by Liu, Jun

In this paper, we present a self-organizing multipath (SOMP) routing protocol aiming at enhancing success rates of delivery of data packets end-to-end, restricting the routing overhead, and being robust to unstable network conditions. In this SOMP protocol, each mobile host sets up multiple beacons at other hosts to indicate routes to reach it. A beacon is an ordered list of mobile hosts along a path going from the host which holds the beacon, to the host which sets up the beacon. Two functionalities are used for routing data packets to their destinations. The first functionality is a beacon-seeking mechanism, which helps data packets to obtain beacons leading to the destinations of the data packets. The second functionality is a source routing mechanism, which is similar to the one used in Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol and is used to forward data packets to their destinations using the beacons obtained. A balanced binary search tree is used in the SOMP protocol as the embedded forwarding structure, which is built on the identifiers of mobile hosts. This search tree serves for both distributing beacon updates and routing data packets to obtain beacons. The actual routes taken by data packets are jointly determined by the embedded forwarding structure and the underlying network connectivity.

DOI: 10.1007/s10922-005-9017-2
Online Date: 4/29/2006
Print publication date: 3/1/2006
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by Kulkarni, Amit; Bush, Stephen

This paper describes an approach to detecting distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that is based on fundamentals of Information Theory, specifically Kolmogorov Complexity. A theorem derived using principles of Kolmogorov Complexity states that the joint complexity measure of random strings is lower than the sum of the complexities of the individual strings when the strings exhibit some correlation. Furthermore, the joint complexity measure varies inversely with the amount of correlation. We propose a distributed active network-based algorithm that exploits this property to correlate arbitrary traffic flows in the network to detect possible denial-of-service attacks. One of the strengths of this algorithm is that it does not require special filtering rules and hence it can be used to detect any type of DDoS attack. We implement and investigate the performance of the algorithm in an active network. Our results show that DDoS attacks can be detected in a manner that is not sensitive to legitimate background traffic.

DOI: 10.1007/s10922-005-9016-3
Online Date: 4/29/2006
Print publication date: 3/1/2006
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by Schönwälder, Jürgen; Serrat, Joan

DOI: 10.1007/s10922-006-9023-z
Online Date: 4/7/2006
Print publication date: 3/1/2006
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by Calvert, Kenneth L.; Griffioen, James; Wen, Su

Although the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) has proven to be a powerful tool for network administrators, it is widely accepted that SNMP does not offer the scalability or the functionality needed to manage large systems of routers and end systems. Active/programmable networks and mobile agent systems have been proposed as alternative network management solutions, offering new functionality and better scalability. Unfortunately, the flexibility and programmability of these (heavyweight) systems comes with its own set of problems, which has prevented them from becoming widely adopted.This paper presents an ultra-lightweight programmable network service called ephemeral state processing (ESP) that can be used to efficiently monitor and collect information from large-scale networks. Although the service offers a limited set of features, the building blocks it does offer can be combined in novel ways to solve a wide range of network management problems while avoiding the problems that plague (heavyweight) active network approaches. The simplicity of ESP allows us to make it available as a general-purpose service that can be used by all packets in the network. We demonstrate the utility of the service by showing how it can be used to efficiently solve common network management problems.

DOI: 10.1007/s10922-005-9013-6
Online Date: 4/7/2006
Print publication date: 3/1/2006
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by

DOI: 10.1007/s10922-005-9021-6
Online Date: 4/7/2006
Print publication date: 12/1/2005
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by Gaglio, Salvatore; Gatani, Luca; Re, Giuseppe; Urso, Alfonso

This paper focuses on improving network management by exploiting the potential of “doing” of the Active Networks technology, together with the potential of “planning,” which is typical of the artificial intelligent systems. We propose a distributed multiagent architecture for Active Network management, which exploits the dynamic reasoning capabilities of the Situation Calculus in order to emulate the reactive behavior of a human expert to fault situations. The information related to network events is generated by programmable sensors deployed across the network. A logical entity collects this information, in order to merge it with general domain knowledge, with a view to identifying the root causes of faults, and to deciding on reparative actions. The logical inference system has been devised to carry out automated isolation, diagnosis, and even repair of network anomalies, thus enhancing the reliability, performance, and security of the network. Experimental results illustrate the Reasoner capability of correctly recognizing fault situations and undertaking management actions.

DOI: 10.1007/s10922-005-9012-7
Online Date: 4/4/2006
Print publication date: 3/1/2006
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