SELFCON: An Architecture for Self-Configuration of Networks

Boutaba, Raouf,Omari, Salima,Singh Virk, Ajay Pal The Korean Institute of Communications and Informa 2001 Journal of communications and networks Vol.3 No.4

Traditional configuration management involves complex labor-intensive processes performed by experts. The configuration tasks such as installing or reconfiguring a system, provisioning network services and allocating resources typically involve a large number of activities involving multiple network elements. The network elements may be associated with proprietary configuration management instrumentation and may also be spread across heterogeneous network domains thereby increasing the complexity of configuration management. This paper introduces an architecture for the self-configuration of networks (SELFCON). The proposed architecture involves a directory server, which is uses to maintain configuration information. The configuration information stared in the directory server is modeled using the standard DEN specification thereby allowing effective exchange of network, system and configuration management data among heterogeneous management domains. SELFCON associates configuration intelligence with the components of the network, rather than limit it to a centralized management station. The network elements are notified about related changes in configuration policies, based upon which, they perform self-configuration. SELFCON is able to provide automation of configuration management and also an effective unifying framework for enterprise management.

The Design and Implementation of an Energy-Smart Home in Korea

Xiao, Jin,Boutaba, Raouf Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Eng 2013 Journal of Computing Science and Engineering Vol.7 No.3

We present the motivation, design and implementation of a smart home system in Korea. Our system is open, extensible, integrated, intelligent, and usage-centric. We detail the challenges and key design requirements for the smart home system based on our past experiences, and show how convergence system design is a capable methodology for enabling an integrated and multi-faceted home management system that encompasses energy management, home appliance control, environment management, u-health, and living support functionalities under a single unified design. Using energy management as a specific case study, we demonstrate how convergence system design can encapsulate technology heterogeneity and hardware-software disparity without compromising simple yet powerful user interfaces.

Assessing Software Service Quality and Trustworthiness at Selection Time

Limam, N,Boutaba, R IEEE 2010 IEEE transactions on software engineering Vol.36 No.4

<P>The integration of external software in project development is challenging and risky, notably because the execution quality of the software and the trustworthiness of the software provider may be unknown at integration time. This is a timely problem and of increasing importance with the advent of the SaaS model of service delivery. Therefore, in choosing the SaaS service to utilize, project managers must identify and evaluate the level of risk associated with each candidate. Trust is commonly assessed through reputation systems; however, existing systems rely on ratings provided by consumers. This raises numerous issues involving the subjectivity and unfairness of the service ratings. This paper describes a framework for reputation-aware software service selection and rating. A selection algorithm is devised for service recommendation, providing SaaS consumers with the best possible choices based on quality, cost, and trust. An automated rating model, based on the expectancy-disconfirmation theory from market science, is also defined to overcome feedback subjectivity issues. The proposed rating and selection models are validated through simulations, demonstrating that the system can effectively capture service behavior and recommend the best possible choices.</P>

The Design and Implementation of an Energy-Smart Home in Korea

Jin Xiao,Raouf Boutaba 한국정보과학회 2013 Journal of Computing Science and Engineering Vol.7 No.3

We present the motivation, design and implementation of a smart home system in Korea. Our system is open, extensible, integrated, intelligent, and usage-centric. We detail the challenges and key design requirements for the smart home system based on our past experiences, and show how convergence system design is a capable methodology for enabling an integrated and multi-faceted home management system that encompasses energy management, home appliance control, environment management, u-health, and living support functionalities under a single unified design. Using energy management as a specific case study, we demonstrate how convergence system design can encapsulate technology heterogeneity and hardware-software disparity without compromising simple yet powerful user interfaces.

ViNEYard: Virtual Network Embedding Algorithms With Coordinated Node and Link Mapping

Chowdhury, Mosharaf,Rahman, M. R.,Boutaba, R. IEEE 2012 IEEE/ACM transactions on networking Vol.20 No.1

<P>Network virtualization allows multiple heterogeneous virtual networks (VNs) to coexist on a shared infrastructure. Efficient mapping of virtual nodes and virtual links of a VN request onto substrate network resources, also known as the VN embedding problem, is the first step toward enabling such multiplicity. Since this problem is known to be <I>NP</I>-hard, previous research focused on designing heuristic-based algorithms that had clear separation between the node mapping and the link mapping phases. In this paper, we present ViNEYard-a collection of VN embedding algorithms that leverage better coordination between the two phases. We formulate the VN embedding problem as a mixed integer program through substrate network augmentation. We then relax the integer constraints to obtain a linear program and devise two online VN embedding algorithms D-ViNE and R-ViNE using deterministic and randomized rounding techniques, respectively. We also present a generalized window-based VN embedding algorithm (WiNE) to evaluate the effect of lookahead on VN embedding. Our simulation experiments on a large mix of VN requests show that the proposed algorithms increase the acceptance ratio and the revenue while decreasing the cost incurred by the substrate network in the long run.</P>

Enhancing Energy Efficiency via Cooperative MIMO in Wireless Sensor Networks: State of the Art and Future Research Directions

Peng, Yuyang,Al-Hazemi, Fawaz,Boutaba, Raouf,Tong, Fei,Hwang, Il-Sun,Youn, Chan-Hyun IEEE 2017 IEEE communications magazine Vol.55 No.11

<P>CMIMO is an effective approach to increase throughput and energy efficiency through the collaboration of individual antennas working together as a virtual multi-antenna system. Several CMIMO strategies have been propounded as major candidates for achieving green communications in wireless sensor networks. Compared to conventional MIMO, CMIMO provides significant gains in terms of flexibility. Recently, more advanced cooperation strategies have been proposed to improve the performance of CMIMO by using emerging techniques such as spatial modulation and coding. Although some breakthroughs have been made in this area, the problem of how to accurately adopt these emerging techniques to model CMIMO is far from being fully understood. This article surveys several state-of-the-art CMIMO models for different scenarios, including data aggregated, multihop-based, and clustered schemes. Moreover, it discusses the implementation of CMIMO techniques, which are expected to be candidate techniques for green communications in modern applications. In the implementation, the trade-offs between energy efficiency and spectral efficiency, quality of service, fairness, and security are discussed. Several simulation results are given to show how emerging techniques in CMIMO design can lead to energy efficiency enhancement. Finally, some challenges and open issues that present future research directions are discussed.</P>

Intersection-Based Geographical Routing Protocol for VANETs: A Proposal and Analysis

Saleet, H.,Langar, R.,Naik, K.,Boutaba, R.,Nayak, A.,Goel, N. IEEE 2011 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY Vol.60 No.9

<P>This paper presents a class of routing protocols for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) called the Intersection-based Geographical Routing Protocol (IGRP), which outperforms existing routing schemes in city environments. IGRP is based on an effective selection of road intersections through which a packet must pass to reach the gateway to the Internet. The selection is made in a way that guarantees, with high probability, network connectivity among the road intersections while satisfying quality-of-service (QoS) constraints on tolerable delay, bandwidth usage, and error rate. Geographical forwarding is used to transfer packets between any two intersections on the path, reducing the path's sensitivity to individual node movements. To achieve this, we mathematically formulate the QoS routing problem as a constrained optimization problem. Specifically, analytical expressions for the connectivity probability, end-to-end delay, hop count, and bit error rate (BER) of a route in a two-way road scenario are derived. Then, we propose a genetic algorithm to solve the optimization problem. Numerical and simulation results show that the proposed approach gives optimal or near-optimal solutions and significantly improves VANET performance when compared with several prominent routing protocols, such as greedy perimeter stateless routing (GPSR), greedy perimeter coordinator routing (GPCR), and optimized link-state routing (OLSR).</P>

Dynamic allocation of power delivery paths in consolidated data centers based on adaptive UPS switching

AL-Hazemi, Fawaz,Peng, Yuyang,Youn, Chan-Hyun,Lorincz, Josip,Li, Chao,Song, Guo,Boutaba, Raouf Elsevier 2018 COMPUTER NETWORKS - Vol.144 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>Although technique known as server consolidation approach in a data center can reduce the overall power consumption, the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of the data center will still be negatively affected with presence of distributed Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPSs). The impact on the PUE arises from the fact that all UPS modules are kept running to maintain power availability for only a few active servers during off-peak periods. To address this problem, in this paper technique for reducing power consumption in a data center by consolidating the UPSs used during off peak periods is proposed. The proposed technique achieves power savings by leveraging a micro Automatic Transfer Switch (micro-ATS) at the server end. The novelty of this work lies in developed adaptive algorithm that continuously looks for opportunities to reduce the number of UPSs by offloading under-loaded UPSs to a neighboring UPS whenever that neighboring UPS can handle the extra load. In various simulated scenarios involving corporate data centers, our approach demonstrates the ability to save more power and achieve lower PUE degradation compared with state-of-the-art approaches such as server consolidation. Specifically, the proposed approach achieves a savings of approximately 20% to 40% in a data center’s power consumption, depending on the data center’s off-peak periods, which can be accomplished using only 80% of the UPS modules in the data center.</P>