SimulaMets research projects are both internally and externally financed. We collaborate with universities both in Norway and in other countries, as well as with industry.
Raksha: 5G Security for Critical Communications
The 5G networks can act as a vehicle to drive the digitalization phase for realizing a gigabit networked society. They use Service-Based Architecture to enable different use-case scenarios for example future critical communications services, such as Next Generation Nodnett (NGN) in Norway will be moving towards 5G networks. The complex 5G networks are vulnerable to cyber-attacks due to the increasing level of network softwarization approach, a requirement to support less secure legacy networks, and the adoption of web-centric protocols for the core network signaling. In addition, the security requirements of NGN are different than of 5G networks, hence it is crucial to understand their threat landscape from the attacker's perspective.
There is also a need for threat modeling methods and tools to effectively identify and address emerging risks in multi-generational 5G networks. Existing threat modeling approaches have limited scope to accommodate new security paradigms and varying degrees of trust assumptions of 5G networks. Moreover, it is almost impossible to validate threat modeling approaches by performing cyber security exercises and assess vulnerabilities on operational 5G as this could lead to unacceptable risk. Therefore, one of the best approaches to address the above issues is to combine threat modeling science together with a cyber range concept to enhance the cyber-resiliency of 5G-enabled critical communications and eventually other use-cases as well.
The project delivers a 5G cyber range platform empowered with tools for risk and threat assessment, cyber-attack simulation, evaluation and demonstration of defensive solutions for NGN. The project includes a Norwegian mobile operator, authorities responsible for cellular networks and security, research institutes, and universities. The proposed approach could be a future best practice for the Norwegian telecom industry to address cyber security challenges.
Coordinator:
Partners:
Interview training of child-welfare and law-enforcement professionals interviewing maltreated children supported via artificial avatars
The interdisciplinary FRIPRO project aims to improve interviews with maltreated children through a training program using realistic and interactive child avatars.
The department of Holistic Systems (HOST) at SimulaMet will be working with the Faculty of Social Sciences at OsloMet. The project will begin on the 1st of April 2021 and end on the 31st of March in 2024. It is funded by The Research Council of Norway with 12 million NOK and will include three Ph.D. positions.
Maltreatment and abuse of children is a significant societal problem that has serious and damaging effects on children’s behavior, psychological development, and adjustment. Detection and prevention of violence and sexual abuse against children is, therefore, a high priority for Child Protective Services (CPS) and law-enforcement professionals. The conversations and investigative interviews that are conducted with these children must be of high quality. However, both Norwegian and international research shows that despite investments in methodology, the current interview and conversation skills still need to be improved.
By using an empirically informed training system in highly realistic child avatars, this project aims to develop and maintain the advanced skills needed for interviewing maltreated children. They will use data from past investigative interviews with maltreated children and create a real-looking avatar that is capable of expressing emotion and spontaneous responses.
The planned avatar will be a combination of technologies from multiple areas in computer science including AI, computer vision, and natural language processing. The aim is for the child avatars to be a part of an interview-training program that will be implemented in cooperation with the CPS and the police. The training system will be evaluated by the project scientists to judge effectiveness in relation to real-world needs.
The project also involves collaborations with researchers from Griffith University in Australia and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
FFC: Female Football Centre
The Department of Holistic Systems at SimulaMet is collaborating with UiT - The Arctic University of Norway and Forzasys AS on the Female Football Centre (FFC), funded by the Tromsø Research Foundation.
The main goal of the centre is to gain new and fundamental insights into what affects the performance and overall health of female elite football players. A general objective is to devise novel methodologies for epidemiological research that might impact research fields in both sports and medicine. In particular, we aim to develop a non-invasive, privacy-preserving technology that enables us to continuously quantify and monitor athlete behavior where we derive analytic insights from different perspectives (e.g., biomechanics, sports-specific science, medicine, coaches, and athletes).
In the current gold standards for epidemiology, observational prospective cohort studies include that cohort subjects are followed in detail over a longer period. This is an error-prone and tedious task that has for a long time been carried out using pen and paper, and later doing a manual, tedious analysis. Making this entire process easier is the main responsibility of the researchers from the Department of Holistic Systems at SimulaMet.
In cooperation with UiT and Forzasys AS, SimulaMet has earlier developed and used an automatic performance monitoring system for athletes used by both national and elite series soccer teams. The goal is to quantify and develop accurate analysis technologies that enable a personalized assessment and performance development of elite athletes.
The automatic performance monitoring system collects athletes’ subjective parameters, like training load, wellness, injury, and illness, using a small questionnaire-app running on their mobile phones, and the data is transferred to a cloud-based backend system. Then, from a trainer-portal, the data can be automatically visualized for both individual players and team overviews.
In FFC, the objective is to extend the system further to include female-specific parameters and introduce more automatic analysis using, for example, machine learning. We will host and develop the system for all the teams participating in the project, and we will initiate automatic analyses that might be able to predict future overuse injuries or to help maybe to find the best development process of a player or a team.
Svein Arne Pettersen (head of research at the School of sports sciences, UiT) is the centre leader, and he has collaborated with the researchers at SimulaMet for a long time.
Read more about the new Female Football Centre (FFC)
FFC is funded by Tromsø Research Foundation.
TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion
Data mining holds the promise to improve our understanding of dynamics of complex systems such as the human brain and human metabolome (i.e., the complete set of small biochemical compounds in the human body) by discovering the underlying patterns, i.e., subsystems, in data collected from these systems. However, discovering those patterns and understanding their evolution in time is a challenging task. The complexity of the systems requires collection of both time-evolving and static data from multiple sources using different technologies recording the behavior of the system from complementary viewpoints, and there is a lack of data mining methods that can find the hidden patterns in such complex data.
The goal of this multidisciplinary project is to develop novel data mining techniques to jointly analyze static and dynamic data sets to discover underlying patterns, understand temporal dynamics of those patterns, and capture early signs of future outcomes. We will introduce a scalable and constrained data fusion framework that can jointly factorize heterogeneous data in the form of matrices and multi-way arrays, by incorporating temporal as well as domain-specific constraints.
These methods will be motivated by a real, challenging system: the human metabolome, and used to jointly analyze static genetic information and longitudinal metabolomics data to discover interpretable patterns, i.e., subsystems corresponding to metabolic networks (networks of metabolites acting together), with the ultimate goal of understanding their role in the transition from healthy to diseased states. The project will play a significant role in terms of developing the data mining tools needed to extract meaningful information from the surge of data, referred to as "personal data clouds" being collected in predictive medicine studies, where participants give blood samples regularly to track their health status and will be alerted of early signs of diseases.
Funding Source
Research Council of Norway, IKTPLUSS (2020-2023)
Novo Nordisk Foundation, Exploratory Interdisciplinary Synergy Grant (2020-2022)
Partners
COPSAC (Danish Pediatric Asthma Center)
University of Copenhagen
University of Amsterdam
Publications for TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion
Proceedings, refereed
PARAFAC2-based coupled Matrix and Tensor Factorizations
In IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). IEEE, 2023.Status: Published
PARAFAC2-based coupled Matrix and Tensor Factorizations
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery , TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2023 |
| Conference Name | IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) |
| Pagination | 1-5 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| DOI | 10.1109/ICASSP49357.2023.10094562 |
Talks, invited
Extracting Insights from Complex Data: Constrained Multimodal Data Mining using Coupled Matrix and Tensor Factorizations
In IPAM Workshop on Explainable AI for the Sciences: Towards Novel Insights, 2023.Status: Published
Extracting Insights from Complex Data: Constrained Multimodal Data Mining using Coupled Matrix and Tensor Factorizations
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery , TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion |
| Publication Type | Talks, invited |
| Year of Publication | 2023 |
| Location of Talk | IPAM Workshop on Explainable AI for the Sciences: Towards Novel Insights |
| URL | http://www.ipam.ucla.edu/abstract/?tid=18155&pcode=XAI2023 |
Journal Article
Analyzing postprandial metabolomics data using multiway models: A simulation study
bioRxiv (2022).Status: Submitted
Analyzing postprandial metabolomics data using multiway models: A simulation study
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery , TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | bioRxiv |
| Publisher | biorxiv |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.19.521154 |
| DOI | 10.1101/2022.12.19.521154 |
Reproducibility in Matrix and Tensor Decompositions: Focus on Model Match, Interpretability, and Uniqueness
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine 39, no. 4 (2022): 8-24.Status: Published
Reproducibility in Matrix and Tensor Decompositions: Focus on Model Match, Interpretability, and Uniqueness
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion, Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | IEEE Signal Processing Magazine |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pagination | 8-24 |
| Date Published | 06/2022 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| DOI | 10.1109/MSP.2022.3163870 |
Tracing Evolving Networks using Tensor Factorizations vs. ICA-based Approaches
Frontiers in Neuroscience 16 (2022).Status: Published
Tracing Evolving Networks using Tensor Factorizations vs. ICA-based Approaches
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery , TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Neuroscience |
| Volume | 16 |
| Date Published | 04/2022 |
| Publisher | Frontiers |
| URL | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2022.861402 |
| DOI | 10.3389/fnins.2022.861402 |
An AO-ADMM approach to constraining PARAFAC2 on all modes
SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science 4 (2022): 1191-1222.Status: Published
An AO-ADMM approach to constraining PARAFAC2 on all modes
Analyzing multi-way measurements with variations across one mode of the dataset is a challenge in various fields including data mining, neuroscience and chemometrics. For example, measurements may evolve over time or have unaligned time profiles. The PARAFAC2 model has been successfully used to analyze such data by allowing the underlying factor matrices in one mode (i.e., the evolving mode) to change across slices. The traditional approach to fit a PARAFAC2 model is to use an alternating least squares-based algorithm, which handles the constant cross-product constraint of the PARAFAC2 model by implicitly estimating the evolving factor matrices. This approach makes imposing regularization on these factor matrices challenging. There is currently no algorithm to flexibly impose such regularization with general penalty functions and hard constraints. In order to address this challenge and to avoid the implicit estimation, in this paper, we propose an algorithm for fitting PARAFAC2 based on alternating optimization with the alternating direction method of multipliers (AO-ADMM). With numerical experiments on simulated data, we show that the proposed PARAFAC2 AO-ADMM approach allows for flexible constraints, recovers the underlying patterns accurately, and is computationally efficient compared to the state-of-the-art. We also apply our model to a real-world chromatography dataset, and show that constraining the evolving mode improves the interpretability of the extracted patterns.
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery , TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science |
| Volume | 4 |
| Number | 3 |
| Pagination | 1191-1222 |
| Publisher | SIAM |
| Place Published | SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science |
| DOI | 10.1137/21M1450033 |
Exploring Dynamic Metabolomics Data With Multiway Data Analysis: a Simulation Study
BMC Bioinformatics 23 (2022).Status: Published
Exploring Dynamic Metabolomics Data With Multiway Data Analysis: a Simulation Study
Background: Analysis of dynamic metabolomics data holds the promise to improve our understanding of underlying mechanisms in metabolism. For example, it may detect changes in metabolism due to the onset of a disease. Dynamic or time-resolved metabolomics data can be arranged as a three-way array with entries organized according to a subjects mode, a metabolites mode and a time mode. While such time-evolving multiway data sets are increasingly collected, revealing the underlying mechanisms and their dynamics from such data remains challenging. For such data, one of the complexities is the presence of a superposition of several sources of variation: induced variation (due to experimental conditions or inborn errors), individual variation, and measurement error. Multiway data analysis (also known as tensor factorizations) has been successfully used in data mining to find the underlying patterns in multiway data. In this paper, we study the use of multiway data analysis to reveal the underlying patterns and dynamics in time-resolved metabolomics data.
Results: We focus on simulated data arising from different dynamic models of increasing complexity, i.e., a simple linear system, a yeast glycolysis model, and a human cholesterol model. We generate data with induced variation as well as individual variation. Systematic experiments are performed to demonstrate the advantages and limitations of multiway data analysis in analyzing such dynamic metabolomics data and their capacity to disentangle the different sources of variations. We choose to use simulations since we want to understand the capability of multiway data analysis methods which is facilitated by knowing the ground truth.
Conclusion: Our numerical experiments demonstrate that despite the increasing complexity of the studied dynamic metabolic models, tensor factorization methods CANDECOMP/PARAFAC(CP) and Parallel Profiles with Linear Dependences (Paralind) can disentangle the sources of variations and thereby reveal the underlying mechanisms and their dynamics.
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery , TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | BMC Bioinformatics |
| Volume | 23 |
| Number | Article 31 |
| Date Published | 2022 |
| Publisher | Springer |
| DOI | 10.1186/s12859-021-04550-5 |
Poster
Characterizing postprandial metabolic response using multi-way data analysis
Norwegian Bioinformatics Days, 2022.Status: Published
Characterizing postprandial metabolic response using multi-way data analysis
Analysis of time-resolved postprandial metabolomics data can enhance our knowledge about the human metabolism by providing a better understanding of regulation of subgroups of metabolites (e.g., lipids) and variations in postprandial responses of subgroups of people, with the potential to ultimately advance precision medicine. However, characterizing postprandial metabolomics response and understanding group differences is a challenging task since it requires the analysis of large-scale metabolomics data from a large set of individuals containing measurements of a wide set of metabolites at multiple time points. Such data is in the form of a three-way array: subjects by metabolites by time points. The state-of-the-art analysis methods mainly focus on clustering temporal profiles relying on summaries of the data across subjects or univariate analysis techniques studying one metabolite at a time, and fail to associate subgroups of subjects and subsets of metabolites with the dynamic time profile simultaneously.
In this study, we use NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy measurements of plasma samples (of over three hundred individuals from the COPSAC2000 cohort) collected at multiple time points during a challenge test. We use a multi-way analysis technique called the CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) model to extract interpretable patterns from the time-resolved data. We compare the analysis of postprandial data, fasting state-corrected data and only fasting state data, and demonstrate the differences between different analysis approaches.
Our results show that the CP model reveals biologically meaningful patterns capturing how certain metabolite groups and their temporal profiles relate to various meta variables, in particular, BMI (body mass index), confirming already known biological knowledge as well as revealing new biological insights.
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion, Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery |
| Publication Type | Poster |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Place Published | Norwegian Bioinformatics Days |
| Keywords | CANDECOMP/PARAFAC, Dynamic metabolomics data, large-scale dataset, Tensor factorization |
Revealing dynamic changes in metabolism through the analysis of postprandial metabolomics data: A simulation study
Metabolomics 2022, Valencia, Spain, 2022.Status: Published
Revealing dynamic changes in metabolism through the analysis of postprandial metabolomics data: A simulation study
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion, Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery |
| Publication Type | Poster |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Place Published | Metabolomics 2022, Valencia, Spain |
Proceedings, refereed
Multi-task FMRI Data Fusion using IVA and PARAFAC2
In IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). IEEE, 2022.Status: Published
Multi-task FMRI Data Fusion using IVA and PARAFAC2
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery , TrACEr: Time-Aware ConstrainEd Multimodal Data Fusion |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) |
| Pagination | 1466-1470 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| DOI | 10.1109/ICASSP43922.2022.9747662 |
SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab
Research objectives
The SimulaMet Interoperability lab (SMIL) support a wide range of research activities at SimulaMet, and will in particular address the following research areas:
- Benchmark and improve time-sensitive networking technologies for 5G networks between base stations and edge computing for 5G.
- Study and improve mechanisms for network slicing to ensure successful co-use of 5G networks for critical applications.
- Study how legacy computers can be used to realize Cloud Radio Access Networks by using software defined radio and lower cost of deployment by moving functionality from hardware to software. Of particular interest is real-time scheduling of Cloud RAN workloads in edge data centres.
- Study new 5G and IoT applications enabled by edge computing using features such as low latency, high throughput and quality of service guarantees combined with edge computing capabilities available in 5G cellular networks.
- Develop and improve self-driving networks for fast recovery with technologies such as SDN, P4 and Network Function Virtualization in combination with machine learning of large-scale data analytics of the entire networked system.
- Understand and improve mechanisms required to establish Robust cellular networks for reliable infrastructure for new user groups which relies on dependable networks.
Time sensitive networking
Traditionally, dedicated point-to-point connections using Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) have been used to interconnect smart cellular antennas to base stations. In 5G, the main infrastructure vendors have proposed e-CPRI, based on the Ethernet standard. With Ethernet, one would expect to leverage traditional switches for aggregation and simultaneous data transport in addition to e-CPRI, but Ethernet and legacy switches are not built for the timing requirements of 5G. To overcome this problem, different technologies have been suggested to enable Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) with Ethernet as the transport technology. In this research activity, we study how TSN can be realized in 5G front haul networks, combining the requirements of synchronization, bound latency in combination with traditional best-effort packet transport. In the laboratory we collaborate with TransPacket for access to FPGA-based implementations of TSN using the Fusion network technology implemented in Xilinx FPGAs enabling 100 Gbit/s Ethernet transport aggregating 5G base stations using 10Gbit/s ethernet with guaranteed transport service.
Network slicing
In 5G networks, the concept of Network slicing enables different classes of applications to share the same physical network. 5G is expected to be able to handle applications like emergency networks, real-time industry applications in combination with supporting demanding multimedia applications for consumers. These requirements require ability to express and enforce Quality of Service requirements ranging from frequency resource allocation, 5G base station resource allocation, network quality of service and allocation of processing resources in edge computers.
Initial work has focused on SDN-based implementations using the opensource Open Air interface, and future work will extend this to network slicing in 5G-NR and 5G front-haul and back-haul network guarantees for network slicing.
Cloud Radio Access Networks (Cloud RAN)
Cloud RAN enable the use of general purpose computers placed in edge data centres for realizing virtualized radio functions by using software defined radio techniques to lower cost of deployment by moving functionality from hardware to software. Of a particular interest to our research group is real-time scheduling of Cloud RAN workloads, how to partition between real-time and non-real-time workloads in the Cloud RAN, and how to handle the strict requirements to enable services like Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) which can enable new applications previously not possible in cellular networks. Vendors are already introducing Cloud RAN solutions, such as the Nokia AirScale CloudRAN , the 4G/5G C-RAN architecture from Ericsson and 5G oriented C-RAN solutions from Huawei. It is of a particular interest to study if such network architectures can be realized in a multi-vendor environment. At what level should interoperability be ensured? Can Virtual Network Functions from different vendors run in the same edge computer environment?
New 5G and IoT applications enabled by edge computing
With edge computing deployed in the distributed 5G networks, new 5G and IoT applications can be made possible since response times can be guaranteed, and computing resources can be made available close to the application. An example is the real-time application of collision avoidance for cars sharing their sensor data with a local edge data center which can execute collision avoidance algorithms within specified time deadlines to provide drivers or self-driving vehicles with time-critical information to avoid collision. Other applications like games using augmented reality and real-time collaboration in industrial applications can be enabled by low latency and high throughput communication service with processing in edge data centres. Finally, IoT sensors with very low power consumption can leverage high sensitivity 5G NR capabilities to provide very long battery life for embedded applications. In SMIL, we will collaborate with other research groups and the 5G industry to investigate applications previously not possible in cellular networks and suggest improvements to applications and networks.
Self-driving Networks
The complexity of configuration and adjustment of telecommunication networks to respond to rapid changes in demand has led to the vision of Self-driving networks which measure, analyze and control themselves in an automated manner. Self-driving networks can react to changes in the environment (e.g., demand), while exploiting existing flexibilities to optimize themselves. Furthermore, the advent of large-scale machine learning can also benefit self-driving networks and over time develop to faster reconfiguration and more reliable operation compared to manual configuration by human operators, see for example the paper Why (and How) Networks Should Run Themselves for an in-depth discussion.
This method is of particular interest in 5G to ensure rapid reconfiguration in case of failure which requires automated response to demand, changes in geographic load in the network, change in network capacity and loss of connectivity with minimal impact for critical applications. The requirement for reconfiguration can also be used for business purposes, for example optimized use of software licenses, where an operator can install hardware at all relevant locations but deploy software licenses only for operation of a subset of this hardware based on actual demand and moved with users. This research area is closely related to Software Defined Networking which until recently has focused mostly on the data plane with technologies such as OpenFlow and Netconf/Yang.
Recent developments such as the Programming Protocol-independent Packet Processors language (P4) has enabled software control also of the data plane which opens for software defined processing in the actual packet flow. In SMIL, we plan to leverage these advances together from SDN controllers such as OpenDaylight to enable Self-driving networks for access and transport networks for 5G. In the laboratory, we will use the latest MX-series routers from Juniper Networks with P4 capabilites to explore self-driving networks for 5G.
Robust cellular networks
New user groups are encouraged to share a common infrastructure to save cost and leverage state of the art technologies. This trend increases the requirements of robustness of the underlying architecture since our society relies not only on critical consumer services like communication services, banking, shopping and logistics, but also applications traditionally served by dedicated networks such as military, emergency (e.g. TETRA) and railroad signalling networks (e.g. GSM-R) which all consider 5G as their network infrastructure in the future.
We believe Heterogeneous infrastructure has several benefits to ensure interoperability and open standards in 5G but this requirement also adds to the complexity of the network since different vendors may rely on different network structures, and different communication protocols even if they are defined by standard bodies such as 3GPP. When the goal of heterogenous infrastructure is added to requirements from new users, we can see that 5G represents very demanding requirements for the cellular operators and the network infrastructure vendors.
SimulaMet Centre for Resilient Networks and Applications have studied this topic over many years in fixed networks, in 4G cellular networks and for IoT applications. With the new laboratory, we will extend our studies to 5G New Radio and will also address how to provide robustness of the 5G core network by reducing the dependency for a centralized 5G infrastructure by virtualization.
Publications for SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab
Journal Article
Towards a Lightweight Task Scheduling Framework for Cloud and Edge Platform
Internet of Things; Engineering Cyber Physical Human Systems (2023).Status: Accepted
Towards a Lightweight Task Scheduling Framework for Cloud and Edge Platform
Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives, but they have limited computational capacity. Thanks to the advancement in the network infrastructure, task offloading from resource-constrained devices to the near edge and the cloud becomes possible and advantageous. Complete task offloading is now possible to almost limitless computing resources of public cloud platforms. Generally, the edge computing resources support latency-sensitive applications with limited computing resources, while the cloud supports latency-tolerant applications. This paper proposes one lightweight task-scheduling framework from cloud service provider perspective, for applications using both cloud and edge platforms. Here, the challenge is using edge and cloud resources efficiently when necessary. Such decisions have to be made quickly, with a small management overhead. Our framework aims at solving two research questions. They are: i) How to distribute tasks to the edge resource pools and multi-clouds? ii) How to manage these resource pools effectively with low overheads? To answer these two questions, we examine the performance of our proposed framework based on Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool). We have shown via simulations that RSerPool, with the correct usage and configuration of pool member selection policies, can accomplish the cloud/edge setup resource selection task with a small overhead.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, NorNet, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2023 |
| Journal | Internet of Things; Engineering Cyber Physical Human Systems |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| Keywords | Cloud computing, Edge Computing, Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool), Resource Pools, Task Scheduling |
Proceedings, refereed
Proactive Resource Orchestration Framework for Cloud/Fog Platform
In Proceedings of the 28th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC). Tunis/Tunisia: IEEE, 2023.Status: Accepted
Proactive Resource Orchestration Framework for Cloud/Fog Platform
Cloud computing makes complex computing an off-premise activity by offering software- and hardware-based services using standard security protocols over the Internet. It has been seen that the cloud is not ideal for latency-sensitive applications. Thanks to the current growth of network communication and infrastructure, fog adds a computing resource delegation layer between the user and the cloud. Fog aims to improve latency-sensitive applications support. Here, we propose one unified, proactive resource orchestration framework from a cloud/fog service provider perspective. The framework consists of a predictor and a resource allocator module. Users subscribe to these resources to execute their applications. The framework does not require application-specific information and is modular, meaning a service provider can customise each module. We have presented the framework prototype by showing each module's simulated performance results using the parameters of our cloud/fog research test bed.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, NorNet, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, MELODIC: Multi-cloud Execution-ware for Large-scale Optimised Data-Intensive Computing |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2023 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 28th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC) |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Place Published | Tunis/Tunisia |
| Keywords | Cloud, Fog, Orchestration, Prediction, Resource Allocation |
A Scalable Data Collection System for Continuous State of Polarisation Monitoring
In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON). Bucharest/Romania, 2023.Status: Accepted
A Scalable Data Collection System for Continuous State of Polarisation Monitoring
Our dependency on the telecommunication infrastructure is continuously increasing, as different infrastructures – such as energy and telecommunication – now have mutual dependencies. This calls for increased monitoring of the fibre network, which is a highly critical part of the infrastructure. State of Polarisation (SoP) of light propagating through fibre transmission systems is impacted by any vibrations and mechanical impacts on the fibre. By continuously monitoring the SoP, any unexpected movements of a fibre along a fibre-path may be traced. Movements may be caused by e.g. work in node-rooms impacting patch-cords, trawlers or other types of sub-sea equipment touching or hooking into sub-sea fibre cables, digging close to a fibre-cable, or geophysical phenomena like earthquakes. In this paper, we describe a low-cost, scalable system for SoP monitoring and give examples of patterns monitored in different types of fibre infrastructures. The monitoring system consists of single-unit rack-mount instruments connected to taps from live optical transmission signals. Each instrument has local storage for 1-2 years of data, and is periodically automatically uploading data to a server for backup and data-access purposes. Examples of observed patterns are impact from a thunderstorm on a Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) cable, 50 Hz on a fibre-cable spun around a high-voltage power air-cable, as well as animal impact on a patch-cord.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, GAIA, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2023 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON) |
| Date Published | 07/2023 |
| Place Published | Bucharest/Romania |
Journal Article
Secure Embedded Living: Towards a Self-contained User Data Preserving Framework
IEEE Communications Magazine 60, no. 11 (2022): 74-80.Status: Published
Secure Embedded Living: Towards a Self-contained User Data Preserving Framework
Smart living represents the hardware-software co-inhabiting with humans for better living standards and improved well-being. Here, hardware monitors human activities (by collecting data) specific to a context. Such data can be processed to offer context-specific valuable insights. Such insights can be used for optimising the well-being, living experience and energy cost of smart homes. This paper proposes a Secure Embedded Living Framework (SELF) that enforces a privacy-preserving data control mechanism by integrating multiple technologies, such as Internet-of-thing, cloud/fog platform, machine learning and blockchain. The primary aim of the SELF is to allow the user to retain more control of its data.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, NorNet, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, GAIA, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | IEEE Communications Magazine |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 11 |
| Pagination | 74–80 |
| Date Published | 11/2022 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| ISSN | 0163-6804 |
| Keywords | blockchain, Cloud, Data, IoTs, Security, User |
| DOI | 10.1109/MCOM.001.2200165 |
AI Anomaly Detection for Cloudified Mobile Core Architectures
Transactions on Network and Service Management (2022).Status: Published
AI Anomaly Detection for Cloudified Mobile Core Architectures
IT systems monitoring is a crucial process for managing and orchestrating network resources, allowing network providers to rapidly detect and react to most impediment causing network degradation. However, the high growth in size and complexity of current operational networks (2022) demands new solutions to process huge amounts of data (including alarms) reliably and swiftly. Further, as the network becomes progressively more virtualized, the hosting of nfv on cloud environments adds a magnitude of possible bottlenecks outside the control of the service owners. In this paper, we propose two deep learning anomaly detection solutions that leverage service exposure and apply it to automate the detection of service degradation and root cause discovery in a cloudified mobile network that is orchestrated by ETSI OSM. A testbed is built to validate these AI models. The testbed collects monitoring data from the OSM monitoring module, which is then exposed to the external AI anomaly detection modules, tuned to identify the anomalies and the network services causing them. The deep learning solutions are tested using various artificially induced bottlenecks. The AI solutions are shown to correctly detect anomalies and identify the network components involved in the bottlenecks, with certain limitations in a particular type of bottlenecks. A discussion of the right monitoring tools to identify concrete bottlenecks is provided.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, NorNet, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | Transactions on Network and Service Management |
| Date Published | 08/2022 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Place Published | Los Alamitos, California/U.S.A. |
| ISSN | 1932-4537 |
| Keywords | 5G, AI, Anomaly detection, Autoencoders, deep learning, Mobile networks, Smart Networks |
| DOI | 10.1109/TNSM.2022.3203246 |
Proceedings, refereed
Load Distribution for Mobile Edge Computing with Reliable Server Pooling
In Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Recent Advances for Multi-Clouds and Mobile Edge Computing (M2EC) in conjunction with the 36th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA). Sydney, New South Wales/Australia: Springer, 2022.Status: Published
Load Distribution for Mobile Edge Computing with Reliable Server Pooling
Energy-efficient computing model is a popular choice for high performance as well as throughput oriented computing ecosystems. Mobile (computing) devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous to our computing domain, but with limited resources (true both for computation as well as for energy). Hence, workload offloading from resource-constrained mobile devices to the Edge and maybe (later) to the cloud become necessary as well as useful. Thanks to the persistent technical breakthroughs in global wireless standards (or in mobile networks) together with the almost limitless amount of resources in public cloud platforms, workload offloading is possible and cheaper. In such scenarios, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) resources could be provisioned in proximity to the users for supporting latency-sensitive applications. Here, two relevant problems could be: i) How to distribute workload to the resource pools of MEC as well as public (multi-)clouds? ii) How to manage such resource pools effectively? To answer these problems in this paper, we examine the performance of our proposed approach using the Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) framework in more detail. We also have outlined the resource pool management policies to effectively use RSerPool for workload offloading from mobile devices into the cloud/MEC ecosystem.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, MELODIC: Multi-cloud Execution-ware for Large-scale Optimised Data-Intensive Computing |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Recent Advances for Multi-Clouds and Mobile Edge Computing (M2EC) in conjunction with the 36th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA) |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Place Published | Sydney, New South Wales/Australia |
| Keywords | Cloud computing, Load Distribution, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Multi-Cloud Computing, Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool), Serverless Computing |
Talks, contributed
Detecting Issues with In-Band Telemetry in OSM-Orchestrated Core Networks
In ETSI, Virtual. Virtual: ETSI, 2022.Status: Published
Detecting Issues with In-Band Telemetry in OSM-Orchestrated Core Networks
Open Source MANO is a helpful tool to manage and orchestrate the instantiation of core network setups, like Network Service (NS) instances of our SimulaMet OpenAirInterface Virtual Network Function (VNF) for Enhanced Packet Cores (EPC). We furthermore extended our NS with VNF instances of Programming Protocol-independent Packet Processors (P4) switches, in order to allow for in-band telemetry. With in-band telemetry, it is possible to flexibly add, process, and remove telemetry information to traffic within the packet core, in order to allow for fine-granular evaluation of the system performance and the users' experienced quality of service. In our presentation and demo, we would like to provide an overview of our ongoing work on P4-based in-band telemetry in an OSM-orchestrated 4G core, which is used for detecting performance problems and anomalies in the network based on machine learning. We would furthermore like to demonstrate the details of our setup to the audience in a live demo.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, NorNet, 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure |
| Publication Type | Talks, contributed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Location of Talk | ETSI, Virtual |
| Publisher | ETSI |
| Place Published | Virtual |
| Type of Talk | Demo presentation |
| Keywords | Anomaly detection, Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Open Source MANO (OSM), P4, Telemetry |
| URL | http://osm-download.etsi.org/ftp/osm-11.0-eleven/OSM13_Ecosystem_Day/OSM... |
Talks, invited
Reliability and security in future telecommunication networks
In Inside Telecom conference, Scandic hotel, Fornebu, Norway. Inside Telecom conference: Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Centre for Resilient Networks and Applications (CRNA), 2022.Status: Published
Reliability and security in future telecommunication networks
The talk address Reliability and security in future telecommunication networks reporting work from SimulaMet SMIL laboratory and the GAIA-project, explaining dependencies and vulnerabilities of current telecommunication networks and applications and how to address these to form robust and reliable networks and services.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, GAIA, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab |
| Publication Type | Talks, invited |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Location of Talk | Inside Telecom conference, Scandic hotel, Fornebu, Norway |
| Publisher | Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Centre for Resilient Networks and Applications (CRNA) |
| Place Published | Inside Telecom conference |
| Type of Talk | Invited talk |
| Keywords | 5G, Applications, Cloud services, geographical dependencies, network measurements, Resilience, Robustness |
Technical reports
Norske mobilnett i 2021 – Tilstandsrapport fra Centre for Resilient Networks and Applications
Oslo/Norway: Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Centre for Resilient Networks and Applications (CRNA), 2022.Status: Published
Norske mobilnett i 2021 – Tilstandsrapport fra Centre for Resilient Networks and Applications
Denne rapporten er utarbeidet av Center for Resilient Networks and Applications (CRNA), som er en del av Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering. CRNA driver grunn- leggende forskning innen robusthet og sikker- het i nettverk med mandat og finansiering fra Kommunal- og moderniseringsdepartementet. Senteret produserer en årlig rapport om tilstan- den i norske mobilnett. Årets rapport er den niende i rekken.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab |
| Publication Type | Technical reports |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Publisher | Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Centre for Resilient Networks and Applications (CRNA) |
| Place Published | Oslo/Norway |
| ISBN Number | 82-92593-36-5 |
| URL | https://www.simula.no/sites/default/files/norske_mobilnett_i_2021.pdf |
Book
AI and ML – Enablers for Beyond 5G Networks
Online: 5G PPP Technology Board, 2021.Status: Published
AI and ML – Enablers for Beyond 5G Networks
This white paper on AI and ML as enablers of beyond 5G (B5G) networks is based on contributions from almost 20 5G PPP projects, coordinated through the 5G PPP Technology Board, that research, implement and validate 5G and B5G network systems. The paper introduces the main relevant mechanisms in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), currently investigated and exploited for enhancing 5G and B5G networks.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications |
| Publication Type | Book |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Date Published | 05/2021 |
| Publisher | 5G PPP Technology Board |
| Place Published | Online |
| URL | https://5g-ppp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AI-MLforNetworks-v1-0.pdf |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.429989 |
DeCipher
Cancer is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. In Norway alone, there are more than 33,000 new cancer patients each year, and 11,000 cancer-associated deaths in 2017. A large proportion of these incidents are preventable. For example, a mass-screening program against cervical cancer established in the Nordic countries has demonstrated a reduction in morbidity and mortality almost by 80 %. Despite this success, it remains a significant challenge to improve the screening program, such as minimize over screening and undertreatment and hence reduce expenditure in a broad public health perspective.
Current knowledge about the disease, together with a wealth of available data and modern technologies, can offer far better-personalized prevention, by deriving an individual-based time till the next screening. Existing automatic decision support systems for cervical cancer prevention are, however, extremely conservative as they are mostly limited to identifying patients who are overdue for their next routine screening, without providing any personalized recommendations for follow-ups.
By intelligent use of existing registries and health data, DeCipher aims to develop a data-driven framework to provide a personalized time-varying risk assessment for cancer initiation and identify subgroups of individuals and factors leading to similar disease progression. By unveiling structure hidden in the data, we will develop novel theoretically grounded machine learning methods for the analysis of large-scale registry and health data.
DeCipher consists of an excellent multidisciplinary research team from diverse fields such as machine learning, data mining, screening programs, and epidemiology. Available to screening programs, clinicians, and individuals in the population, the DeCipher results will allow for an improvement of an individual’s preventive cancer healthcare while reducing the cost of screening programs.
SimulaMet’s Role
SimulaMet will play a central role in the development of machine learning algorithms for longitudinal screening data analysis. Moreover, as the coordinator, SimulaMet is responsible for overall project management and dissemination activities.
Funding source
Research Council of Norway, IKTPLUSS
All partners
Cancer Registry Norway
Karolinska University Hospital, Sweden
Lawrence Livermore National Lab, USA
Coordinator
SimulaMet
Publications for DeCipher
Journal Article
Unsupervised EHR-based Phenotyping via Matrix and Tensor Decompositions
WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (2023).Status: Accepted
Unsupervised EHR-based Phenotyping via Matrix and Tensor Decompositions
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery , DeCipher |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2023 |
| Journal | WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery |
| Publisher | Wiley |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.00322 |
Proceedings, refereed
Phenotyping of cervical cancer risk groups via generalized low-rank models using medical questionnaires
In Norwegian AI Symposium: Nordic Artificial Intelligence Research and Development. Springer, 2022.Status: Published
Phenotyping of cervical cancer risk groups via generalized low-rank models using medical questionnaires
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | DeCipher, Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | Norwegian AI Symposium: Nordic Artificial Intelligence Research and Development |
| Pagination | 94--110 |
| Publisher | Springer |
| DOI | 10.1007/978-3-031-17030-0_8 |
Talks, contributed
Mono- and multi-infection patterns of HPV and the risk of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia
In ANCR Symposium, the Faroe Islands. ANCR Symposium, 2022.Status: Published
Mono- and multi-infection patterns of HPV and the risk of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | DeCipher |
| Publication Type | Talks, contributed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Location of Talk | ANCR Symposium, the Faroe Islands |
| Publisher | ANCR Symposium |
Talks, contributed
Generalized Low-Rank Models for Phenotyping Cervical Cancer Risk Groups using Medical Questionnaires
In Stavanger, Norway, 2021.Status: Published
Generalized Low-Rank Models for Phenotyping Cervical Cancer Risk Groups using Medical Questionnaires
| Afilliation | Machine Learning |
| Project(s) | Department of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery , DeCipher |
| Publication Type | Talks, contributed |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Location of Talk | Stavanger, Norway |
GAIA
Background
Recent advances in cloud computing and higher network capacities have led to online services being hosted at diverse geographic locations. Outsourcing of services for commercial reasons have become common. The growth of the internet infrastructure has happened dynamically and has been based on trust. Therefore, many countries now rely on services that are not contained within their respective national borders. These may be general services, such as Google, WhatsApp and Facebook as well as the DNS infrastructure and microservices critical to national services like health and online banking.
This development has led to our society becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attacks and major disruptions. Recent increases in cyber attacks and their potential harmful ramifications have made combating cyber vulnerabilities a national security priority. Consequently, an increasing number of states are calling for tighter controls on service placement and Internet connectivity in order to maintain national autonomy. While these fears could be warranted, a premature push in this direction may undermine the very fabric of openness and trust that binds the Internet together.
In this respect, GAIA aims to fill an important gap in our current knowledge, which is the lack of maps that describe the geographic distribution of online services. Such maps will provide an understanding of how Internet traffic travels between different countries and allow us to explore how internet connectivity interplays with geopolitics. GAIA will achieve that through an interdisciplinary effort that combines technological and political aspects of the problem. To this end, the project consortium comprises a unique set of stakeholders, including computer scientists, social and political scientists, regulatory bodies and network operators.
See GAIA's webpages here.
Partner
SimulaMet is partnering with The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) to deliver this project.
Outcomes
The insights gained by the GAIA project will help reducing the vulnerability of our society to potential harmful attacks on communication infrastructures which in worse case could harm our economy, endager our democracy and even result in loss of
The envisioned results of GAIA will thus contribute to improve our understanding of the complex interplay between digital vulnerabilities and national autonomy, which will be of relevance to policy makers, technologists and end users.
And just as important, GAIA's findings will provide regulators and policy makers with expert opinions that will help navigating the intricate conflict of interest between national autonomy and the trust-based openness on which the current Internet is based.
Consortium and methods
The project consortium comprises a unique set of stakeholders, including computer scientists, social and political scientists, regulatory bodies and network operators. GAIA will be using a combination of methods; measurement and data analytics, testbed experimentations as well as interviews and case studies.
Publications for GAIA
Proceedings, refereed
A Scalable Data Collection System for Continuous State of Polarisation Monitoring
In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON). Bucharest/Romania, 2023.Status: Accepted
A Scalable Data Collection System for Continuous State of Polarisation Monitoring
Our dependency on the telecommunication infrastructure is continuously increasing, as different infrastructures – such as energy and telecommunication – now have mutual dependencies. This calls for increased monitoring of the fibre network, which is a highly critical part of the infrastructure. State of Polarisation (SoP) of light propagating through fibre transmission systems is impacted by any vibrations and mechanical impacts on the fibre. By continuously monitoring the SoP, any unexpected movements of a fibre along a fibre-path may be traced. Movements may be caused by e.g. work in node-rooms impacting patch-cords, trawlers or other types of sub-sea equipment touching or hooking into sub-sea fibre cables, digging close to a fibre-cable, or geophysical phenomena like earthquakes. In this paper, we describe a low-cost, scalable system for SoP monitoring and give examples of patterns monitored in different types of fibre infrastructures. The monitoring system consists of single-unit rack-mount instruments connected to taps from live optical transmission signals. Each instrument has local storage for 1-2 years of data, and is periodically automatically uploading data to a server for backup and data-access purposes. Examples of observed patterns are impact from a thunderstorm on a Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) cable, 50 Hz on a fibre-cable spun around a high-voltage power air-cable, as well as animal impact on a patch-cord.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, GAIA, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2023 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON) |
| Date Published | 07/2023 |
| Place Published | Bucharest/Romania |
Book Chapter
5G-sikkerhet: Norge mellom stormaktene
In Digitalisering og internasjonal politikk. Universitetsforlaget, 2022.Status: Published
5G-sikkerhet: Norge mellom stormaktene
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, GAIA |
| Publication Type | Book Chapter |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Book Title | Digitalisering og internasjonal politikk |
| Chapter | 7 |
| Date Published | 01/2022 |
| Publisher | Universitetsforlaget |
| ISBN Number | 9788215052557 |
Journal Article
OpenIaC: open infrastructure as code - the network is my computer
Journal of Cloud Computing 11 (2022).Status: Published
OpenIaC: open infrastructure as code - the network is my computer
Modern information systems are built fron a complex composition of networks, infrastructure, devices, services, and applications, interconnected by data flows that are often private and financially sensitive. The 5G networks, which can create hyperlocalized services, have highlighted many of the deficiencies of current practices in use today to create and operate information systems. Emerging cloud computing techniques, such as Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and elastic computing, offer a path for a future re-imagining of how we create, deploy, secure, operate, and retire information systems. In this paper, we articulate the position that a comprehensive new approach is needed for all OSI layers from layer 2 up to applications that are built on underlying principles that include reproducibility, continuous integration/continuous delivery, auditability, and versioning. There are obvious needs to redesign and optimize the protocols from the network layer to the application layer. Our vision seeks to augment existing Cloud Computing and Networking solutions with support for multiple cloud infrastructures and seamless integration of cloud-based microservices. To address these issues, we propose an approach named Open Infrastructure as Code (OpenIaC), which is an attempt to provide a common open forum to integrate and build on advances in cloud computing and blockchain to address the needs of modern information architectures. The main mission of our OpenIaC approach is to provide services based on the principles of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) among the federation of connected resources based on Decentralized Identity (DID). Our objectives include the creation of an open-source hub with fine-grained access control for an open and connected infrastructure of shared resources (sensing, storage, computing, 3D printing, etc.) managed by blockchains and federations. Our proposed approach has the potential to provide a path for developing new platforms, business models, and a modernized information ecosystem necessary for 5G networks.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | GAIA, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | Journal of Cloud Computing |
| Volume | 11 |
| Number | 12 |
| Date Published | 05/2022 |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Place Published | Journal of Cloud Computing |
| Keywords | 5G networks, Cloud, edge, infrastructure-as-Code, OPenIaC |
Secure Embedded Living: Towards a Self-contained User Data Preserving Framework
IEEE Communications Magazine 60, no. 11 (2022): 74-80.Status: Published
Secure Embedded Living: Towards a Self-contained User Data Preserving Framework
Smart living represents the hardware-software co-inhabiting with humans for better living standards and improved well-being. Here, hardware monitors human activities (by collecting data) specific to a context. Such data can be processed to offer context-specific valuable insights. Such insights can be used for optimising the well-being, living experience and energy cost of smart homes. This paper proposes a Secure Embedded Living Framework (SELF) that enforces a privacy-preserving data control mechanism by integrating multiple technologies, such as Internet-of-thing, cloud/fog platform, machine learning and blockchain. The primary aim of the SELF is to allow the user to retain more control of its data.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, NorNet, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, GAIA, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | IEEE Communications Magazine |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 11 |
| Pagination | 74–80 |
| Date Published | 11/2022 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| ISSN | 0163-6804 |
| Keywords | blockchain, Cloud, Data, IoTs, Security, User |
| DOI | 10.1109/MCOM.001.2200165 |
Proceedings, refereed
Towards a Privacy Preserving Data Flow Control via Packet Header Marking
In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, and Analytics (HPCC). Chengdu, Sichuan/People's Republic of China: IEEE, 2022.Status: Published
Towards a Privacy Preserving Data Flow Control via Packet Header Marking
{Computing infrastructure is becoming ubiquitous thanks to the advancement in computing and the network domain. Reliable network communication is essential to offer good quality services, but it is not trivial. There are privacy concerns. Metadata may leak user information even if traffic is encrypted. Some countries have data privacy preserving-related regulations, but end-users cannot control through which path, networks, and hardware their data packets should travel. Even worse, the user cannot declare their privacy preferences. This paper presents an approach to tackle such privacy issues through data privacy-aware routing. The user can specify their preferences for packet routing using marking and filtering. Routing can work according to such specifications. It is implemented by P4, allowing a vendor-independent realisation with standard off-the-shelf hardware and open-source software components. We presented the initial experimental results of a proof-of-concept run on a unified cloud/fog research testbed.}
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, GAIA |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, and Analytics (HPCC) |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Place Published | Chengdu, Sichuan/People's Republic of China |
| Keywords | Cloud, Data, Fog, P4, Packets, Privacy, Routing |
Towards a Blockchain and Fog-Based Proactive Data Distribution Framework for ICN
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies (PDCAT). Sendai/Japan, 2022.Status: Published
Towards a Blockchain and Fog-Based Proactive Data Distribution Framework for ICN
Most of today's IP traffic is cloud traffic. Due to a vast, complex and non-transparent Internet infrastructure, securely accessing and delegating data is not a trivial task. Existing technologies of Information-Centric Networking (ICN) make content distribution and access easy while primarily relying on the existing cloud-based security features. The primary aim of ICN is to make data independent of its storage location and application. ICN builds upon traditional distributed computing, which means ICN platforms also can suffer from similar data security issues as distributed computing platforms. We present our ongoing work to develop a secure, proactive data distribution framework. The framework answers the research question, i.e., How to extend online data protection with a secure data distribution model for the ICN platform? Our framework adds a data protection layer over the content distribution network, using blockchain and relying on the fog to distribute the contents with low latency. Our framework is different from the existing works in multiple aspects, such as i) data are primarily distributed from the fog nodes, ii) blockchain is used to protect data and iii) blockchain allows statistical and other information sharing among stakeholders (such as content creators) following access rights. Sharing statistics about content distribution activity can bring transparency and trustworthiness among the stakeholders, including the subscribers, into the ICN platforms. We showed such a framework is possible by presenting initial performance results and our reflections while implementing it on a cloud/fog research testbed.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, GAIA |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies (PDCAT) |
| Place Published | Sendai/Japan |
| Keywords | blockchain, Data, Distribution, Fog, ICN, Protection |
Network Path Integrity Verification using Deterministic Delay Measurements
In TMA Conference 2022. IEEE/IFIP, 2022.Status: Published
Network Path Integrity Verification using Deterministic Delay Measurements
With the intuition that every device on the data path contributes to the end-to-end delay, we propose a simple and deterministic measurement-based approach for detecting the insertion of a layer-2 switch on the data path of a network operator.
For this purpose, we use commodity hardware and the standard ping tool for collecting ICMP RTTs.
To minimise inaccuracies in the measurements, we increase timing determinism on both ICMP source and target by using a real-time kernel on both, a dedicated source (a Linux server) and target (an RPI4 with custom image). Additionally, we manipulate real-time attributes for prioritising the ping process. By using this approach on different loaded networks: lab, campus network, research and education network and an ISP, we are able to reliably detect that a switch was added at the end of the path or within it.
Our method yields an excellent performance on networks with considerable cross traffic as well as lightly loaded networks.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, GAIA |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | TMA Conference 2022 |
| Publisher | IEEE/IFIP |
| ISBN Number | 978-3-903176-47-8 |
| Keywords | alien switch, deterministic RTT, network |
Find Out: How Do Your Data Packets Travel?
In Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM). Thessaloniki, Greece: IEEE, 2022.Status: Published
Find Out: How Do Your Data Packets Travel?
In today's communication-centric world, users generate and exchange a huge amount of data. The Internet helps user data to travel from one part of the world to another via a complex setting of network systems. These systems are intelligent, heterogeneous, and non-transparent to users. In this paper, we present an extensive trace-driven study of user data traffic covering five years of observations, six large ISPs, 21 different autonomous systems, and a total of 13 countries. The aim of this work is to make users aware about how their data travels in the Internet, as the data traffic path is majorly influenced by the interests of ISPs. We showed that shortest land distance between the two countries does not impact data path selection, while data traffic prefers to travel even though country do not share land borders.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, GAIA, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM) |
| Date Published | 11/2022 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Place Published | Thessaloniki, Greece |
| ISBN Number | 978-3-903176-51-5 |
| Keywords | connectivity, Data, Internet, Packets, Routing, Traffic Paths |
Crosslayer Network Outage Classification Using Machine Learning
In Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW). ACM, 2022.Status: Published
Crosslayer Network Outage Classification Using Machine Learning
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, GAIA |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW) |
| Pagination | 1-7 |
| Publisher | ACM |
Public outreach
Hvorfor venter vi «skandale» hver gang it-sikkerheten sjekkes i staten?
Dagens Næringsliv, 2022.Status: Published
Hvorfor venter vi «skandale» hver gang it-sikkerheten sjekkes i staten?
Det eneste som kan gi bedre datasikkerhet i staten raskt, er at politikerne tar beslutninger som går på tvers av sektorene. Mer ansvar og myndighet til NSM og Justisdepartementet er en mulig løsning.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, GAIA, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications |
| Publication Type | Public outreach |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Date Published | 11/2022 |
| Publisher | Dagens Næringsliv |
| Type of Work | Popular science |
| Keywords | Security |
| URL | https://www.dn.no/innlegg/datasikkerhet/it-sikkerhet/cyberangrep/hvorfor... |
UPSKILL
An incomplete mapping of the skills of a given individual, combined with insufficient insight into a company's actual need for competence, give rise to quite a few challenges. For instance, it may lead to hiring the wrong candidates, lack of insight into the best path for personal development and challenges when deciding relevant content for courses, learning material and for continued education.
UPSKILL will introduce a global platform for professional networking. The platform will connect individuals, companies and learning providers, and offer automatic methods for identification, mapping, and development of skills and abilities.
The project will result in new methods for representing the skills of an individual, mapping a company's need for competence, as well as new methods for matching available skills and abilities with the actual need for
competence. The methods will be self-learning, applicable for commercial use and independent of industry.
As a result, the UPSKILL platform will lead to simplified and less expensive hiring and restructuring processes, reduced risk of hiring wrong candidates, free competence guidance for individuals, and content recommendation for learning providers. The platform will be launched in Europe and Southeast Asia after project completion.
Simula’s Role
Simula plays a central role in designing and developing data-driven algorithms for the automatic and unbiased hiring process, identification of individual’s competence profile from available data sources, and development of matching algorithms for potential employees and employers. The developed methods will form a solid foundation for the UPSKILL platform.
Funding source
Research Council of Norway, BIA
All partners
Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering
Oslo Metropolitan University
University of South-Eastern Norway
Coordinator
Conexus AS
5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure
5G-VINNI will accelerate the uptake of 5G in Europe by providing an end-to-end (E2E) facility that validates the performance of new 5G technologies by operating trials of advanced vertical sector services. The 5G-VINNI strategy to achieve this involves:
- Designing the most advanced 5G facility to demonstrate that technical and business 5G KPIs can be met,
- Building and operating 7 interworking instances of the E2E facility to prove the capabilities and openness of the system,
- Creating user friendly zero-touch orchestration, operations and management systems for the 5G-VINNI facilities to ensure operational efficiencies and optimal resource use,
- Proving the 5G-VINNI capabilities through extensive experiments and measurements of performance against the 5G KPIs,
- Developing a viable 5G ecosystem model to support the NaaS infrastructure provision as a sustainable business beyond the project, and
- Promoting the value of 5G-VINNI results to the relevant standards bodies and open source communities.
The 5G-VINNI E2E facility will demonstrate the achievement of 5G KPIs across a range of combinations and permutations of new 5G access technologies and end-user equipment types interconnected by the most advanced 5G core network technologies available. For this 5G-VINNI will leverage the latest 5G technologies, including results from previous 5G PPP projects. This approach employs Network Function Virtualization, Network Slicing and a rigorous automated testing campaign to validate the 5G KPIs under various combinations of technologies and network loads.
To ensure realistic load scenarios 5G-VINNI will create and make available an openness framework to give verticals and peer projects easy access to the 5G-VINNI facilities, both legally and technically, e.g. via open APIs. The 5G-VINNI facilities include 7 infrastructure instances in nationally supported 5G nodes across Europe; this number may be expanded as the ICT-19 projects come on-line in 2019.
Funding source
This project has received funding from the European Horizon 2020 Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement n° 815279 - 5G VINNI
All partners
Simula Metropolitan Centre for Digital Engineering (Norway)
Telenor ASA (Norway)
British Telecommunications Public Limited Company (UK)
Telefonica Investigacion y Desarollo SA TID (Spain)
Samsung Electronics (UK)
Limited SAMS (UK)
Huawei Technologies Duesseldorf GMBH (Germany)
Huawei Technologies Norway AS (Norway)
Ericsson AS (Norway)
Nokia Solutions and Networks (Finland)
Software Radio Systems Limited SRS 9Ireland)
Lime Microsystems LTD (UK)
EANTC Aktiengesellschaft (Germany)
Keysight Technologies (Denmark)
APS KEYS (Denmark)
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung E.V. FHG (Germany)
EURESCOM-European Institute for Research and Strategic Studies in Telecommunications GMBH EUR (Germany)
Altice Labs SA (Portugal)
Panepistimio Patron UOP (Greece)
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain)
Athens University of Economics and Business – Research Center AUEB (Greece)
Intracom SA Telecom Solutions ICOM (Greece)
SES Techcom SA SES (Luxembourg)
Cisco Norway AS (Norway)
Engineering-Ingegneria Informatica SPA (Italy)
Social media presence
Publications for 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure
Journal Article
AI Anomaly Detection for Cloudified Mobile Core Architectures
Transactions on Network and Service Management (2022).Status: Published
AI Anomaly Detection for Cloudified Mobile Core Architectures
IT systems monitoring is a crucial process for managing and orchestrating network resources, allowing network providers to rapidly detect and react to most impediment causing network degradation. However, the high growth in size and complexity of current operational networks (2022) demands new solutions to process huge amounts of data (including alarms) reliably and swiftly. Further, as the network becomes progressively more virtualized, the hosting of nfv on cloud environments adds a magnitude of possible bottlenecks outside the control of the service owners. In this paper, we propose two deep learning anomaly detection solutions that leverage service exposure and apply it to automate the detection of service degradation and root cause discovery in a cloudified mobile network that is orchestrated by ETSI OSM. A testbed is built to validate these AI models. The testbed collects monitoring data from the OSM monitoring module, which is then exposed to the external AI anomaly detection modules, tuned to identify the anomalies and the network services causing them. The deep learning solutions are tested using various artificially induced bottlenecks. The AI solutions are shown to correctly detect anomalies and identify the network components involved in the bottlenecks, with certain limitations in a particular type of bottlenecks. A discussion of the right monitoring tools to identify concrete bottlenecks is provided.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, NorNet, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Journal | Transactions on Network and Service Management |
| Date Published | 08/2022 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Place Published | Los Alamitos, California/U.S.A. |
| ISSN | 1932-4537 |
| Keywords | 5G, AI, Anomaly detection, Autoencoders, deep learning, Mobile networks, Smart Networks |
| DOI | 10.1109/TNSM.2022.3203246 |
Proceedings, refereed
A Live Demonstration of In-Band Telemetry in OSM-Orchestrated Core Networks
In Proceedings of the 47th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN). Edmonton, Alberta/Canada: IEEE, 2022.Status: Published
A Live Demonstration of In-Band Telemetry in OSM-Orchestrated Core Networks
Network Function Virtualization is a key enabler to building future mobile networks in a flexible and cost-efficient way. Such a network is expected to manage and maintain itself with least human intervention. With early deployments of the fifth generation of mobile technologies – 5G – around the world, setting up 4G/5G experimental infrastructures is necessary to optimally design Self-Organising Networks (SON). In this demo, we present a custom small-scale 4G/5G testbed. As a step towards self-healing, the testbed integrates four Programming Protocol-independent Packet Processors (P4) virtual switches, that are placed along interfaces between different components of transport and core network. This demo not only shows the administration and monitoring of the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) VNF components, using Open Source MANO, but also as a proof of concept for the potential of P4-based telemetry in detecting anomalous behaviour of the mobile network, such as a congestion in the transport part.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 47th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN) |
| Pagination | 245–247 |
| Date Published | 09/2022 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Place Published | Edmonton, Alberta/Canada |
| ISBN Number | 978-1-6654-8001-7 |
| Keywords | Anomaly detection, Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Open Source MANO (OSM), P4, Telemetry |
Load Distribution for Mobile Edge Computing with Reliable Server Pooling
In Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Recent Advances for Multi-Clouds and Mobile Edge Computing (M2EC) in conjunction with the 36th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA). Sydney, New South Wales/Australia: Springer, 2022.Status: Published
Load Distribution for Mobile Edge Computing with Reliable Server Pooling
Energy-efficient computing model is a popular choice for high performance as well as throughput oriented computing ecosystems. Mobile (computing) devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous to our computing domain, but with limited resources (true both for computation as well as for energy). Hence, workload offloading from resource-constrained mobile devices to the Edge and maybe (later) to the cloud become necessary as well as useful. Thanks to the persistent technical breakthroughs in global wireless standards (or in mobile networks) together with the almost limitless amount of resources in public cloud platforms, workload offloading is possible and cheaper. In such scenarios, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) resources could be provisioned in proximity to the users for supporting latency-sensitive applications. Here, two relevant problems could be: i) How to distribute workload to the resource pools of MEC as well as public (multi-)clouds? ii) How to manage such resource pools effectively? To answer these problems in this paper, we examine the performance of our proposed approach using the Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) framework in more detail. We also have outlined the resource pool management policies to effectively use RSerPool for workload offloading from mobile devices into the cloud/MEC ecosystem.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, MELODIC: Multi-cloud Execution-ware for Large-scale Optimised Data-Intensive Computing |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Recent Advances for Multi-Clouds and Mobile Edge Computing (M2EC) in conjunction with the 36th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA) |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Place Published | Sydney, New South Wales/Australia |
| Keywords | Cloud computing, Load Distribution, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Multi-Cloud Computing, Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool), Serverless Computing |
Talks, contributed
Detecting Issues with In-Band Telemetry in OSM-Orchestrated Core Networks
In ETSI, Virtual. Virtual: ETSI, 2022.Status: Published
Detecting Issues with In-Band Telemetry in OSM-Orchestrated Core Networks
Open Source MANO is a helpful tool to manage and orchestrate the instantiation of core network setups, like Network Service (NS) instances of our SimulaMet OpenAirInterface Virtual Network Function (VNF) for Enhanced Packet Cores (EPC). We furthermore extended our NS with VNF instances of Programming Protocol-independent Packet Processors (P4) switches, in order to allow for in-band telemetry. With in-band telemetry, it is possible to flexibly add, process, and remove telemetry information to traffic within the packet core, in order to allow for fine-granular evaluation of the system performance and the users' experienced quality of service. In our presentation and demo, we would like to provide an overview of our ongoing work on P4-based in-band telemetry in an OSM-orchestrated 4G core, which is used for detecting performance problems and anomalies in the network based on machine learning. We would furthermore like to demonstrate the details of our setup to the audience in a live demo.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, NorNet, 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure |
| Publication Type | Talks, contributed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Location of Talk | ETSI, Virtual |
| Publisher | ETSI |
| Place Published | Virtual |
| Type of Talk | Demo presentation |
| Keywords | Anomaly detection, Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Open Source MANO (OSM), P4, Telemetry |
| URL | http://osm-download.etsi.org/ftp/osm-11.0-eleven/OSM13_Ecosystem_Day/OSM... |
NorNet – A Linux- and Open-Source-Software-based International Platform for Networking Research
In Linux Conference Australia, Virtual. Melbourne, Australia: Linux Conference Australia, 2022.Status: Published
NorNet – A Linux- and Open-Source-Software-based International Platform for Networking Research
The NorNet testbed (https://www.nntb.no) is an Internet testbed platform for research on multi-homed systems. The particular property of multi-homed systems is to be connected to multiple Internet Service Providers (ISP) simultaneously. Its initial purpose is of course to still provide connectivity in case of ISP/network failures. But does it really work that well, also with current protocols and applications? And redundancy does not come for free. A user connected to multiple ISPs will also receive multiple Internet bills each month. So, is there a possibility to make further use of multi-homing in the usual case where nothing goes wrong? Obviously, there are a lot of interesting research questions, which need to be examined in realistic Internet setups! Therefore, we are building up the NorNet open Internet testbed platform as a Linux- and Open-Source-software-based infrastructure, which currently spreads over multiple sites in different countries.
NorNet makes extensive use of advanced Linux features like Kernel-based Virtualisation (KVM), Linux Containers (LXC), BTRFS file system features, IP routing rules, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), Multi-Path TCP (MPTCP), and many more. The goal of this talk is therefore to present an overview of the testbed, its underlying Linux features, and how they are combined to provide the multi-homing features to the various testbed users. This particularly includes an overview of how to make use of multi-path transport with MPTCP – based on the Linux MPTCP implementation – in multi-homed environments. The idea is to provide guidelines for also utilising multi-homing features in own projects.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , GAIA |
| Publication Type | Talks, contributed |
| Year of Publication | 2022 |
| Location of Talk | Linux Conference Australia, Virtual |
| Publisher | Linux Conference Australia |
| Place Published | Melbourne, Australia |
| Keywords | Linux, Multi-Homing, Multi-Path Transport, NorNet, Open Source, Testbed |
| URL | https://lca2022.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/52/ |
Book
AI and ML – Enablers for Beyond 5G Networks
Online: 5G PPP Technology Board, 2021.Status: Published
AI and ML – Enablers for Beyond 5G Networks
This white paper on AI and ML as enablers of beyond 5G (B5G) networks is based on contributions from almost 20 5G PPP projects, coordinated through the 5G PPP Technology Board, that research, implement and validate 5G and B5G network systems. The paper introduces the main relevant mechanisms in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), currently investigated and exploited for enhancing 5G and B5G networks.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications |
| Publication Type | Book |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Date Published | 05/2021 |
| Publisher | 5G PPP Technology Board |
| Place Published | Online |
| URL | https://5g-ppp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AI-MLforNetworks-v1-0.pdf |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.429989 |
Journal Article
Optimising Performance for NB-IoT UE Devices through Data Driven Models
Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks 10 (2021).Status: Published
Optimising Performance for NB-IoT UE Devices through Data Driven Models
<p>This paper presents a data driven framework for performance optimisation of Narrow-Band IoT user equipment. The proposed framework is an edge micro-service that suggests one-time configurations to user equipment communicating with a base station. Suggested configurations are delivered from a Configuration Advocate, to improve energy consumption, delay, throughput or a combination of those metrics, depending on the user-end device and the application. Reinforcement learning utilising gradient descent and genetic algorithm is adopted synchronously with machine and deep learning algorithms to predict the environmental states and suggest an optimal configuration. The results highlight the adaptability of the Deep Neural Network in the prediction of intermediary environmental states, additionally the results present superior performance of the genetic reinforcement learning algorithm regarding its performance optimisation.</p>
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks |
| Volume | 10 |
| Number | 1 |
| Publisher | MDPI |
| Place Published | Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks |
| ISSN | 2224-2708 |
| URL | https://www.mdpi.com/2224-2708/10/1/21 |
| DOI | 10.3390/jsan10010021 |
Proceedings, refereed
A Demo of Workload Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing Using the Reliable Server Pooling Framework
In Proceedings of the 46th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN). Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: IEEE Computer Society, 2021.Status: Published
A Demo of Workload Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing Using the Reliable Server Pooling Framework
Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) places cloud resources nearby the user, to provide support for latency-sensitive applications. Offloading workload from resource-constrained mobile devices (such as smartphones) into the cloud ecosystem is becoming increasingly popular. In this demonstration, we show how to deploy a mobile network (with OpenAirInterface and Open Source MANO), as well as to adapt the Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) framework to efficiently manage MEC as well as multi-cloud resources to run an interactive demo application.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, MELODIC: Multi-cloud Execution-ware for Large-scale Optimised Data-Intensive Computing, 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, NorNet |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 46th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN) |
| Date Published | 10/2021 |
| Publisher | IEEE Computer Society |
| Place Published | Edmonton, Alberta, Canada |
| Keywords | Demonstration, Evolved Packet Core (EPC), Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Multi-Cloud Computing, Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) |
| URL | https://www.ieeelcn.org/lcn46demos/Demo_4_1570754367.pdf |
An Exposed Closed-Loop Model for Customer-Driven Service Assurance Automation
In 2021 Joint European Conference on Networks and Communications & 6G Summit (EuCNC/6G Summit). Porto, Portugal: IEEE Computer Society, 2021.Status: Published
An Exposed Closed-Loop Model for Customer-Driven Service Assurance Automation
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is widely applied in telecommunications to enable zero-touch automation in network operation and service management. Due to the high complexity, deploying advanced AI mechanisms is not always feasible inside the operator’s network domains. Instead, via service exposures, it becomes possible for vertical customers to integrate their external AI solutions with the network and service management system to form a closed loop (CL) and contribute to the automation process. In this paper, we propose an exposed CL model based on service exposure and apply it to automate service assurance tasks like autoscaling in a network function virtualization (NFV) system orchestrated by ETSI Open Source MANO (OSM). A testbed is built to validate the model. It collects monitoring data from the OSM monitoring module and external monitoring tools. Vertical customers drive and customize their AI solutions to aggregate these data sets and run analytics to detect and predict anomalies prepared for scaling. Preliminary analysis demonstrates the added values of customer-driven monitoring and analysis via the exposed CL.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Conference Name | 2021 Joint European Conference on Networks and Communications & 6G Summit (EuCNC/6G Summit) |
| Pagination | 419–424 |
| Date Published | 06/2021 |
| Publisher | IEEE Computer Society |
| Place Published | Porto, Portugal |
| ISBN Number | 978-1-6654-1526-2 |
| Keywords | Autonomous Management, Closed Loop, Machine learning, Monitoring, Service Exposure |
| DOI | 10.1109/EuCNC/6GSummit51104.2021.9482533 |
Reliable Server Pooling Based Workload Offloading with Mobile Edge Computing: A Proof-of-Concept
In Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA 2021). Springer, 2021.Status: Published
Reliable Server Pooling Based Workload Offloading with Mobile Edge Computing: A Proof-of-Concept
In recent times, mobile broadband devices have become almost ubiquitous. However, battery-powered devices (such as smartphones), have limitations on energy consumption, computation power and storage space. Cloud computing, and in particular with the upcoming 5G networks, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) can provide compute and storage services at the vicinity of the user (with a low communication latency). However, the complexity lies in how to simply and efficiently realise MEC services, with the auxiliary public (multi-)cloud resources? In this paper, we propose a proof-of-concept of using Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) as a light-weight layer of managing resource pools and handling application sessions with these pools. Our approach is simple, efficient, has low overhead and is available as open-source. Here, we demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by measuring in a test setup, with a 4G testbed connected to MEC and public multi-cloud resources.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, SMIL: SimulaMet Interoperability Lab, 5G-VINNI: 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure , Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, MELODIC: Multi-cloud Execution-ware for Large-scale Optimised Data-Intensive Computing |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Conference Name | Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA 2021) |
| Pagination | 582-593 |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Keywords | 5G, Evolved Packet Core (EPC), Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Multi-Cloud Computing, Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) |
LUCS: Learning to Understand and Control nation-wide Smart grids of energy prosumers
The world energy market is changing, with many developed countries investing into green energy as well as distributed energy production. This transformation has led to the possibility of prosumers- the producer of relatively small and sporadic amounts of energy, to significantly influence the market and the power quality in the grid. Nonetheless, a wider proliferation of privately owned solar collectors, windmills, and other kinds of green generators make it challenging to manage the flow of energy that is no longer uni-directional.
LUCS is bringing together research groups and educational institutions that are committed to educating the next generation of researchers and engineers by joining forces to provide knowledge and experience that will assist Masters and early doctoral students with experiment design and performance analyses of smart grid systems. The research-related objectives of LUCS are to facilitate interaction of researchers for the purpose of developing and implementing novel approaches to improve the performance and robustness of the smart grid systems.
Final goal
LUCS will conduct four main activities:
-
Organize 4 summer schools
- Develop a common smart grid curriculum at University of Oslo and Technical University of Berlin
- Organize 3 research workshops
- Sponsor the mobility of researchers to strengthen the group collaboration
Summer schools
3 summer schools have been held since 2018, and the final summer school, led by University of Oslo (UiO), will be in the summer of 2022 at Sundvollen.
-
Future Energy Information Networks, was held in Oslo from September 3rd to 7th, 2018.
- Smart Cities for Sustainable Energy Future - from design to practice, was held in Berlin from August 19th to 30th, 2019.
- Green Computing meets Green Energy, was held in Lille from September 5th to 10th, 2021. The Lille summer school was the first in-person event since the pandemic. More information on this summer school is found in this article.
-
From Energy Systems to Energy Justice, hosted by University of Oslo. Will be held at Sundvollen, from August 29—September 2, 2022. Call for participation.
Workshops
3 collaborative LUCS-PACE research workshops have been held.
-
The first workshop was a combined kick-off held in Oslo.
- The second LUCS-PACE workshop was held virtually due to Covid-19, from 25th to 26th of April, 2021. A summary of the workshop is available through this article.
- The final workshop was led by the Technical University of Munich (TuM), and took place at their premises in Munich, from 2nd to 4th of March, 2022. Read more about this workshop.
Funding source
INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research
All partners
- Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
- University of Oslo, Norway
- Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin), Germany
- German Turkish Advanced Research Center for ICT (GT-ARC) Germany
Project leader
David Hayes, Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, SimulaMet, Norway
MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe
Given today's importance of mobile broadband (MBB) networks, there is a strong need for objective information about their performance, particularly, the quality experienced by the end user. MONROE proposes to design, build and operate the first European transnational open platform for independent, multi-homed, large-scale monitoring and performance assessment of MBB networks in heterogeneous environments. It also provides WiFi connectivity mimicking multi-homing in smartphones with both MBB and WiFi interfaces, to allow experimenting on different access technologies as well as to explore new ways of combining them to increase performance and robustness. Moreover, the platform's users are in the core of the MONROE project. Following the FIRE’s philosophy, MONROE offers a user-oriented closed-loop system design in which the experimental platform is open to external users, and where users are incorporated early on in the experimental design process. Second, MONROE will provide Experiments as a Service (EaaS), thus lowering the barrier for using the platform to external experimenters and users, by providing well-documented tools and adjustable, flexible, high-level scripts to execute experiments, collect results, and analyze data. Interoperability with existing FIRE and FP7 measurement platforms, jointly with the effort of MONROE to develop business and funding models, will guarantee sustainability and usefulness of the platform.
Funding source:
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644399. (H2020-ICT-2014-1)
All partners:
- Simula (Norway)
- Imdea Networks (Spain)
- Karlstad University (Sweden)
- Politecnico Di Torino (Italy)
- Nextworks (Italy)
- Celerway Communications (Norway)
- Telenor (Norway)
Social media presence
Publications for MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe
Journal Article
Large scale “speedtest” experimentation in Mobile Broadband Networks
Computer Networks 184, no. 31 (2021): 107629.Status: Published
Large scale “speedtest” experimentation in Mobile Broadband Networks
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | Department of Mobile Systems and Analytics, MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Journal | Computer Networks |
| Volume | 184 |
| Issue | 31 |
| Pagination | 107629 |
| Date Published | Oct-17-2021 |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| ISSN | 13891286 |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.comnet.2020.107629 |
Proceedings, refereed
Mobile Network Performance during the COVID-19 Outbreak from a Testbed Perspective
In Proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental Evaluation & Characterization. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2020.Status: Published
Mobile Network Performance during the COVID-19 Outbreak from a Testbed Perspective
COVID-19 has changed our lives and continues to have a drastic impact. It forces us to impose restrictive social distancing measures and leads us to rely more on the Internet. Mobile networks become one of the major means to access the Internet for most of us. We investigate the performance of 9 mobile networks in Europe around the time when restrictions were imposed, considering web QoE, throughput, RTT, and signal coverage. Our results show countries' mobile networks are impacted by COVID-19 (as high as 46 % increase in page load time) at different times based on the outbreak timelines in these countries. Moreover, we find that operators responded properly and the network performance is back to the pre-COVID-19 times.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | Department of Mobile Systems and Analytics, MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental Evaluation & Characterization |
| Pagination | 110–117 |
| Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Place Published | New York, NY, USA |
| ISBN Number | 9781450380829 |
| Keywords | COVID-19, mobile network performance, RTT, signal coverage, Throughput, web QoE |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1145/3411276.3412194 |
| DOI | 10.1145/3411276.3412194 |
Mobile Network Performance during the COVID-19 Outbreak from a Testbed Perspective
In MobiCom '20: The 26th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and NetworkingProceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation & Characterization. London United KingdomNew York, NY, USA: ACM, 2020.Status: Published
Mobile Network Performance during the COVID-19 Outbreak from a Testbed Perspective
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe , Department of Mobile Systems and Analytics |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Conference Name | MobiCom '20: The 26th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and NetworkingProceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation & Characterization |
| Publisher | ACM |
| Place Published | London United KingdomNew York, NY, USA |
| ISBN Number | 9781450380829 |
| URL | https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3411276https://dl.acm.org/doi... |
| DOI | 10.1145/341127610.1145/3411276.3412194 |
Journal Article
Low-Latency Scheduling in MPTCP
IEEE Transactions on Networking 27, no. 1 (2019).Status: Published
Low-Latency Scheduling in MPTCP
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe , Department of Mobile Systems and Analytics |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Networking |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Date Published | 02/2019 |
| Publisher | ACM IEEE |
Dissecting the Performance of YouTube Video Streaming in Mobile Networks
International Journal on Network Management Early View (2019): e2058.Status: Published
Dissecting the Performance of YouTube Video Streaming in Mobile Networks
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe , Department of Mobile Systems and Analytics |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Journal | International Journal on Network Management |
| Volume | Early View |
| Pagination | e2058 |
| Publisher | Wiley |
| DOI | 10.1002/nem.2058 |
Results from Running an Experiment as a Service Platform for Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe
Elsevier Computer Communications 133 (2019): 89-101.Status: Published
Results from Running an Experiment as a Service Platform for Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe , Department of Mobile Systems and Analytics |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Journal | Elsevier Computer Communications |
| Volume | 133 |
| Pagination | 89-101 |
| Date Published | 01/2019 |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
Proceedings, refereed
On the importance of TCP splitting proxies for future 5G mmWave communications
In IEEE Local Computer Networks (LCN) Symposium on Emerging Topics in Networking. IEEE, 2019.Status: Published
On the importance of TCP splitting proxies for future 5G mmWave communications
Abstract—5G mmWave technology promises capacities 10 to 100 times that of 4G. However, mmWave links are very sensitive to having direct line of sight between sender and receiver, with dramatically fluctuating capacities due to transient blocking and shadow fading, which can substantially degrade TCP performance. TCP-splitting proxies (SPEPs) are often used to improve TCP performance over wireless links. We investigate current operator SPEPs (used in 4G LTE networks) under mmWave-like dynamics using the MONROE testbed. We introduce a mmWave emulation model for an urban canyon scenario, and use it to evaluate how current operational SPEPs impact the performance. Our results from experiments including four operators and three countries, indicate that SPEPs will be even more important for 5G mmWave than they are in LTE. Current 4G SPEPs provide significant, though not optimal, benefits under mmWave-like conditions, allowing them to be utilized as the network transitions to 5G technology.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | MAMI: Measurement and Architecture for a Middleboxed Internet, MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe , Department of Mobile Systems and Analytics, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Conference Name | IEEE Local Computer Networks (LCN) Symposium on Emerging Topics in Networking |
| Pagination | 108--116 |
| Date Published | 10/2019 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| ISBN Number | 978-1-7281-2561-9 |
| URL | http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9000661&isnumber... |
| DOI | 10.1109/LCNSymposium47956.2019.9000661 |
Estimating Downlink Throughput from End-User Measurements in Mobile Broadband Networks
In IEEE World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM). IEEE, 2019.Status: Published
Estimating Downlink Throughput from End-User Measurements in Mobile Broadband Networks
In recent years, Downlink (DL) throughput estima- tion in Mobile Broadband (MBB) networks has gained immense popularity and it is expected to become a vital component of the upcoming fifth generation (5G) systems. Plentiful adaptive video streaming algorithms greatly rely on accurate DL throughput predictions to adapt their mechanisms and ensure high Quality of Service (QoS) to the end-users. Thus far, conventional DL throughput estimation approaches, also known as speed tests, require an extensive exchange of TCP traffic over the network for an allocated time duration. While such tools appear to deliver trustworthy results, they turn out to be inefficient when mobile subscriptions with limited data plans are engaged.
In this paper, we propose a supervised Machine Learning (ML) solution for DL throughput estimation that aims at delivering highly accurate predictions while significantly limiting the over- the-air data consumption. We capture the network performance metrics by exploring both crowdsourced and controlled test- ing methodologies. We leverage RTR-NetTest, a platform of broadband measurements provided by the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications (RTR), and MONROE-NetTest, its counterpart wrapper built as an Experi- ment as a Service (EaaS) on top of Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe (MONROE). Results reveal that our solution can achieve a 39.7% reduction in terms of data consumption while delivering a Median Absolute Percentage Error (MdAPE) of 5.55%. We further show that accuracy can be traded-off, for example, a significant data consumption reduction of 95.15% can be achieved for a MdAPE of 20%.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Conference Name | IEEE World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM) |
| Pagination | 1-10 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
Web Experience in Operational Mobile Networks: Lessons from Two Million Page Visits
In WWW '19: The World Wide Web Conference. ACM, 2019.Status: Published
Web Experience in Operational Mobile Networks: Lessons from Two Million Page Visits
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe , Department of Mobile Systems and Analytics |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Conference Name | WWW '19: The World Wide Web Conference |
| Pagination | 1532-1543 |
| Publisher | ACM |
Measuring Web Quality of Experience in Cellular Networks
In International Conference on Passive and Active Network Measurement. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019.Status: Published
Measuring Web Quality of Experience in Cellular Networks
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | MONROE: Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe , Department of Mobile Systems and Analytics |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Conference Name | International Conference on Passive and Active Network Measurement |
| Pagination | 18-33 |
| Publisher | Springer International Publishing |
| Place Published | Cham |
NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet
The NEAT project wants to achieve a complete redesign of the way in which Internet applications interact with the network. Our goal is to allow network "services" offered to applications – such as reliability, low-delay communication or security – to be dynamically tailored based on application demands, current network conditions, hardware capabilities or local policies, and also to support the integration of new network functionality in an evolutionary fashion, without applications having to be rewritten. This architectural change will make the Internet truly “enhanceable”, by allowing applications to seamlessly and more easily take advantage of new network features as they evolve.
Funding source
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 644334. (ICT-05-2014: Smart Networks and novel Internet Architectures)
All partners:
- Simula Research Laboratory (Norway)
- Celerway (Norway)
- Cisco Europe (France)
- EMC (Ireland)
- Mozilla Denmark (Denmark)
- Fachhochschule Münster (Germany)
- Karlstad University (Sweden)
- University of Aberdeen (United Kingdom)
- University of Oslo (Norway)
Project leader
David Ros, Simula Research Laboratory (Norway)
Online presence
Publications for NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet
Journal Article
On the Usability of Transport Protocols other than TCP: A Home Gateway and Internet Path Traversal Study
Computer Networks 173 (2020).Status: Published
On the Usability of Transport Protocols other than TCP: A Home Gateway and Internet Path Traversal Study
Network APIs are moving towards protocol agility, where applications express their needs but not a static protocol binding, and it is up to the layer below the API to choose a suitable protocol. The IETF Transport Services (TAPS) Working Group is standardizing a protocol-independent transport API and offering guidance to implementers. Apple’s recent “Network.framework” is specifically designed to allow such late and dynamic binding of protocols. When the network stack autonomously chooses and configures a protocol, it must first test which protocols are locally available and which work end-to-end (“protocol racing”). For this, it is important to know the set of available options, and which protocols should be tried first: Does it make sense to offer unchecked payload delivery, as with UDP-Lite? Is a UDP-based protocol like QUIC always a better choice, or should native SCTP be tried? This paper develops answers to such questions via (i) a NAT study in a local testbed, (ii) bidirectional Internet tests, (iii) a large scale Internet measurement campaign. The examined protocols are: SCTP, DCCP, UDP-Lite, UDP with a zero checksum and three different UDP encapsulations.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Journal | Computer Networks |
| Volume | 173 |
| Date Published | 05/2020 |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| ISSN | 1389-1286 |
| Keywords | DCCP, Internet, NAT, Protocol Testing, SCTP, UDP-Lite |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.comnet.2020.107211 |
Journal Article
On the Utility of Unregulated IP DiffServ Code Point (DSCP) Usage by End Systems
Performance Evaluation 135 (2019): 102036.Status: Published
On the Utility of Unregulated IP DiffServ Code Point (DSCP) Usage by End Systems
DiffServ was designed to implement service provider quality of service (QoS) policies, where routers change and react upon the DiffServ Code Point (DSCP) in the IP header. However, nowadays, applications are beginning to directly set the DSCP themselves, in the hope that this will yield a more appropriate service for their respective video, audio and data streams. WebRTC is a prime example of such an application. We present measurements, for both IPv4 and IPv6, of what happens to DSCP values along Internet paths after an end system has set them without any prior agreement between a customer and a service provider. We find that the DSCP is often changed or zeroed along the path, but detrimental effects from using the DSCP are extremely rare; moreover, DSCP values sometimes remain intact (potentially having an effect on traffic) for several AS hops. This positive result motivates an analysis of the potential latency impact from such DSCP usage, for which we present the first measurement results. We find that routers at approximately 3% of more than 100,000 links differentiate between the WebRTC DSCP values (EF, AF42 and CS1) and consistently reduce delay in comparison with probes carrying a zero value (CS0) under congestion. In contrast, routers at around 2% of these links increase the delay by a comparable amount under congestion, uniformly for EF, AF42 and CS1.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NorNet, The Center for Resilient Networks and Applications, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet, MELODIC: Multi-cloud Execution-ware for Large-scale Optimised Data-Intensive Computing |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Journal | Performance Evaluation |
| Volume | 135 |
| Pagination | 102036 |
| Date Published | 08/2019 |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| ISSN | 0166-5316 |
| Keywords | DiffServ, DiffServ Code Point, latency, QoS, WebRTC |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.peva.2019.102036 |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.peva.2019.102036 |
Proceedings, refereed
ctrlTCP: Reducing Latency through Coupled, Heterogeneous Multi-Flow TCP Congestion Control
In 21st IEEE Global Internet Symposium (GI 2018). Honolulu, HI, USA: IEEE, 2018.Status: Published
ctrlTCP: Reducing Latency through Coupled, Heterogeneous Multi-Flow TCP Congestion Control
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2018 |
| Conference Name | 21st IEEE Global Internet Symposium (GI 2018) |
| Date Published | 04/2018 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Place Published | Honolulu, HI, USA |
| Notes | In conjunction with IEEE INFOCOM, Honolulu, HI, USA |
| URL | https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/71297 |
| DOI | 10.1109/INFCOMW.2018.8406887 |
Journal Article
NEAT: A Platform- and Protocol-Independent Internet Transport API
IEEE Communications Magazine 55, no. 6 (2017): 46-54.Status: Published
NEAT: A Platform- and Protocol-Independent Internet Transport API
The sockets Applications Programming Interface (API) has become the standard way that applications access the transport services offered by the Internet Protocol stack. This paper presents NEAT, a user-space library that can provide an alternate transport API. NEAT allows applications to request the service they need using a new design that is agnostic to the specific choice of transport protocol underneath. This not only allows applications to take advantage of common protocol machinery, but also eases introduction of new network mechanisms and transport protocols. The paper describes the components of the NEAT library and illustrates the important benefits that can be gained from this new approach. NEAT is a software platform for developing advanced network applications that was designed in accordance with the standardization efforts on Transport Services (TAPS) in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), but its features exceed the envisioned functionality of a TAPS system.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2017 |
| Journal | IEEE Communications Magazine |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pagination | 46-54 |
| Date Published | 06/2017 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| ISSN | 0163-6804 |
| DOI | 10.1109/MCOM.2017.1601052 |
| Research Notes | https://www.neat-project.org/publications/#papers |
Proceedings, refereed
fling: A Flexible Ping for Middlebox Measurements
In 2017 29th International Teletraffic Congress (ITC 29). Vol. 1. IEEE, 2017.Status: Published
fling: A Flexible Ping for Middlebox Measurements
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2017 |
| Conference Name | 2017 29th International Teletraffic Congress (ITC 29) |
| Volume | 1 |
| Pagination | 134–142 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
A NEAT Way to Browse the Web
In Proceedings of the Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW). Praha/Czech Republic: IEEE, 2017.Status: Published
A NEAT Way to Browse the Web
There is a growing concern that the Internet transport layer has become ossified in the face of emerging novel applications, and that further evolution has become very difficult. The NEAT system is a novel and evolvable transport system that decouples applications from the underlying transport layer and network services. In so doing, it facilitates dynamic transport selection. This demo shows how the NEAT system is able to dynamically select the most appropriate transport solution for the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet, NorNet |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2017 |
| Conference Name | Proceedings of the Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW) |
| Date Published | 07/15/2017 |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Place Published | Praha/Czech Republic |
| Keywords | NEAT, ossification, SCTP, tcp, Transport Selection, Transport Service |
| Notes | Demo Presentation |
| URL | https://irtf.org/anrw/2017/anrw17-final13.pdf |
Evaluating CAIA Delay Gradient as a Candidate for Deadline-Aware Less-than-Best-Effort Transport
In Workshop on Future of Internet Transport (FIT 2017). IFIP, 2017.Status: Published
Evaluating CAIA Delay Gradient as a Candidate for Deadline-Aware Less-than-Best-Effort Transport
Less-than-best-effort (LBE) congestion control offers a low-priority service for applications tolerant to high latency and low throughput, like peer-to-peer file transfers or automatic software updates. There are, however, situations where it would be beneficial for the application to specify a soft deadline for task completion. Examples of such situations could be completion of backup tasks or synchronisation between CDN data centres. Since network conditions change over time, a deadline-aware LBE (DA-LBE) congestion control would need the ability to dynamically adapt how aggressively it competes for capacity to meet the soft deadline, trading low-priority behaviour for timeliness. One candidate that shows promise as a LBE congestion control is CAIA Delay Gradient (CDG). CDG uses changes in measured end-to-end delay to control the congestion window. CDG has several parameters that might help tune its “aggressiveness” in a way that might help achieve the goal of DA-LBE congestion control. We have evaluated CDG in order to establish how it can be tuned to exhibit different degrees of LBE behaviour under varying network conditions. Our results show that it is possible to control CDG to vary its aggressiveness in a consistent way, making it a prime candidate to implement a DA-LBE congestion control system.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2017 |
| Conference Name | Workshop on Future of Internet Transport (FIT 2017) |
| Publisher | IFIP |
| ISBN Number | 978-3-901882-94-4 |
| Keywords | congestion control, deadline-aware congestion control, Less-than-Best-Effort Service, scavenger service |
| URL | http://dl.ifip.org/db/conf/networking/networking2017/1570350870.pdf |
| DOI | 10.23919/IFIPNetworking.2017.8264882 |
A Framework for Less than Best Effort Congestion Control with Soft Deadlines
In 2017 IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking) and Workshops. IEEE, 2017.Status: Published
A Framework for Less than Best Effort Congestion Control with Soft Deadlines
Applications like inter data-centre synchronisation or client-to-cloud backups require a reliable end-to-end data transfer, however, they typically do not have strong capacity or latency constraints, just a loose delivery deadline. Besides, their potential to disrupt more quality-constrained flows should be kept to a minimum. These applications could be well served by a transport protocol providing a less-than-best-effort (LBE) or scavenger service rather than TCP but, neither TCP nor standard LBE methods like LEDBAT consider any notion of deadline or completion time. TCP simply tries to maximise the use of available capacity, while LEDBAT tries to enforce an LBE behaviour regardless of any timeliness requirements.
This paper introduces a framework for adding both LBE behaviour and awareness of “soft” delivery deadlines to any congestion control (CC) algorithm, whether loss-based, delay-based or explicit signaling-based. This effectively allows it to turn an arbitrary CC protocol into a scavenger protocol that dynamically adapts its sending rate to network conditions and remaining time before the deadline, to balance timeliness and transmission aggressiveness. Network utility maximization (NUM) theory provides a solid foundation for the proposal. The effectiveness of the approach is validated by numerical and simulation experiments, with TCP Cubic and Vegas used as examples.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2017 |
| Conference Name | 2017 IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking) and Workshops |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| ISBN Number | 978-3-901882-94-4 |
| URL | http://dl.ifip.org/db/conf/networking/networking2017/1570334752.pdf |
| DOI | 10.23919/IFIPNetworking.2017.8264853 |
Talks, invited
NEAT Tutorial at Hainan University: Getting Started with NEAT
In Haikou, Hainan, People's Republic of China. Haikou, Hainan/People's Republic of China, 2017.Status: Published
NEAT Tutorial at Hainan University: Getting Started with NEAT
The goal of NEAT (A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet) is to allow network "services" offered to applications – such as reliability, low-delay communication or security – to be dynamically tailored based on application demands, current network conditions, hardware capabilities or local policies, and also to support the integration of new network functionality in an evolutionary fashion, without applications having to be rewritten. This talk gives a practical introduction to NEAT from a developer's perspective: after an introduction to NEAT, the APIs and in particular the NEAT Sockets API are explained. This is followed by pseudo-code examples and finally running-code examples. These running-code examples particularly also show how to use NEAT in NorNet Core.
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet, NorNet |
| Publication Type | Talks, invited |
| Year of Publication | 2017 |
| Location of Talk | Haikou, Hainan, People's Republic of China |
| Place Published | Haikou, Hainan/People's Republic of China |
| Type of Talk | Tutorial |
| Keywords | Client, Examples, NEAT, NEAT Sockets API, NorNet Core, programming, Server |
A Practical Introduction to NEAT at Hainan University
In Haikou, Hainan, People's Republic of China. Haikou, Hainan, People's Republic of China, 2017.Status: Published
A Practical Introduction to NEAT at Hainan University
The goal of NEAT (A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet) is to allow network "services" offered to applications – such as reliability, low-delay communication or security – to be dynamically tailored based on application demands, current network conditions, hardware capabilities or local policies, and also to support the integration of new network functionality in an evolutionary fashion, without applications having to be rewritten. This talk gives a practical introduction to NEAT from a developer's perspective: after an introduction to NEAT, the APIs and in particular the NEAT Sockets API are explained. This is followed by pseudo-code examples and finally running-code examples. These running-code examples particularly also show how to use NEAT in NorNet Core
| Afilliation | Communication Systems |
| Project(s) | NEAT: A New, Evolutive API and Transport-Layer Architecture for the Internet, NorNet |
| Publication Type | Talks, invited |
| Year of Publication | 2017 |
| Location of Talk | Haikou, Hainan, People's Republic of China |
| Place Published | Haikou, Hainan, People's Republic of China |
| Type of Talk | Invited Talk |
| Keywords | Client, Examples, NEAT, NEAT Sockets API, NorNet Core, programming, Server |
MobRob: Resilient Networks Mobile Broadband Measurements
The Centre for resilient networks and applications (CRNA) at Simula leads and operates an activity that continuously measures and evaluates the robustness of the service of all major mobile broadband providers in Norway. These measurements are financed by the Ministry of Transport and Communication. During the fall of 2011 all providers were invited to participate in this effort. Participation from providers is sought to scale up the scale the number of measurement points that Simula can operate and to give the participating providers access to unique measurement data that closely captures end users’ experience. Tele2 and Ice Norge expressed willingness and joined Simula in building the first large-scale mobile broadband measurements world-wide. MobRob was commissioned immediately thereafter to manage and steer this collaboration.
The ambition of MobRob is to build a unique large scale measurement infrastructure and to create a dynamic medium where researchers and network operators can work together. Since its start in 2012, MobRob along with Robuste nett 2 have managed to deploy several hundreds of measurement points all over Norway. Participating operators have been using the collected measurement data in conjunction with data analysis and visualization systems developed by Simula to monitor how end users perceive their services.
Final goal:
Funding source:
Partners and self-financing from CRNA
All partners:
- Tele2
- Ice Norge