Sándor Plósz

A Low Power, Programmable Networking Platform and Development Environment

Programmable networking platforms are getting widely used for customized traffic manipulation, analysis and network management. This propagates the need for exceptional development flexibility, for wide variety of high-speed interfaces and for the usage of high performance, yet low power technologies. This paper presents an FPGA-based programmable platform, capable of real-time processing, filtering and manipulating 10Gbps traffic. In order to expand its potential, besides the two 10GbE interfaces, the platform contains extension slots for COM express, mini PCI-e, and it has 16 onboard SFP connectors, towards which the fraction of the traffic, or even the full traffic can be forwarded to. The design is modular, programmable in both hardware (firmware) and software, aiming low power consumption. The full potential of the hardware can only be exploited with an easy-to-use development environment, with simple design customization and support for creating new applications. To fulfill this, a development environment is also presented, including a modeling framework that provides an easy way to create new networking applications on the platform. This framework allows modeling applications in SystemC, and eases the development of the hardware description code.

Dependability of a Network Monitoring Hardware

System dependability plays an important role in the realization of computer communication infrastructures and the everyday operations and maintenance of computer networks. Increased redundancy is used as a common practice to improve dependability, however in some cases duplication of a networking equipment is not desirable due to high cost or increased system complexity as a result of handling potentially duplicated data. In such cases a single point of failure exists. In this paper we first present a highly dependable networking hardware architecture and demonstrate its application in a monitoring example then we provide a detailed dependability analysis for the hardware used in monitoring application.

Security threats and issues in automation IoT

Solving security concerns are one of the main challenges for the Internet of Things. There are different issues to be solved within the physically connected part of the IoT and in the networking domain, and another set of issues exist for the data-processing back-end, not to mention the presentation/configuration layer, where direct human interaction brings in further threats. Automation IoT applications have special real-time requirements, they are expected to have high level of reliability, and often operate in safety-critical environment. These requirements justify extreme security and safety measures. This paper discusses the security threats that can appear in the different layers of an IoT architecture, especially in the automation domain. The mitigation practices of the various security issues are also discussed, bearing in mind that the solutions can bring quite different measures for the physical equipment in the field, for the communication infrastructure, or for the data processing applications.

Ring Flushing for Reduced Overload in Spanning Tree Protocol Controlled Ethernet Networks

Flooding causes serious problems to the scalability of Ethernet networks. Recent proposals to overcome this problem, such as SEATTLE [5], usually require significant changes in different network layers, making the realistic chance of their deployment questionable. In this paper, we propose Ring Flushing, a practical method to reduce the burden of flooding during topology changes. The basic idea behind our approach is to locate stale forwarding information in an efficient way. Ring Flushing abolishes the broadcast-like spreading of topology change information thus shrinking the flushing domain. We implemented Ring Flushing in OMNeT++ simulation environment and evaluated its performance in different topologies and parameter settings. Our simulations show that the Ring Flushing has clear advantage over the approach of standard Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) in terms of throughput during network recovery. Furthermore, the Ring Flushing diminishes overall network overload during topology changes as the network size increases.

Monocular indoor localization techniques for smartphones

Abstract In the last decade huge research work has been put to the indoor visual localization of personal smartphones. Considering the available sensor capabilities monocular odometry provides promising solution, even reecting requirements of augmented reality applications. This paper is aimed to give an overview of state-of-the-art results regarding monocular visual localization. For this purpose essential basics of computer vision are presented and the most promising solutions are reviewed.

Characterization of power-aware reconfiguration in FPGA-based networking hardware

Dynamic reconfiguration of FPGA in the networking hardware device is a feature which can be exploited in numerous networking applications. By reconfiguration we can change either the functionality, performance or even energy consumption of an area on the FPGA. This property can be exploited in a number of ways, in different application areas. However, the question of performance and power consumption trade-off in these situations is still an open issue. In this paper we address this issue by investigating different use cases and introducing a general approach of algorithmic optimization of power consumption based on dynamic reconfiguration. Our findings are supported by extensive SystemC/TLM hardware level simulations.

Design and Implementation of a Practical Smart Home System Based on DECT Technology

Energy management is important not only for the homes, but also for the energy providers. With the ever-increasing broadband penetration it becomes possible the information exchange between the energy provider and customer, and a smart home management system. In this paper, we present a practical smart home system that serves as platform for efficient metering and communication within the household. The interconnection of the home appliances and the home network is realized by light-weight, feature-rich and cost-effective DECT technology (Digital Enhanced Cordless Tele-communications). Furthermore, we provide a concept of integration of the smart home system within the smart energy grid. A model is presented which served as the basis of the design and prototype realization of components of the system including an energy management device (EMD), DECT communication interfaces based on state-of-the-art technology. Finally, we present our prototype system for the concept.