Schlagwort-Archive: Science

On the TPC of the 10th Int-Conf Wired/Wireless Internet Communications (WWIC 2012)

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The 10th International Conference on Wired/Wireless Internet Communications – WWIC 2012 will be held in the magnificent island of Santorini, Greece, on June 4-6, 2012.

The goal of the conference is to present high-quality results in the field of global internetworking, and to provide a framework for research collaboration through focused discussions that will designate future research efforts and directions. In this context, the program committee will accept only a limited number of papers that meet the criteria of originality, presentation quality and topic relevance. WWIC is a single-track conference which has reached, within 9 years, the highest level of quality, which is reflected both in the level of participation as well as the acceptance ratio and the amount and quality of submitted papers. Following the conference tradition there will also be a best paper award.

Accepted papers from the Call-for-Papers (CFP) will appear in the conference proceedings published by Springer in the Lecture Notes of Computer Science (LNCS) Series. Extended versions of selected papers will be considered for publication in a special issue of a competitive international journal.

5th GI/ITG KuVS Fachgespräch Next Generation Service Delivery Platforms

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Notes of the 5th KuVS GI/ITG Workshop „NG Service Delivery Platforms“ with the topic „Advanced Service Delivery Platforms for Mobile Networks“

QoE optimization with network layer awareness on hybrid wireless networks (T. Melia, S. Randriamasy, Alcatel-Lucent, France; D. Munaretto, M. Zorzi, Univ. Padova/CFR, Italy)
– FP7 Medieval Project
– QoE based resource management in current BWA networks (LTE but also WiFi)
– Qoe Metrics for Video – Compare with reference and/or no reference
– Use the fact that different paths trough the networks means different QoE. Access/path selection based on QoE targets
– IETF ALTO (Application Layer Optimization) Working Group
— Describes attributes of caches and of their locations
— ALTO server provides ALTO clients with info on topology, routing cost, etc
– ALTO stores the network cost and needs to be combined with application layer metrics
– ALTO a tool for the operator to evaluate the performance of network caches
– In Medival ALTO not opened to users, ie operator does not reveal network-internals

Analysis of managed and OTT streaming services in mobile networks (J. Eisl, G. Kuhn, M. Lott, Nokia Siemens Networks, Germany; M. Varela, J. Prokkola, T. Mäki, J–P. Laulajainen, VTT, Finland)
Presented by M. Lott, Head of Service Control & Identity Management
– Compares „managed services“ (with QoS/QoE support by operators) and OTT services
– Different devices, different services (Mobile TV, Streaming Video, etc)
– Measurements via tcpdump, Wireshark, and tool developed by VTT
– OTT services mostly provided over HTTP, some use RTP/RTSP
– Microsoft Smoth Streaming and Apple HTTP Live Streaming are HTTP-based adaptive streaming protocols
– Conclusions: Rate adaptation not widely used, not supported by many servers, HTTP-based adaptations proprietary
– Conclusion: Managed services not significantly better than OTT services
— Paper author/NSN concludes: Means current QoS/QoE mechanisms are ineffective; more research required

FoG and Clouds: On Optimizing QoE for YouTube (T. Hoßfeld, F. Liers, T. Volkert, R. Schatz, Univ. Würzburg, Germany; Univ. Ilmenau, Germany; FTW Vienna, Austria
– Trend away from QoS towards QoE
– How to manage/optimize networks for QoE
– For HTTP-based video streaming there is no „low quality“, video will simply stall if too few resources
– Proposed: YouTube QoE metric that covers „stalling“
– Extensive study with human subjects to identify key criteria for „video quality“
– Mapping between „MOS and Number of Stalls“
– Conclusion: Users accept only very very few stalls (1 to no) and only very short stalls (exponential decrease of MOS)
– Equation for initial caching delay versus bandwidth provisioning

Application and Quality of Experience Aware Resource Management (D. Stähle, Univ. Würzburg, Germany)
– Look for ways to achieve win/win situation through network/user cooperation
– Possible with QoE as metric?
– And for Mesh-Networks?
– AquareYoumon tool by Uni Wuerzburg (Youtube QoE over mesh networks)
– YoMo – client-based application monitoring

MediaCloud – A Distributed Service Platform for Media Services (M. Bauer, S. Braun, P. Domschitz, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, Germany)
– Pardigm shift expected away from „Big Iron“ approach (datacenter centric) towards distributed „MediaCloud“
– A new approach to „building distributed services“
— Flow-driven model, Atomic execution model;
— Work on media chunks, not IP packets
– G-Streamer framework goes a bit into this direction

Seamless Service Provision in P2P Service Overlays (K. Panitzek, I. Schweizer, M. Ikramy and Max Mühlhäuser, TU Darmstadt, Germany)
– P2P service overlays – distribution and execution of applications, composition of services
– Seamless service migration between peers
– MudoCore middleware – for code migration between peers
– Chord DHT – for distributed service registry

IEEE Globecom 2010

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IEEE GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE (IEEE GLOBECOM) is one of the flagship conferences of the IEEE Communications Society and high up on my annual conference must-attends.

This year, IEEE Globecom 2010, is held in Miami, Florida and lines-up seamlessly in the hall of fame of this conference series. With 2500 attendees on-site it sets a new record and as usual it features a very comprehensive program with a good number of high-profile speakers from business as well as academia.

Keynote by Yoshihiro Obata, CTO of eAccess Ltd in Japan
A very interesting talk, excellent presentation with a very good mix of industry/company background/insight and technological/research challenges. This is the style of talks you look for at IEEE Globecom.

Here is what Mr Obata had to tell:

– Traditionally, Telco services were controlled by operators (e.g. SMS). With IP services control moves towards devices/applications
– And terminal are no any longer provided by the operator, huge variety in devices, competition high (e.g. Apple vs Google)

– Smart-phones turn signaling (traffic) into a huge issue for operators. As control went from network to devices operators cant control / police users effectively. This essentially prevents M2M introduction

– Highest expenses are still with the backbone, eAccess flat rate offers were only possible since they own a backbone, especially in wireless networks is the backbone cost what matters; base stations are not relatively inexpensive

– Volume and characteristic of traffic by corporate users does not cause trouble, i.e. corporate users behave as they follow a certain (manageable) pattern (e.g. peak traffic).

– Mobile vs Fixed: The peak (busy hour) in mobile networks is broad (TMB: statistically stationary) versus traffic in fixed networks (ie DSL) shows very sharp/short peaks (instationary) -> TMB: This has consequences to admission control!

– Reasoning: mobile terminals/services are simpler to use, by potentially more singles and younger users, which are attached for longer periods to their terminals; In contrast, Internet services over fixed (cable, DSL, etc) access require a greater effort to start, in particular the terminal (PC, laptop, etc) and hence users start-use-shut.

– On traffic patterns: 300K (2-5%) users take 50% of the capacity for peer-to-peer traffic, still no issue for state-of-the-art technlogy, annoying though, but the network needs to be sized for full capacity anyways.

– On business in general, telcos need to adapt to change as meanwhile nearly 30% of the user spending goes to the terminal and this takes a major part of the overall budget

– A new service in Japan is „Pocket WiFi, WiFi allows terminals to concurrently access the network with one subscription. This gives meanwhile three options for mobile operators – hotspots, mirco cells, pocket wifi – still unclear which will predominate

Kevin Fall (Intel) WSN Forum
– Observation on WSNs – mostly worried with power consumption, use essentially the same network architecture as any other devices, people mostly use them for trivial scenarios (room temperature monitoring)

– Programming WSNs as essembles instead can be a basis for innovative scenarios

– Issues: disconnection, addressing (location/ID, address space)

– Some ideas/solutions: DTN (storage/caching), use URIs for addressing/naming anything

– Info-networking (content-centric or data-centric networking) that put data/information in the center of design, architecture, operations instead of hosts

Edward Knightly (Rice Uni) WSN Forum
Edward, how was giving a keynote at my BWA workshop in 2008, talked about „sensing“ in general and took WSNs into the vehicular, smart grid, and eHealth domain. Nothing really new, some of the slides are indeed known for a while (eHealth). What was new though, is that he is promoting „Visible Light Communication“ as a technology for vehicular communications.

H. Atarashi (NTT DOCOMO) 4G Operator Perspectives
– DOCOMO to deploy LTE comercially in Dec 2010, initially over legacy 3G infrastructure, terminals will support dual-mode

– 3 deployment scenarios, remote-radio-head, cabinet-type, indoor

– Remote radio head: base stations (eNodeB) are deployed somewhere and connect over fiber to the …

– ~1000BS by end of 2010, 5000 by end of 2011, 15000 by end of 2012 (40% POP coverage)

China Mobile
– 564m subscribers, ~500000 GSM base stations
– LTE deployment in 2011, several trials conducted with several manufacturers involved (terminal + network), LTE-TD meets all expectations

COMCAST IPv6 Forum
– CDNs are starting migration strategies this year (2011)
– Mind that this involves many aspects, way beyond the network, e.g. OS, Apps, OSS tools, CRM, Accounting, BSS in general
– To wait is a risk: v6 introduction takes time, Google needed 3 years
– And there will be more NAT to come in the meantime
– But 90% of v6-readiness can be achieved without turning v6 on!
– How to save cost? Put v6-readiness in your product strategy (TMB: that“s easy said ..) and mind that a customer may need to turn NAT on in order to access your content
– But isn“t v6 broken? No, that“s mostly an issue on your consumer-side and mind, ISP-NAT does not scale and add complexity/unwanted control
– The today challenge of v6 is not so much technology, it“s training of field personell, sales, support, etc
– Comcast is virtually v6 ready

Nokia IPv6 Forum
– Symbian is v6 ready since quite a while
– NAT versus v6, keep-alive versus idle but connected -> NAT drains your mobile“s battery
– Operators will not switch on Voice over LTE in the near future
– More details on NAT: keep-alive commonly in 40sec-5min intervals, can decrease your standby time from days to hours, many different/imcompatible tunneling, very different NATs (home, office, hotspots, ISP-NAT, etc) in terms of traversal mechanisms, frequently poor quality code, mind multi-level NAT (cascades)
– T-Mobile and Nokia run v6-trial in the USA, Nokia supports cell+wifi v6 in the N900 dual-stack.

Some random notes
– JND theory, „just noticable distortion“, widely used theory for picture quality evaluation (subjective)

– Wireless network usage is not uniform, one practical example shows 15% of the cells generate 50% of total traffic

– Most of the traffic in the future is expected to come from indoor environments

NETWORKING INNOVATIONS OVER VIRTUALIZED INFRASTRUCTURES (NOVI)

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NOVI is new research project that aims at developing a federation of „Experimental Facilities“. This is indeed needed looking at the very many „test beds, pilot sites, experimental infrastructures and facilities“ that were built in the past with public funds and co-innovation research all over Europe. Without knowing numbers, there must be hundreds if not thousands of such sites that allow to experiment with network architectures and more recently also compute and storage systems.

What remains to be seen is whether a cohesive/coherent federation will lead to an upsurge of usage, especially by industrial research organisation. From this perspective, the issue is less scale and simplicity but rather legal aspects related to running code on nodes/hosts that are operated by someone in the „experimental cloud“.

Some time ago I had a closer look into PlanetLab, perhaps the pioneer in this domain, and the concepts behind truly appeal. Technically, the conceptual proximity to Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings, like the one by Amazon or Akamai, is intriguing. And usage statistics indicate significant interesst by the community. The biggest disadvantage in my view was/is the lack of support for reproducability of experiments as resources are not explicitely granted and isolated. Essentially, one can conduct an experiment at large-scale and realistic conditions but each and anyone remains unique and hence (striclty) uncomparable.

This is supposted to be different for GENI, which is a pretty large-scale infrastructure for a „Future Internet“ (communication architecture). Some claim it will turn sooner or later, once the Future Internet Architecture is identified, into the Future Internet, just like the ARPA/DARPA Net did orignially.

So something that is worth to keep an eye on.

But along with Cloud Computing (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) offerings the IT domain is also looking more into this domain and OpenCirrus is a perfect example for this. It remains a somewhat semi-pubilc resource but allows to experiment with IaaS down to the virtualization layers (and slightly beyond).

It“s hard to keep track of this domain, indeed. In Europe there is a whole research theme / community after it – Future Internet Research & Experimentation – but the needed for experimentation seems to be there. Actually I know too little of actual usage stats and it was something that called experimental facilities in question over the past.

But now I got invited to the advisory board of the NOVI project and I am truly looking forward to gaining deeper insight in this domain.