Bogdan V. Ghita

Assessing the Global Accessibility of the Internet.

Previous studies have identified significant disparity in the levels of Internet access availability in different countries, particularly in developing nations. This paper presents the findings of an investigation into Internet connectivity and usage in different countries, in an attempt to determine the extent of Internet access, and whether the availability of such technology is considered to be beneficial. This research considers indicators such as available technology infrastructure and access costs, in order to identify the varying limitations that may be faced in different countries across continents. In addition, the opinions of individuals were sought regarding their typical access methods and level of Internet access, typical services utilised, and the general impact Internet has had upon their activities. A Web‐based questionnaire was used to elicit comments from 152 respondents from 19 countries, yielding preliminary statistical data to enable the assessment of Internet usage in different countries.

Improvements to Inter System Handover in the EPC Environment

The Evolved Packet Core (EPC), defined by 3GPP, provides the possibility of integrating 3GPP as well as non-3GPP access network technologies. This opens up new options for mobility through the use of inter system handover over several access network technologies. This paper provides an overview of the introduced component Access Network Discovery and Selection Function (ANDSF) from the 3GPP as well as the Media Independent Handover (MIH) Service standard 802.21 from IEEE which aim to facilitate handovers, in particular the inter system handover. The paper provides an insight into how the two handover optimisation mechanisms can work together and complement one another. Furthermore a solution that combines MIH and ANDSF is proposed for improving the inter system handover behaviour.

A new taxonomy for comparing intrusion detection systems

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a new taxonomy for intrusion detection systems as a way of generating further research topics focussed on improving intrusion system performance.Design/methodology/approach – The paper shows that intrusion systems are characterised by the type of output they are capable of producing, such as intrusion/non‐intrusion declarations, through to intrusion plan determination. The output type is combined with the data scale used to undertake the intrusion determination, to produce a two‐dimensional intrusion matrix.Findings – The paper finds that different approaches to intrusion detection can produce different footprints on the intrusion matrix. Qualitative comparison of systems can be undertaken by examining the area covered within the footprint and the footprint overlap between systems. Quantitative comparison can be achieved in the areas of overlap.Research limitations/implications – The paper shows that the comparison of systems based on their footprint on th...

P2p-based community concept for M2M applications

This publication presents a novel concept to provide and use services in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) connected Machine-To-Machine (M2M) community. Service compositions are presented that address several application fields like Ambient Assisted Living, traffic, energy, electro mobility, logistic or surveillance. The successfully implemented concept for optimisation of energy management in the local grid with P2P connected households became more generalised. Now it can be part of M2M application fields of 2nd and 3rd generation. The concept provides an overall solution for information exchange, extended by community mechanism, for convenient networking of peers to use and provide optimised services. Inside the community, the peers can operate as a single peer or operate as a cluster of peers to provide and use the services.

On Internet Traffic Classification

Traffic classification utilizing flow measurement enables operators to perform essential network management. Flow accounting methods such as NetFlow are, however, considered inadequate for classification requiring additional packet-level information, host behaviour analysis, and specialized hardware limiting their practical adoption. This paper aims to overcome these challenges by proposing two-phased machine learning classification mechanism with NetFlow as input. The individual flow classes are derived per application through k-means and are further used to train a C5.0 decision tree classifier. As part of validation, the initial unsupervised phase used flow records of fifteen popular Internet applications that were collected and independently subjected to k-means clustering to determine unique flow classes generated per application. The derived flow classes were afterwards used to train and test a supervised C5.0 based decision tree. The resulting classifier reported an average accuracy of 92.37% on approximately 3.4 million test cases increasing to 96.67% with adaptive boosting. The classifier specificity factor which accounted for differentiating content specific from supplementary flows ranged between 98.37% and 99.57%. Furthermore, the computational performance and accuracy of the proposed methodology in comparison with similar machine learning techniques lead us to recommend its extension to other applications in achieving highly granular real-time traffic classification.

Hop-Based dynamic fair scheduler for wireless Ad-Hoc networks

In a typical multihop Ad-Hoc network, interference and contention increase when flows transit each node towards destination, particularly in the presence of cross-traffic. This paper observes the relationship between throughput and path length, self-contention and interference and it investigates the effect of multiple data rates over multiple data flows in the network. Drawing from the limitations of the 802.11 specification, the paper proposes a scheduler named Hop Based Multi Queue (HBMQ), which is designed to prioritise traffic based on the hop count of packets in order to provide fairness across different data flows. The simulation results demonstrate that HBMQ performs better than a Single Drop Tail Queue (SDTQ) scheduler in terms of providing fairness. Finally, the paper concludes with a number of possible directions for further research, focusing on cross-layer implementation to ensure the fairness is also provided at the MAC layer.

Toward enhanced data exchange capabilities for the oneM2M service platform

The machine-to-machine (M2M) service platform is being standardized to enable the intercommunication of devices, which is the basis for smart environments and intelligent transport systems (ITS) applications. In such environments, adapting the data exchange between devices and applications to the requirements of the application is a critical step in ensuring the functionality and reliability of the service. This article employs test-cases to analyze the data exchange of the oneM2M standard using an M2M-based automotive service delivery platform. Following the analysis, it proposes enhancements such as application-data-dependent criteria for data notification in combination with aggregation of different subscriptions to the same resource. Finally, the article discusses the proposed enhancements against the background of M2M design considerations and improved privacy.

Network quality of service monitoring for IP telephony

This paper presents a non‐intrusive method of determining network performance parameters for voice packet flows within a Voice over IP, or Internet Telephony call. An advantage of the method is that it allows not only end‐to‐end performance monitoring of flows, but also makes it possible to inspect the transport parameters of a specific network or link when delay sensitive traffic transits through it. The results of a preliminary test, to check the validity of the method, are also included.

Decentralised system architecture for autonomous and cooperative M2M application service provision

This publication presents a novel concept for autonomous and decentralised M2M application service provision. The functional architecture of the approach is introduced as well as a detailed description of the system structure and process for application creation. Furthermore, this publication describes details about the proposed process for decentralised M2M application service management and formal description of M2M application services.

Framework for automated functional testing of P2P-based M2M applications

This publication presents a novel concept for automated testing of decentralised services and applications in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) connected Machine-to-Machine (M2M) networks. Different challenges and requirements for testing are defined and a novel testing framework with a special testing architecture for functional testing is introduced. Furthermore, this publication describes a novel concept for deriving and generating test cases in M2M applications composed by several services.