Alexandros Kostopoulos

Towards Multipath TCP Adoption: Challenges and opportunities

Successful deployment of new network protocols on the Future Internet is not a trivial task. Deployable protocol design is necessary but not sufficient condition for protocols success, unless it takes all stakeholders involved in the deployment process into account. This paper investigates the challenges of deploying a new transport protocol on the Internet, using Multipath TCP - a TCP variant that transmits along several network paths at the same time - as an example and proposes a framework for its adoption process based on diffusion theory. The paper distinguishes the roles of adopters and other stakeholders in the deployment process, and presents scenarios that enhance Multipath TCP deployment and adoption. One key finding is that the role of end users is not of significant importance for Multipath TCP deployment, because they are not necessarily in a position to make a conscious adoption decision.

On user-centric tools for QoE-based recommendation and real-time analysis of large-scale markets

This article focuses on mechanisms that empower users with quality of experience recommendations and smart real-time analytics. It presents a user-centric recommendation system (called u-map) that enables users to collect network measurements and subjective opinion scores about the performance of various services. It also cross-correlates measurements obtained by u-map to provide geo-statistics, user profiles, and quality of experience prediction models for different services. The article also presents CoRLAB, a modular multi-layer framework for modeling and assessing various markets, services, and their evolution under a diverse set of customer populations and conditions. U-map feeds CoRLAB with user measurements and feedback in (semi) real-time. The article discusses how u-map and CoRLAB have been used to analyze telecommunication markets and services. It highlights the main research results, challenges, and potential research directions.

Enhancing information lookup privacy through homomorphic encryption

Revealing one’s interests in communication has been recognized as a growing problem in the Internet. We postulate that it is desirable for future information retrieval systems to provide privacy in both what information is requested and what information is received, without raising obstacles to the deployment of accounting and access control mechanisms. This paper outlines a solution that fulfills this requirement in the context of broker-based systems, that is, systems in which brokers facilitate the communication between a consumer and a provider (of information). Broker-assisted communication is a common paradigm used in many settings, including contemporary information-centric networking approaches. We present the design and the evaluation of a solution that conceals consumers’ interests, without hiding consumer identity or location. The developed solution is applied over a system of hierarchically organized brokers; similar systems are used in many information lookup services. Because in these systems, information is distributed in various locations, traditional private information retrieval (PIR) protocols exhibit significant communication overhead. Our solution achieves up to 97% less communication overhead compared with a PIR protocol, without additional computational overhead. Copyright

Realising an application environment for information-centric networking

It has been argued by many that the Future Internet should address information at the core of its operation. Prototypes have emerged to embody this new paradigm. Applications for such networks, however, are noted primarily by their absence. In spite of an appetite for Information-Centric Networking (ICN) applications, relatively little has come to fruition. We suggest that this is due to an unfavorable development environment, requiring applications to interface with the ICN substrate directly. This paper aims to answer this shortcoming by providing a middleware layer that aids the development of more advanced applications. We also present an application that leverages the middleware and answers a real-world problem concerning personalised media delivery. We argue that the development of this, and potentially other, application(s) is aided by the presence of such an application environment.

A tussle analysis for information-centric networking architectures

Current Future Internet (FI) research brings out the trend of designing information-oriented networks, in contrast to the current host-centric Internet. Information-centric Networking (ICN) focuses on finding and transmitting information to end-users, instead of connecting end hosts that exchange data. The key concepts of ICN are expected to have significant impact on the FI, and to create new challenges for all associated stakeholders. In order to investigate the motives as well as the arising conflicts between the stakeholders, we apply a tussle analysis methodology in a content delivery scenario incorporating socio-economic principles. Our analysis highlights the interests of the various stakeholders and the issues that should be taken into account by designers when deploying new content delivery schemes under the ICN paradigm.

Towards the Adoption of Secure Cloud Identity Services

Enhancing trust among service providers and end-users with respect to data protection is an urgent matter in the growing information society. In response, CREDENTIAL proposes an innovative cloud-based service for storing, managing, and sharing of digital identity information and other highly critical personal data with a demonstrably higher level of security than other current solutions. CREDENTIAL enables end-to-end confidentiality and authenticity as well as improved privacy in cloud-based identity management and data sharing scenarios. In this paper, besides clarifying the vision and use cases, we focus on the adoption of CREDENTIAL. Firstly, for adoption by providers, we elaborate on the functionality of CREDENTIAL, the services implementing these functions, and the physical architecture needed to deploy such services. Secondly, we investigate factors from related research that could be used to facilitate CREDENTIALs adoption and list key benefits as convincing arguments.

Energy-Aware Pricing Within Cloud Environments

The Adapting Service lifeCycle towards EfficienT Clouds (ASCETiC) project aims to provide novel methods and tools to support software developers aiming to optimize energy efficiency resulting from designing, developing, deploying and running software at the different layers of the cloud stack architecture, while maintaining other quality aspects of software to meet the agreed levels. The Pricing Modeler is a component within the ASCETiC architecture, which is responsible for the price estimation and billing of cloud applications or Virtual Machines (VMs) based on their energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a set of novel energy-aware pricing schemes implemented within the Pricing Modeler component, as well as a set of envisaged service plans which aim to facilitate the gradual adoption of the ASCETiC architecture.

Deployment and adoption of future internet protocols

Many, if not most, well-designed Future Internet protocols fail, and some badly-designed protocols are very successful. This somewhat depressing statement illustrates starkly the critical importance of a protocols deployability. We present a framework for considering deployment and adoption issues, and apply it to two protocols, Multipath TCP and Congestion Exposure, which we are developing in the Trilogy project. Careful consideration of such issues can increase the chances that a future Internet protocol is widely adopted.

Putting Intelligence in the Network Edge Through NFV and Cloud Computing: The SESAME Approach

The core challenges in the actual SESAME EU-funded project is to develop an ecosystem to sustain network infrastructure openness, built on the pillars of network functions virtualization (NFV), mobile-edge computing (MEC) capabilities and cognitive network management that will provide multi-tenancy and flexible cloud-network interaction with highly-predictable and flexible end-to-end performance characteristics. Based on this aspect, we discuss the potential benefits of including NFV and MEC in a modern mobile communications infrastructure, through Small Cells coordination and virtualization, also focused upon realistic 5G-oriented considerations. Within the proposed SESAME architecture, we also assess the various advantages coming from a more enhanced network operation and management of resources, as it appears with the incorporation of cognitive capabilities embracing knowledge and intelligence.

Design aspects for 5G architectures: The SESAME and COHERENT approach

The exponential growth of mobile data traffic still remains an important challenge for the mobile network operators. In response, the 5G scene needs to couple fast connectivity and optimized spectrum usage with cloud networking and high processing power, optimally combined in a converged environment. In this paper, we investigate two 5G research projects; SESAME [1] and COHERENT [2]. We consider the proposed 5G architectures and the corresponding key network components, in order to highlight the common aspects towards the 5G architecture design.