Future networks will face major challenges in accommodating emerging and future networked applications. These challenges include significant architecture and management issues pertaining to future networks. In this thesis, we study several of these challenges including issues such as configurability, application-awareness, rapid application-creation and deployment and scalable QoS management. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Application-Oriented Network (AON) architecture as a converged computing and communication network in which application providers are able to flexibly configure in-network resources on-demand. The resources in AON are virtualized and offered to the application providers through service-oriented approaches. To enable large-scale experimentation with future network architectures and applications, in the second part of this thesis, we present the Virtualized Application Networking Infrastructure (VANI) as a prototype of an Application-Oriented Network. VANI utilizes a service-oriented control and management plane that provides flexible and dynamic allocation, release, program and configuration of resources used for creating applications or performing network research experiments from layer three and up. Moreover, VANI resources allow development of network architectures that require a converged network of computing and communications resources such as in-network processing, storage and software and hardware-based reprogrammable resources. We also present a Distributed Ethernet Traffic Shaping (DETS) system used in bandwidth virtualization in VANI and designed to guarantee the send and receive Ethernet traffic rates in VANI, in a computing cluster or a datacenter. The third part of this thesis addresses the problem of scalable QoS and admission control in service-oriented environments where a limited number of instances of service components are shared among different application classes. We first use Markov Decision Processes to find optimal solutions to this problem. Next we present a scalable and distributed heuristic algorithm able to guarantee probability of successful completion of a composite application. The proposed algorithm does not assume a specific distribution type for services execution times and applications request inter-arrival times, and hence is suitable for systems with stationary or non-stationary request arrivals. We use simulations and experimental measurements to show the effectiveness of the proposed solutions and algorithms in various parts of this thesis.

Future networks will face major challenges in accommodating emerging and future networked applications. These challenges include significant architecture and management issues pertaining to future networks. In this thesis, we study several of these challenges including issues such as configurability, application-awareness, rapid application-creation and deployment and scalable QoS management. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Application-Oriented Network (AON) architecture as a converged computing and communication network in which application providers are able to flexibly configure in-network resources on-demand. The resources in AON are virtualized and offered to the application providers through service-oriented approaches. To enable large-scale experimentation with future network architectures and applications, in the second part of this thesis, we present the Virtualized Application Networking Infrastructure (VANI) as a prototype of an Application-Oriented Network. VANI utilizes a service-oriented control and management plane that provides flexible and dynamic allocation, release, program and configuration of resources used for creating applications or performing network research experiments from layer three and up. Moreover, VANI resources allow development of network architectures that require a converged network of computing and communications resources such as in-network processing, storage and software and hardware-based reprogrammable resources. We also present a Distributed Ethernet Traffic Shaping (DETS) system used in bandwidth virtualization in VANI and designed to guarantee the send and receive Ethernet traffic rates in VANI, in a computing cluster or a datacenter. The third part of this thesis addresses the problem of scalable QoS and admission control in service-oriented environments where a limited number of instances of service components are shared among different application classes. We first use Markov Decision Processes to find optimal solutions to this problem. Next we present a scalable and distributed heuristic algorithm able to guarantee probability of successful completion of a composite application. The proposed algorithm does not assume a specific distribution type for services execution times and applications request inter-arrival times, and hence is suitable for systems with stationary or non-stationary request arrivals. We use simulations and experimental measurements to show the effectiveness of the proposed solutions and algorithms in various parts of this thesis.

This thesis focuses on methods for fast recognition of application protocols. Fast recognition is recognition with minimal delay from the time of capturing the first data packet sent  from the source node. This thesis describes possible techniques and methods for recognition of application protocols and basic information and description of reference system for lawful interception in computer networks. Furthermore, the thesis describes analysis, design and implementation phase of a tool for fast recognition of application protocols. The conclusion of this thesis describes the results of tests performed by the tool and shows its limitations and possible extensions.

In this study, an online movie recommendation engine that serves on Facebook is developed in order to evaluate social circle eects on user preferences in a trust-based environment. Instead of using single-user profiles in the social environment identification process, virtual group profiles that present common tastes of the social environments, are formed to achieve a successful social circle analysis and innovative suggestions. Recommendations are generated based on similar social circles and based on social circles of similar users separately and their results are evaluated. Pure collaborative filtering is applied to emphasize the influence of social environment characteristics.

Scalable and accurate analysis of networks is essential to a wide variety of existing and emerging network systems. Specifically, network measurement and analysis helps to understand networks, improve existing services, and enable new data-mining applications. To support various services and applications in large-scale networks, network analytics must address the following challenges: (i) how to conduct scalable analysis in networks with a large number of nodes and links, (ii) how to flexibly accommodate various objectives from different administrative tasks, (iii) and how to cope with the dynamic changes in the networks. This dissertation presents novel path analysis schemes that effectively address the above challenges in analyzing pair-wise relationships among networked entities. In doing so, we make the following three major contributions to large-scale IP networks, social networks, and application service networks. For IP networks, we propose an accurate and flexible framework for path property monitoring. Analyzing the performance side of paths between pairs of nodes, our framework incorporates approaches that perform exact reconstruction of path properties as well as approximate reconstruction. Our framework is highly scalable to design measurement experiments that span thousands of routers and end hosts. It is also flexible to accommodate a variety of design requirements. For social networks, we present scalable and accurate graph embedding schemes. Aimed at analyzing the pair-wise relationships of social network users, we present three dimensionality reduction schemes leveraging matrix factorization, count-min sketch, and graph clustering paired with spectral graph embedding. As concrete applications showing the practical value of our schemes, we apply them to the important social analysis tasks of proximity estimation, missing link inference, and link prediction. The results clearly demonstrate the accuracy, scalability, and flexibility of our schemes for analyzing social networks with millions of nodes and tens of millions of links. For application service networks, we provide a proactive service quality assessment scheme. Analyzing the relationship between the satisfaction level of subscribers of an IPTV service and network performance indicators, our proposed scheme proactively (i.e., detect issues before IPTV subscribers complain) assesses user-perceived service quality using performance metrics collected from the network. From our evaluation using network data collected from a commercial IPTV service provider, we show that our scheme is able to predict 60% of the service problems that are complained by customers with only 0.1% of false positives. / text

Current systems for counting cars on parking lots usually use specialized equipment, such as barriers at the parking lot entrance. Usage of such equipment is not suitable for free or residential parking areas. However, even in these car parks, it can help keep track of their occupancy and other data. The system designed in this thesis uses the YOLOv4 model for visual detection of cars in photos. It then calculates an embedding vector for each vehicle, which is used to describe cars and compare whether the car has changed over time at the same parking spot. This information is stored in the database and used to calculate various statistical values like total cars count, average occupancy, or average stay time. These values can be retrieved using REST API or be viewed in the web application.