos, inviável. Com o objetivo de possibilitar o monitoramento remoto de pacientes com doenças crônicas através de dispositivos de healthcare disponíveis no mercado, uma proposta de middleware foi desenvolvida em um projeto de pesquisa para contornar as limitações relacionadas à interoperabilidade, coleta de dados, gerência, segurança e privacidade encontradas nos dispositivos utilizados. O middleware foi projetado com o intuito de executar em access points instalados na casa dos pacientes. Contudo, as limitações de hardware e software do access point utilizado refletem no desenvolvimento, pois restringem o uso de linguagens de programação e recursos que poderiam agilizar e facilitar a implementação dos módulos e dos mecanismos necessários. Os contratempos encontrados no desenvolvimento motivaram a busca por alternativas, o que resultou na refatoração do middleware através de Software-Defined Networking, baseando-se em trabalhos que exploram o uso desse paradigma em redes domésticas. O objetivo deste trabalho é verificar a viabilidade da utilização de Software-Defined Networking no contexto de Internet of Things, mais especificamente, aplicado ao serviço de monitoramento de pacientes da proposta anterior e explorar os possíveis benefícios resultantes. Com a refatoração, a maior parte da carga de serviços da rede e do monitoramento foi distribuída entre servidores remotos dedicados, com isso os desenvolvedores podem ir além das restrições do access point e fazer uso de recursos antes não disponíveis, o que potencializa um processo de desenvolvimento mais ágil e com funcionalidades mais complexas, ampliando as possibilidades do serviço. Adicionalmente, a utilização de Software-Defined Networking proporcionou a entrega de mais de um serviço através de um único access point, escalabilidade e autonomia no gerenciamento das redes e dos dispositivos e na implantação de serviços, fazendo uso de recursos do protocolo OpenFlow, e a cooperação entre dispositivos e serviços a fim de se criar uma representação digital mais ampla do ambiente monitorado. / Some words and definitions usually employed when talking about Software-Defined Networking such as programmability, frexibility, or centralized management sound very appropriate to the context of another network paradigm: Internet of Things. The presence of devices designed for security, air conditioning, lighting, health monitoring and some other automation resources have become common in home networks; those devices may be different in many ways, such as the way they operate and communicate, between others. Dealing with this kind of scenario may differ in many ways from what we are familiar regarding networking and services management; the use of traditional management tools and protocols may be hard or even unfeasible. Aiming to enable the health monitoring of patients with chronical illnesses through using off-the-shelf healthcare devices a middleware proposal was developed in a research project to circumvent interoperability, data collecting, management, security and privacy issues found in employed devices. The middleware was designed to run on access points in the homes of the patients. Although hardware and software limitations of the used access points reflect on the development process, because they restrict the use of programming languages and resources that could be employed to expedite the implementation of necessary modules and features. Development related mishaps have motivated the search for alternatives resulting in the middleware refactoring through Software-Defined Networking, based on previous works where that paradigm is used in home networks. This work aims to verify the feasability of the employment of Software- Defined Networking in the Internet of Things context, and its resulting benefits; specifically in the health monitoring of chronic patients service from the previous proposal. After refactoring most of the network and services load was distributed among remote dedicated servers allowing developers to go beyond the limitations imposed by access points constraints, and to make use of resources not available before enabling agility to the development process; it also enables the development of more complex features expanding services possibilities. Additionally Software-Defined Networking employment provides benefits such as the delivering of more than only one service through the same access point; scalability and autonomy to the network and devices monitoring, as to the service deployment through the use of OpenFlow resources; and devices and services cooperation enabling the built of a wider digital representation of the monitored environment.

Network management requires a large amount of knowledge about the network. In particular, knowledge about used network addresses, access time, and topology is useful. In a network composed of managed devices, much of the data necessary can come from simple network management protocol (SNMP) queries. Other data can come from other databases, or analysis of existing data. In particular, layer-two network topology can be determined by analyzing the mac address forwarding tables of layer-two devices. The layer-two topology can be merged with a layer-three topology to generate a complete topology of the network. This information is useless unless it is easily accessible to the network manager; therefore, a simple interface should be used to give access to all of this data.

This thesis develops a number of graph-based techniques that are capable of measuring the dynamic behaviour of a network and discusses their application in network management. By representing a computer network as a time series of uniquely labelled graphs, it is possible to measure the degree of change that has occurred between a pair of graphs, and hence the dynamics in a network. Concepts introduced include the median graph, intra- and inter- graph clustering, and hierarchical graph representations. The focus is on producing efficient algorithms and improved measures of network change. It is believed that these graph-based techniques for measuring network dynamics have great potential in network anomaly detection, and thus will improve reliability of enterprise intranets.

This dissertation reports on studies of the application of lexicographic graph searches to solve problems in FPGA detailed routing. Our contributions include the derivation of iteration limits for scalar implementations of negotiation congestion for standard floating point types and the identification of pathological cases for path choice. In the study of the routability-driven detailed FPGA routing problem, we show universal detailed routability is NP-complete based on a related proof by Lee and Wong. We describe the design of a lexicographic composition operator of totally-ordered monoids as path cost metrics and show its optimality under an adapted A* search. Our new router, CornNC, based on lexicographic composition of congestion and wirelength, established a new minimum track count for the FPGA Place and Route Challenge. For the problem of long-path timing-driven FPGA detailed routing, we show that long-path budgeted detailed routability is NP-complete by reduction to universal detailed routability. We generalise the lexicographic composition to any finite length and verify its optimality under A* search. The application of the timing budget solution of Ghiasi et al. is used to solve the long-path timing budget problem for FPGA connections. Our delay-clamped spiral lexicographic composition design, SpiralRoute, ensures connection based budgets are always met, thus achieves timing closure when it successfully routes. For 113 test routing instances derived from standard benchmarks, SpiralRoute found 13 routable instances with timing closure that were unroutable by a scalar negotiated congestion router and achieved timing closure in another 27 cases when the scalar router did not, at the expense of increased runtime. We also study techniques to improve SpiralRoute runtimes, including a data structure of a trie augmented by data stacks for minimum element retrieval, and the technique of step tomonoid elimination in reducing the retrieval depth in a trie of stacks structure.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-187).

Future Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) with high carrier frequencies and wide channels need a dense deployment of Access Points (APs) to provide good performance. In densely deployed WLANs associations of stations and handovers need to be managed more intelligently than today. This dissertation studies when and how a station should perform a handover and to which AP from a theoretical and a practical perspective. We formulate and solve optimization problems that allow to compute the optimal AP for each station in normal WLANs and WLANs connected via a wireless mesh backhaul. Moreover, we propose to use software defined networks and the OpenFlow protocol to optimize station associations, handovers and traffic rates. Furthermore, we develop new mechanisms to estimate the quality  of a link  between a station and an AP. Those mechanisms allow optimization algorithms to make better decisions about when to initiate a handover. Since handovers in today’s WLANs are slow and may disturb real-time applications such as video streaming, a faster procedure is developed in this thesis. Evaluation results from wireless testbeds and network simulations show that our architectures and algorithms significantly increase the performance of WLANs, while they are backward compatible at the same time.

The current Internet architecture presents a barrier to accommodate the vigorous arising demand for deploying new network services and applications. The next-generation architecture views the network virtualization as the gateway to overcome this limitation. Network virtualization promises to run efficiently and securely multiple dedicated virtual networks (VNs) over a shared physical infrastructure. Each VN is tailored to host a unique application based on the user’s preferences. This thesis addresses the problem of the efficient embedding of multiple VNs onto a shared substrate network (SN). The contribution of this thesis are twofold: First, a novel hierarchical SN management framework is proposed that efficiently selects the optimum VN mapping scheme for the requested VN from more than one proposed VN mapping candidates obtained in parallel. In order to accommodate the arbitrary architecture of the VNs, the proposed scheme divides the VN request into smaller subgraphs, and individually maps them on the SN using a variation of the exact subgraph matching techniques. Second, the physical resources pricing policy is introduced that is based on time-ofuse, that reflects the effect of resource congestion introduced by VN users. The preferences of the VN users are first represented through corresponding demand-utility functions that quantify the sensitivity of the applications hosted by the VNs to resource consumption and time-of-use. A novel model of time-varying VNs is presented, where users are allowed to up- or down-scale the requested resources to continuously maximize their utility while minimizing the VNs embedding cost. In contrast to existing solutions, the proposed work does not impose any limitations on the size or topology of the VN requests. Instead, the search is customized according to the VN size and the associated utility. Extensive simulations are then conducted to demonstrate the improvement achieved through the proposed work in terms of network utilization, the ratio of accepted VN requests and the SP profits.

Modem network control plane that supports versatile communication services (e.g. performance differentiation, access control, virtualization, etc.) is highly complex. Different control components such as routing protocols, security policy enforcers, resource allocation planners, quality of service modules, and more, are interacting with each other in the control plane to realize complicated control objectives. These different control components need to coordinate their actions, and sometimes they could even have conflicting goals which require careful handling. Furthermore, a lot of these existing components are distributed protocols running on large number of network devices. Because protocol state is distributed in the network, it is very difficult to tightly coordinate the actions of these distributed control components, thus inconsistent control actions could create serious problems in the network. As a result, such complexity makes it really difficult to ensure the optimality and consistency among all different components. Trying to address the complexity problem in the network control plane, researchers have proposed different approaches, and among these the centralized control plane architecture has become widely accepted as a key to solve the problem. By centralizing the control functionality into a single management station, we can minimize the state distributed in the network, thus have better control over the consistency of such state. However, the centralized architecture has fundamental limitations. First, the centralized architecture is more difficult to scale up to large network size or high requests rate. In addition, it is equally important to fairly service requests and maintain low request-handling latency, while at the same time having highly scalable throughput. Second, the centralized routing control is neither as responsive nor as robust to failures as distributed routing protocols. In order to enhance the responsiveness and robustness, one approach is to achieve the coordination between the centralized control plane and distributed routing protocols. In this thesis, we develop a centralized network control system, called Maestro, to solve the fundamental limitations of centralized network control plane. First we use Maestro as the central controller for a flow-based routing network, in which large number of requests are being sent to the controller at very high rate for processing. Such a network requires the central controller to be extremely scalable. Using Maestro, we systematically explore and study multiple design choices to optimally utilize modern multi-core processors, to fairly distribute computation resource, and to efficiently amortize unavoidable overhead. We show a Maestro design based on the abstraction that each individual thread services switches in a round-robin manner, can achieve excellent throughput scalability while maintaining far superior and near optimal max-min fairness. At the same time, low latency even at high throughput is achieved by Maestro's workload-adaptive request batching. Second, we use Maestro to achieve the coordination between centralized controls and distributed routing protocols in a network, to realize a hybrid control plane framework which is more responsive and robust than a pure centralized control plane, and more globally optimized and consistent than a pure distributed control plane. Effectively we get the advantages of both the centralized and the distributed solutions. Through experimental evaluations, we show that such coordination between the centralized controls and distributed routing protocols can improve the SLA compliance of the entire network.