Luca Davoli

Design and Deployment of an IoT Application-Oriented Testbed

The global reach and extreme heterogeneity of the Internet of Things present major application development challenges. Using the same Web-based approach underlying the Internets evolution into the IoT, the Web of Things Testbed provides a stable, open, dynamic, and secure infrastructure to simplify application design and testing.

Traffic Engineering with Segment Routing: SDN-Based Architectural Design and Open Source Implementation

Traffic Engineering (TE) in IP carrier networks is one of the functions that can benefit from the Software Defined Networking paradigm. However traditional per-flow routing requires a direct interaction between the SDN controller and each node that is involved in the traffic paths. Segment Routing (SR) may simplify the route enforcement delegating all the configuration and per-flow state at the border of the network. In this work we propose an architecture that integrates the SDN paradigm with SR based TE, for which we have provided an open source reference implementation. We have designed and implemented a simple TE/SR heuristic for flow allocation and we show and discuss experimental results.

An Open-Source Cloud Architecture for Big Stream IoT Applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) is shaping to a worldwide network of networks consisting of billions of interconnected heterogeneous sensor/actuator-equipped devices (denoted as “things” or “smart objects”), which are expected to exceed 50 billions by 2020. Smart objects, which will be pervasively deployed, are constrained devices with (i) limited processing power and available memory and (ii) limited communication capabilities, in terms of transmission rate and reliability. Future Smart-X applications, such as Smart Cities and Home Automation, will be fostered by the use of standard and interoperable IP-based communication protocols that smart objects are going to implement, by simplifying their development, integration, and deployment. Smart-X applications will significantly differ from traditional Internet services, in terms of: (i) the number of data sources; (ii) rate of information exchange; and, (iii) need for real-time processing. Because of these requirements, such services are denoted as “Big Stream” applications, in order to distinguish them from traditional Big Data applications. In this paper, we present an implementation of a novel Cloud architecture for Big Stream applications based on standard protocols and open-source components, which provides a scalable and efficient processing platform for IoT applications, designed to be open and extensible and to guarantee minimal latency between data generation and consumption. We also provide a performance evaluation based on experimentation in a real-world Smart Parking scenario, to assess the feasibility and scalability of the proposed architecture.

Performance evaluation of a SIP-based constrained peer-to-peer overlay

In recent years, due to the development and innovation in hardware and software, the scenario of a global worldwide network capable of interconnecting both traditional nodes and new Smart Objects (the Internet of Things) is coming true. The Internet of Things (IoT) will involve billions of communicating heterogeneous devices, using different protocols in order to enable new forms of interaction between things and people. In this context, due to scalability, fault-tolerance, and self-configuration requirements, peer-to-peer(P2P) architectures are very appealing in many large-scale IoT scenarios. However, due to memory, processing, and power limitations of constrained devices, the use of specific signaling protocols for the maintenance of the P2P overlay is a critical point. In this paper we present a performance evaluation of a real DHT-based P2P overlay in order to understand the benefits in terms of bandwidth consumption and transmitted/received data when a constrained SIP-based protocol, denoted as CoSIP, is used as P2P signaling protocol.

PMSR — Poor Man's Segment Routing, a minimalistic approach to Segment Routing and a Traffic Engineering use case

The current specification of the Segment Routing (SR) architecture requires enhancements to the intradomain routing protocols (e.g. OSPF and IS-IS) so that the nodes can advertise the Segment Identifiers (SIDs). We propose a simpler solution called PMSR (Poor Mans Segment Routing), that does not require any enhancement to routing protocol. We compare the procedures of PMSR with traditional SR, showing that PMSR can reduce the operation and management complexity. We analyze the set of use cases in the current SR drafts and we claim that PMSR can support the large majority of them. Thanks to the drastic simplification of the control plane, we have been able to develop an open source prototype of PMSR. In the second part of the paper, we consider a Traffic Engineering use case, starting from a traditional flow assignment optimization problem, which allocates hop-by-hop paths to flows. We propose a SR path assignment algorithm and prove that it is optimal with respect to the number of segments allocated to a flow.

From Micro to Macro IoT: Challenges and Solutions in the Integration of IEEE 802.15.4/802.11 and Sub-GHz Technologies

Research efforts in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) are providing solutions in building new types of “network of networks,” going beyond the technological barriers due to intrinsic limitations of the constrained devices typically used in this context. Thanks to the improvement in communication/networking protocols and the hardware cost reduction, it is now possible to define new IoT architectures, combining the “micro” IoT paradigm, based on short-range radio technologies (e.g., IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11), with the rising “macro” IoT paradigm, based on sub-GHz radio technologies. This allows the implementation of scalable network architectures, able to collect data coming from constrained devices and process them in order to provide useful services and applications to final consumers. In this paper, we focus on practical integration between micro and macro IoT approaches, providing architectural and performance details for a set of experimental tests carried out in the campus of the University of Parma. We then discuss challenges and solutions of the proposed micro–macro integrated IoT systems.

An anonymization protocol for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to pervasively interconnect billions of devices, denoted as “smart objects”, in an Internet-like structure, which will extend the current Internet, enabling new forms of interactions between objects based on social relationships. In such a scenario, security is a difficult and challenging task, and proper mechanisms should be defined without introducing too much protocol overhead and processing load. In particular, in this paper we focus on the anonymity of the communications and we propose a solution particularly suitable for such a constrained scenario. In the proposed solution IoT nodes form an Onion Routing anonymity network completely based on a datagram transport (e.g., over UDP). Confidentiality is completely enforced by the anonymity network and no other security protocols, such as IPSec or DTLS, are required. The proposed solution has been also implemented and tested.

Internet of Things on Power Line Communications: An Experimental Performance Analysis

The giant information exchange enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, i.e. by a “network of networks” of smart and connected devices, will likely exploit electrical lines as a ready-to-use infrastructure. Power Line Communications (PLC) have received a significant attention in the last decade, as electrical lines are not used as simple energy supply media, but as information carriers. Among the different aspects of PLC-based architectures, an interesting and important analysis have to be reserved to security aspects that should be adopted in similar infrastructures, having that they are crucial to deliver trustworthy and reliable systems and, hence, to support users relying on available services, especially in case in which they should be inherently secure at the physical level (e.g. against unauthorised signal removal/interruption and eavesdropping, since they are difficult and dangerous). Motivated by the relevant impact of PLC on IoT, in this chapter we investigate experimentally the performance of IoT systems on PLC in indoor environments, considering a vendor-provided application tool and a self-developed Java library. The experimental tests are carried out on both cold and hot electrical lines, evaluating both fixed-size and variable-length power lines. Our results show that IoT-oriented PLC can reach a throughput of 8 kbps on a 300-m cold line and of 6 kbps on a 300-m hot line. Further experimental efforts will be oriented to performance analyses in presence of the adoption of security measures.

Design and experimental performance analysis of a B.A.T.M.A.N.-based double Wi-Fi interface mesh network

Abstract Mesh networks and, in particular, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are gaining a growing interest because of their scalability, robustness, and ease of deployment. These characteristics make WMNs suitable for several applications, such as distributed sensing, monitoring, and public safety. In this paper, we describe a novel WMN implementation based on the use of low-cost double Wi-Fi interface embedded IoT-oriented devices. At each node, one interface provides external connectivity, whereas the other interface is used to create a mesh backbone. On the mesh side, the Better Approach To Mobile Ad-hoc Networking (B.A.T.M.A.N.) routing algorithm is used to route the traffic flows from external clients (possibly towards an Internet gateway), which can be IoT nodes and/or mobile nodes (e.g., smartphones and tablets). After providing a description of the architecture and relevant implementation details, we carry out an extensive experimental campaign to evaluate the WMN performance, especially in terms of the trade-off between throughput and number of hops.