Billy Pinheiro

Filling the gap between Software Defined Networking and Wireless Mesh Networks

Software Defined Networking (SDN) has emerged as a new paradigm that highly increase the network management flexibility through simple but powerful abstractions. The key idea is decoupling the control plane, which makes the forward decisions, from the data plane, which effectively makes the forward. However, the OpenFlow, the main SDN enabler, is designed mainly by wired networks characteristics. As consequence, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) is not suitable for operating as control plane and many wireless networks features are neglected in the OpenFlow, e.g.: power control and network ID. In addition, there are few effort research to extend SDN to wireless networks and these existing works focus on very specific issues of this integration. In this paper, we propose an architecture to extent the OpenFlow functionalities in order to proper deal with wireless networks, including an approach for transporting the control plane over wireless multihop networks. The extensions include new rules, actions, and commands, which bring the network management flexibility to the wireless context. We validated our proposal by implementing and testing some extensions in a small real world testbed. As a proof of concept, we illustrate the OpenFlow capability of isolation between research and production traffics in a wireless backhaul.

CIM-SDN: A Common Information Model extension for Software-Defined Networking

The increase in complexity of computer networks and their services have boosted the development of standardizations, models, and solutions for network management over the years. Lately, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) defined the Common Information Model (CIM) for describing computational entities and businesses on the Internet. This paper proposes an extension of the CIM for Software-Defined Networking (SDN) by adding new elements (Controllers, Apps, Slices and others) to improve the system management performance. Furthermore, we define a metamodel to help the process of creating and understanding the proposed model. The proposal was validated by creating a script that generates the FlowVisor configuration file using the network model as input and using Object Constraint Language (OCL) to find inconsistencies in the network.

A Multimedia-Based Fuzzy Queue-Aware Routing Approach for Wireless Mesh Networks

The proliferation of multimedia content and Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are changing the Internet facilities and life style of fixed and mobile users. For the success of the next generation wireless networks, novel multimedia approaches with quality level assurance are required to allow the distribution of video-streaming, video conference, gaming, multimedia social networking, green multimedia content and other entrainment applications for thousand of users in ubiquitous wireless (mesh) systems. In this context, new routing schemes are needed to provide end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) support for delay/loss/jitter-sensitive multimedia applications in WMNs. The well-known OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing) protocol with ETX (Expected Transmission Count) metric bring many benefits for the path selection process, but present a drawback in the queue availability management and reduce the system performance. Therefore, multimedia-related packets will suffer with loss/delay/jitter and the system overall performance will decrease. This paper proposes the Queue-based OLSR ETX (QoETX) approach to overcome the limitations of OLSR-ETX regarding queue availability by using a cross-layer scheme and supporting QoS and QoE assurance. QoETX optimizes network and user-based parameters by coordinating queue availability, QoS and fuzzy issues in the routing decision process as a way to allocate the best paths for multimedia applications. In order to present the benefits of the proposed solution compared with existing routing schemes, namely OLSR-ETX, OLSR-FLC, OLSR-MD and HWMP (IEEE 802.11s standard), regarding QoS (block probability and throughput) and QoE (PSNR, SSIM, VQM and MOS) parameters, performance evaluations were carried by using the Network Simulator (NS-2.34).

A fuzzy queue-aware routing approach for wireless mesh networks

Recent advances in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have overcome the drawbacks of traditional wired and ad-hoc networks and now they are seen as a means of allowing last mile communications with quality level assurance in Future Multimedia Systems. However, new routing schemes are needed to provide end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) support for delay/loss/jitter-sensitive multimedia applications. The well-known OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing) protocol with ETX (Expected Transmission Count) metric brings many benefits to the path selection process, but has a drawback with regard to queue availability management, which reduces the system performance. This problem is caused when OLSR-EXT control messages are exchanged and the queues of mesh routers along the end-to-end communication path are overloaded. As a result, multimedia-related packets will suffer from loss/delay/jitter and the overall system performance will decrease. This paper proposes the Optimized Link State Routing-Fuzzy ETX Queue (OLSR-FEQ) protocol to overcome the limitations of OLSR-ETX regarding queue availability, QoS and QoE assurance. OLSR-FEQ optimizes network and user-based parameters by coordinating queue availability, QoS and fuzzy issues in the routing decision process as a way of allocating the best paths for multimedia applications. Performance evaluations were carried out with the Network Simulator (NS-2.34) to show the benefits of the proposed solution when compared with existing routing schemes, namely OLSR-ETX, OLSR-FLC, OLSR-MD and HWMP (IEEE 802.11s standard), regarding QoS (unsuccessful packet delivery and throughput) and QoE (PSNR, SSIM, VQM and MOS) parameters.

Abaré: A deployment and management framework for wireless mesh network

The adoption of wireless mesh networks as a solution for access networks in indoor and outdoor environments is considered by the academic community and industry as a good alternative for Internet access due to their economic and technical feasibility. However, the existence of proprietary and open-source solutions that are not interoperable and the delay in the standardization makes the deployment of wide scale wireless mesh networks a time consuming task and it may come along with some security problems. In this paper, we propose Abaré, a framework which defines a set of components and steps to aid in the deployment and administration of mesh networks since its inception.

Trends and Challenges for Quality of Service and Quality of Experience for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless communications have received a lot of attention from both industry and academic groups. Wireless access allows independency between the users position and the physical bearer used to access services from the network, as well as, it supports the delivery of multimedia content ubiquitously (Chiti et al., 2008) (Akyildiz & Wang, 2009). Nowadays, the Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) model is one of the most relevant approaches to provide lastmile access in emerging communication systems (Held, 2005) (Zhang et al., 2006) (Hossain & Leung, 2009), such as The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11s (802.11s, 2010). Another standard that enables mesh mode is the IEEE 802.16 (802.16, 2010), which is used in Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) systems. WMNs are a special case of ad hoc networks, which allow multiple hops, increase the coverage area, and have low implementation cost and support ubiquitous features for Internet access. A WMN consists of clients (Mesh Clients (MC)), routers (Mesh Routers (MR)) and gateways, where routers provide connectivity to a set of fixed and/or mobile users and gateways assure Internet connectivity as presented in Figure 1. Multimedia applications, such as video streaming, Voice over IP (VoIP), and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), will be abundant in future wireless mesh systems and, consequently, the end-to-end quality level support for these services is a major requirement for a near future. In this context, new Quality of Service (QoS) (Bok-Nyong Park et al. 2006) and Quality of Experience (QoE) (Jain, 2004) approaches are needed to optimize the usage of (scarce wireless) network resources and increase the user s satisfaction. QoS-based schemes define a set of network level (and packet level) measurement and control operations to guarantee the distribution of multimedia content, in wired and wireless networks, with an acceptable quality level. Traditional QoS metrics, such as packet loss rate, packet delay rate and throughput, are typically used to indicate the impact on the multimedia quality level from the network’s point of view, but do not reflect the user’s experience. The receiving (by user devices), presenting (by displaying units) and perceiving (by end-users) of the applications are not considered.

Abare: a coordinated and autonomous framework for deployment and management of wireless mesh networks

The adoption of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) is a solution to provide last mile indoor and outdoor Internet access and is gaining an important attention form academic and industry research groups in recent years. WMNs will support the distribution of diverse type of services, ranging from battlefield surveillance to high quality mobile audio and video applications. However, the existence of open source and proprietary approaches that are not interoperable as well as the delay in the standardization process makes the deployment of a large-scale WMN time-consuming and very complex. This paper is an extension of the framework Abare with autonomic capability as well as performance evaluation results are presented. Abare defines a set of components and practices in order to assist the implementation and management of WMN systems, as well as to provide autonomic features in routers to decrease the manager workload and reduce time-consuming.

Model of organization and distribution of applications for software defined networks: SDNrepo

One way to provide more flexibility for computer networks is through software defined networks (SDN). This paradigm supports network applications, whose behavior is defined by the controllers. However, management applications SDN is a solution under explored, such applications are scattered in various repositories codes on-line, or are still embedded in the factory switches. This article proposes a model of organization and distribution of applications, called SDNrepo, may specify and model all the way that applications must do to reach the end user, in this case the controllers.