Glenford E. Mapp

Networked surfaces: a new concept in mobile networking

Networked Surfaces are surfaces which provide networking to specially augmented objects when these objects are physically placed on top of the surface. When an object (e.g., a notebook computer) connects, a handshaking protocol assigns functions such as data or power transmission to the various conducting paths that are established. This paper describes the position occupied by this concept in the world of networking, presents an overview of the technology used in its realisation, describes the current prototype implementation, and outlines the implications in the fields of Ubiquitous and Sentient Computing.

On the Investigation of Cloud-Based Mobile Media Environments With Service-Populating and QoS-Aware Mechanisms

Recent advances in mobile devices and network technologies have set new trends in the way we use computers and access networks. Cloud Computing, where processing and storage resources are residing on the network is one of these trends. The other is Mobile Computing, where mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are believed to replace personal computers by combining network connectivity, mobility, and software functionality. In the future, these devices are expected to seamlessly switch between different network providers using vertical handover mechanisms in order to maintain network connectivity at all times. This will enable mobile devices to access Cloud Services without interruption as users move around. Using current service delivery models, mobile devices moving from one geographical location to another will keep accessing those services from the local Cloud of their previous network, which might lead to moving a large volume of data over the Internet backbone over long distances. This scenario highlights the fact that user mobility will result in more congestion on the Internet. This will degrade the Quality of Service and by extension, the Quality of Experience offered by the services in the Cloud and especially multimedia services that have very tight temporal constraints in terms of bandwidth and jitter. We believe that a different approach is required to manage resources more efficiently, while improving the Quality of Service and Quality of Experience of mobile media services. This paper introduces a novel concept of Cloud-Based Mobile Media Service Delivery in which services run on localized public Clouds and are capable of populating other public Clouds in different geographical locations depending on service demands and network status. Using an analytical framework, this paper argues that as the demand for specific services increases in a location, it might be more efficient to move those services closer to that location. This will prevent the Internet backbone from experiencing high traffic loads due to multimedia streams and will offer service providers an automated resource allocation and management mechanism for their services.

A ubiquitous, personalized computing environment for all: Teleporting in an X Window System Environment

Teleporting is the ability to redirect a windowing environment to different computer displays. This paper describes the implementation of a teleporting system developed at Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL). We outline two particular features of the system that make it powerful. First, it operates with existing applications, which will run without any modification. Second, it incorporates sophisticated techniques of personnel and equipment location which make it simple to use. Teleporting may represent a development in attempts to achieve a ubiquitous, personalised computing environment for all.

Providing Security in 4G Systems: Unveiling the Challenges

Several research groups are working on designing new security architectures for 4G networks such as Hokey and Y-Comm. Since designing an efficient security module requires a clear identification of potential threats, this paper attempts to outline the security challenges in 4G networks. A good way to achieve this is by investigating the possibility of extending current security mechanisms to 4G networks. Therefore, this paper uses the X.805 standard to investigate the possibility of implementing the 3G’s Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol in a 4G communication framework such as YComm. The results show that due to the fact that 4G is an open, heterogeneous and IP-based environment, it will suffer from new security threats as well as inherent ones. In order to address these threats without affecting 4G dynamics, Y-Comm proposes an integrated security module to protect data and security models to target security on different entities and hence protecting not only the data but, also resources, servers and users.

A practical approach for 4G systems: deployment of overlay networks

Experimental activities play a vital role in the deployment and development of novel radio access networks. In particular the movement from 3G to 4G poses new challenges, which need to be solved using practical approaches such as testbeds. This paper presents a testbed that can be regarded as an early attempt to build a 4G system. It fully integrates heterogeneous wireless technologies using a loosely-coupled architecture. Also, experimental results are included to show the possibilities of this setup.

Exploring Efficient Imperative Handover Mechanisms for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The Next Generation Internet will provide ubiquitous computing by the seamless operation of heterogeneous wireless networks. It will also provide support for quality-ofservice, QoS, fostering new classes of applications and will have a built-in multi-level security environment. A key requirement of this new infrastructure will be support for efficient vertical handover. Y-Comm is a new architecture that will meet the challenge of this new environment. This paper explores the design of efficient imperative handover mechanisms using the Y-Comm Framework. It first looks at different types of handovers, then examines the Y-Comm Framework and shows how Y-Comm maps unto current mobile infrastructure. It then explores support for different handover mechanisms using Y-Comm. Finally, it highlights the development of a new testbed to further investigate the proposed mechanisms.

Secure Live Virtual Machines Migration: Issues and Solutions

In recent years, there has been a huge trend towards running network intensive applications, such as Internet servers and Cloud-based service in virtual environment, where multiple virtual machines (VMs) running on the same machine share the machines physical and network resources. In such environment, the virtual machine monitor (VMM) virtualizes the machines resources in terms of CPU, memory, storage, network and I/O devices to allow multiple operating systems running in different VMs to operate and access the network concurrently. A key feature of virtualization is live migration (LM) that allows transfer of virtual machine from one physical server to another without interrupting the services running in virtual machine. Live migration facilitates workload balancing, fault tolerance, online system maintenance, consolidation of virtual machines etc. However, live migration is still in an early stage of implementation and its security is yet to be evaluated. The security concern of live migration is a major factor for its adoption by the IT industry. Therefore, this paper uses the X.805 security standard to investigate attacks on live virtual machine migration. The analysis highlights the main source of threats and suggests approaches to tackle them. The paper also surveys and compares different proposals in the literature to secure the live migration.

A formally verified AKA protocol for vertical handover in heterogeneous environments using Casper/FDR

Next generation networks will comprise different wireless networks including cellular technologies, WLAN and indoor technologies. To support these heterogeneous environments, there is a need to consider a new design of the network infrastructure. Furthermore, this heterogeneous environment implies that future devices will need to roam between different networks using vertical handover techniques. When a mobile user moves into a new foreign network, data confidentiality and mutual authentication between the user and the network are vital issues in this heterogeneous environment. This article deals with these issues by first examining the implication of moving towards an open architecture, and then looking at how current approaches such as the 3GPP, HOKEY and mobile ethernet respond to the new environment while trying to address the security issue. The results indicate that a new authentication and key agreement protocol is required to secure handover in this environment. Casper/FDR, is used in the analysis and development of the protocol. The proposed protocol has been proven to be successful in this heterogeneous environment.

A client-based handoff mechanism for mobile IPv6 wireless networks

Mobile IP enables mobile computers to roam transparently in any network. However, the current proposed protocol specification does not support a suitable handoff mechanism to allow a mobile computer to change its point of attachment from one network to another. This paper describes a handoff mechanism for mobile host, which makes use of Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) and mobile IP without the need to introduce a new mobility management protocol or make changes to the network infrastructure.

Exploiting Location and Contextual Information to Develop a Comprehensive Framework for Proactive Handover in Heterogeneous Environments

The development and deployment of several wireless and cellular networks mean that users will demand to be always connected as they move around. Mobile nodes will therefore have several interfaces and connections will be seamlessly switched among available networks using vertical handover techniques. Proactive handover mechanisms can be combined with the deployment of a number of location-based systems that provide location information to a very high degree of accuracy in different contexts. Furthermore, this new environment will also allow contextual information such as user profiles as well as the availability of using location and contextual information to provide efficient handover mechanisms. Using location-based techniques, it is possible to demonstrate that the Time Before Vertical Handover as well as the Network Dwell Time can be accurately estimated. These techniques are dependent on accurately estimating the handover radius. This paper investigates how location and context awareness can be used to estimate the best handover radius. The paper also explores how such techniques may be integrated into the Y-Comm architecture which is being used to explore the development of future mobile networks. Finally, the paper highlights the use of ontological techniques as a mechanism for specifying and prototyping such systems.