Bilhanan Silverajan

Factoring IPv6 Device Mobility and Ad-hoc Interactions into the Service Location Protocol

The rise in device mobility, interactions for service discovery as well as IPv6 networking, necessitate a means by which a clear and consistent approach towards supporting rapid, dynamic service discovery and service provision must be undertaken. This paper describes ways to provide movement detection, automatic and dynamic discovery of network services as well as network characteristics at the point of attachment for mobile devices moving in IPv6 network spaces. It employs a service discovery mechanism based on using the service location protocol (SLP), one of the most extensively researched and standardised discovery protocols in existence today. We show why traditional means of service discovery have shortcomings when used in advanced mobile networking environments, and describe new extensions to overcome these issues without losing compatibility to existing work in SLP. Prototypes developed and tested from the work described provided empirical verification over several of our production and research IPv6 networks.

IPv6 Addressing Strategies for IoT

In this paper, we analyze the suitability of different IPv6 addressing strategies for nodes, gateways, and various access network deployment scenarios in the Internet of Things. A vast number of things connected to the Internet need IPv6 addresses, as the IPv4 address space was effectively consumed before the introduction of the Internet of Things. We highlight how the heterogeneity of nodes and network technologies, extreme constraint and miniaturization, renumbering, and multihoming, present serious challenges toward IPv6 address allocation. By considering the topologies of various types of IoT networks, their intended uses as well as the types of IPv6 addresses that need to be deployed, we draw attention to allocation solutions as well as potential pitfalls.

Developing network software and communications protocols towards the internet of things

One of the most profound changes today is the increase in mobility of portable yet powerful wireless devices capable of communicating via several different kinds of wireless radio networks of varying link-level characteristics. This paper addresses how the design and implementation of future applications and protocols can be facilitated by network programming frameworks. For the Internet of Things, upholding a clean layered network design while explicitly taking into account host capabilities, interfaces, device resources, device associations, multihoming, user policies and context management would impose many challenges for implementation support. The paper then presents a highly interoperable and lightweight event-based framework that serves many of these needs while also modelling, monitoring and handling events intrinsically present in communication architectures.

Tailored Security: Building Nonrepudiable Security Service-Level Agreements

The security features of current digital services are mostly defined and dictated by the service provider (SP). A user can always decline to use a service whose terms do not fulfill the expected criteria, but in many cases, even a simple negotiation might result in a more satisfying outcome. This article aims at building nonrepudiable security service-level agreements (SSLAs) between a user and an SP. The proposed mechanism provides a means to describe security requirements and capabilities in different dimensions, from overall targets and risks to technical specifications, and it also helps in translating between the dimensions. A negotiation protocol and a decision algorithm are then used to let the parties agree on the security features used in the service. This article demonstrates the feasibility and usability of the mechanism by describing its usage scenario and proof-of-concept implementation and analyzes its nonrepudiability and security aspects.

An event-based framework for converged service provisioning

The paper describes an object-oriented event-based framework for provisioning services for the converging telecommunications networks and the Internet. The DOORS (distributed object operations) framework attempts to address several issues in protocol development, interoperability and distributed computing in heterogenous networks and telecommunications systems. The framework highlights a generic service platform, called Network Intelligence Middleware, as a means to interface with the disparate networks and systems. In addition, the platform is a controlling environment for provisioning the services in the network, guaranteeing the runtime robustness and scalability.

Utilising IPv6 over VPN to enhance home service connectivity

Purpose – The number of home networks, as well as the number of services and hosts in them, is increasing. Often home users cannot get public IPv4 network allocations from service providers and are forced to use network address translation (NAT) and port forwarding to solve connectivity issues to the different home services. This paper seeks to introduce a secure connectivity solution utilising both IPv6 and IPv6 transition mechanisms in cooperation with existing virtual private network (VPN) solutions.Design/methodology/approach – The proposed solution to avoid route conflicts and other problems with private IPv4 address space collisions is to utilise 6to4, an IPv6 transition mechanism, to obtain routable IPv6 network addresses first for the home network and services and then, to utilise the same IPv6 network for connectivity by bridging it over a VPN connection to the mobile terminal.Findings – The paper finds that the adoption of this solution and these technologies will depend on how useful they are s...

IPv6 Experiments in Deploying and Accessing Services from Home Networks

New networking challenges are arising in home networks which will host advanced services in the future. In this paper, we look at home networks as they are managed today, and attempt to identify difficulties that will arise in future when advanced usage is desired. We discuss how IPv6 and standardised IPv6 transition technologies assist in deploying advanced services from home networks. Our practical experiences and experiments with bringing IPv6 to home networks using 6 to 4, building an experimental prototype home gateway device, as well as deploying image sharing, data and streaming audio services from these networks are detailed

A Service discovery model for wireless and Mobile terminals in IPv6

As the mobility and the number of affordable, powerful, and highly portable devices becoming networked increases, so will the amount of networked services offered, managed and discovered. In this paper, we discuss the need and use of service discovery mechanisms in future fixed and mobile networks. In particular, we choose to focus on future enterprise networks that we anticipate would need to support both fixed and wireless terminals with IPv6 and Mobile IPv6 access. We describe service discovery mechanisms using the Service Location Protocol (SLP) in IPv6, and propose extensions to the protocol for utilisation by visiting mobile devices using Mobile IPv6, that will allow service discovery to be performed without breaking compatibility to standard SLP. The extensions introduce 2 new Agents for mobility detection and overcoming limitations of multicast usage by Mobile Nodes in foreign networks. Finally we describe our SLP implementation for IPv6.

Service discovery framework for MANETs using cross-layered design

Service discovery for computer networks has traditionally been done in the application layer. An explosion of growth in the adoption of wireless technology has led to the emergence of a new breed of networks, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). These networks are constrained for resources, error prone and highly volatile. Cross-layered design approaches address the performance problems faced by traditional approaches to service discovery in MANETs. In these approaches the optimization is achieved by coupling the service discovery functions with routing functions, which reduces the generality of the solutions. In this paper we present a cross-layered solution to this problem that aims to preserve the best of both the traditional application layer and cross-layered design approaches. We propose a framework for service discovery in MANETs that not only exhibits superior performance but is also feature rich, takes an integrated approach to service discovery and is based on a modular design.

Home Network Security: Modelling Power Consumption to Detect and Prevent Attacks on Homenet Routers

Future home networks are expected to become extremely sophisticated, yet only the most technically adept persons are equipped with skills to secure them. In this paper, we provide a novel solution to detect and prevent attacks on home routers based on anomalous power consumption. We developed a means of measuring power consumption that could be used in a wide variety of home networks, although our primary focus on is on profiling Homenet-based residential routers, specifically to detect attacks against homenet routing infrastructure. Several experimental results are presented when the infrastructure is exposed to various types of attacks, which show strong evidence of the feasibility of our approach.