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The 5G EVE is a 5G PPP phase 3 Infrastructure project aimed at building a European 5G validation platform for extensive trials. One of the main objectives of 5G EVE is to offer an accessible and fully operational 5G end-to-end infrastructure, flexible enough to support a plethora of tests for different vertical industries, distributed among several sites. When executing the declared tests, vertical industries with expertise deploying such services may state the operational key performance indicators, and the platform will provide an analysis of the results. This paper presents the design and results of the first 5G end to end experiment deployed on the 5G EVE infrastructure. In particular, we present the 5G EVE architecture, all the steps required to design and execute a simple experiment. Finally, this paper also provides an analysis and discussion of the results provided by our platform.

5G technology offers innovative network services to vertical players, able to boost their service portfolio in critical areas that could not be fully addressed with 4G systems. However, 5G networks are complex systems, massively relying on the virtualization of network and computing resources, which requires specific skills to fully exploit their potential. This may represent a hard barrier for vertical stakeholders to effectively test and use innovative services on 5G networks. Our solution addresses this issue, by simplifying the way vertical players approach 5G services though simple yet flexible service templates that allow not only to specify and deploy a service, but also to test it in a variety of realistic conditions. Vertical players interact with these templates named Experiment Blueprints, which are manipulated by our tool and then translated into network service descriptors to be deployed by a service orchestrator, keeping unaware the vertical experimenter of the underlying operations. We use a vertical service in the area of Industry 4.0 as a running example to ease the understanding of the proposed approach.

This paper shows a proposal for pricing cloud services tailored to IoT applications that generate big data. The basic assumption of our analysis is that the emerging IoT applications do not simply make use of the information collected by few sensors. The expected volume of information generated by sensors, the different nature of sensors, the different information delivery techniques, and the variable nature of applications make the system management a real 3V big data problem. In this paper we identify the key feature that characterizes a cloud-based, sensing-as-a-service IoT application, map each feature into a specific cost function, and suitably combine these cost functions. This way, we obtain a pricing strategy sufficiently simple to be applied in operation, dependent on all the identified features, and flexible enough for being updated for any new introduced IoT service in the cloud infrastructure.

The management of network infrastructures has become increasingly complex over time, which is mainly attributed to the introduction of new functionality to support emerging services and applications. To address this important issue, research efforts in the last few years focused on developing Software-Defined Networking solutions. While initial work proposed centralized architectures, their scalability limitations have led researchers to investigate a distributed control plane, with controller placement algorithms and mechanisms for building a logically centralized network view, being examples of challenges addressed. A critical issue that has not been adequately addressed concerns the communication between distributed decision-making entities to ensure configuration consistency. To this end, this paper proposes a signaling framework that can allow the exchange of information in distributed management and control scenarios. The benefits of the proposed framework are illustrated through a realistic network resource management use case. Based on simulation, we demonstrate the flexibility and extensibility of our solution in meeting the requirements of distributed decision-making processes.

The Internet of Things concept has revolutionized the way of using sensors and produced data. The interconnection of sensors to computing systems and to both storage infrastructures and processing facilities in a cloud fashion enables the paradigm of Sensing as a Service (S2aaS). In this paper, we propose a system architecture compliant with the S2aaS model, and detail it for a specific use case, the Spectrum Sensing as a Service (S3aaS). We illustrate the system components, including heterogeneous spectrum sensors, a distributed messaging system, a scheduler, a scalable database with a relevant SQL interface tool, and a user interface tool used to interact with the S3aaS system. Finally, we show the implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype used for assessing its effectiveness in operation.

Cloud computing is a convenient model to easily access large amounts of computing resources in order to implement platforms for data intensive applications. These platforms, such as Hadoop, are designed to run on large clusters. When the amount of computing and networking resources are limited, such as in the emergent paradigm of edge computing, maximizing their utilization is of paramount importance. In this paper we investigate the performance of a benchmark suite for Hadoop, running on both physical and virtual infrastructure in a testbed representative of an edge computing deployment. Experimental results show that in spite of a predictable performance loss in virtualized environments with respect to the native one, it is still convenient to execute Hadoop in a small cloud. This could be useful to pre-process data coming from sensors and/or mobile devices before sending them to a central cloud for further analysis.

This paper shows the methodology used for analyzing the technical and non-technical skills necessary for defining a university program providing a Data Science certification. The original aspects of the approach consists of the close collaboration between the organizing universities and the collaborating companies. For what concerns the technical skills, the statistics collected by the already existing programs have been validated by processing thousands of job offers worldwide. The humanistic perspective has completed the picture of the set of skills that have led to the program shown.

This paper shows the network solutions proposed and implemented in the framework of the project ARES. The strategic objective of ARES is to create an advanced CDN, accessible through a cloud interface, supporting medical and research systems making a large use of genomic data. The expected achievements consist of identifying suitable management policies of genomic contents in a cloud environment, in terms of efficiency, resiliency, scalability, and QoS in a distributed fashion using a multi-user CDN approach. The experimental architecture envisages the use of the following key elements: a wideband networking infrastructure, a resource virtualization software platform, a distributed service architecture, including suitable computing and storage infrastructure, a distributed software platform able to ingest, validate, and analyze high volumes of data, a software engine executing a sophisticated intelligence for workload distribution and CDN provisioning.

This paper shows the cloud services provided by the project ARES. The network solutions have been illustrated in a companion paper in the same conference. The ARES project aims to deploy CDN services over a broadband network for accessing and exchanging genomic datasets, accessible by medical and research personnel through a Cloud interface. This paper illustrates the procedure defined to access such services, also providing a case-study simulation to show the implementation of the bioinformatics pipeline included. The experimental activity in ARES aims to gain a detailed understanding of the network problems relating to its sustainability given the increasing use of genomics for diagnostic purposes. The main aim is to allow an extensive use of genomic data through the collection of relevant information available from the network in the medical and diagnostic field diseases.

In this paper, we evaluate the suitability of the vehicular devices for supporting data storage and distribution applications. Vehicular storage systems have recently emerged as means for making the information related to the vehicular environment available to vehicular users. Information could either be collected by sensors mounted onboard vehicles or coming from the surrounding environment. Modeling a vehicular data storage and distribution system requires the introduction of a number of parameters, such as the vehicle concentration and transmission range, the value of which may determine the suitability or unsuitability of the vehicular environment for establishing a communication infrastructure with the desired quality. In this paper we show how to solve this problem by resorting to a Markovian model and some results achieved through its application., Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE LANMAN 2013

This paper shows an innovative solution for distributing dynamic sensor data by using distributed caches. Our proposal is based on the concepts of service modularization and virtualization of network nodes made available by the NetServ hosting environment, which has been defined and implemented with the aim of extending the functions of the network nodes. Through a lab experiment involving tens of nodes, we have demonstrated a significant performance improvements in term of traffic saving and download time in comparison with a legacy, Internet-based, approach. Beyond this performance improvements, the proposed solution holds also functional improvements, in terms of dynamic deployment and easy integration with services making use of sensor data., Accepted for publication in IEEE LANMAN 2013

In this paper we propose a solution for transmitting digital information within the cardiocirculatory system. In particular, we make use of a channel delivering burst of molecules, emitted by mobile transmitters, which diffuse in the blood towards fixed receivers, that are attached to the vessel walls. This communication scheme has been inspired by the real signaling between platelets and endothelial cells, the behavior of which has been investigated experimentally. We thus believe that our proposal can be successfully deployed in living bodies. On the basis of the results achieved through simulations on the communication system capabilities, we propose a simple but effective receiver scheme, and we outline the future research directions., Comment: First International Black Sea Conference on Communications and Networking (BlackSeaCom 2013), Batumi, Georgia, July 3-5, 2013

Within the activities of the Java APIs for Integrated Networks (JAIN), the Java community offers a set of standard frameworks and open protocol APIs to create advanced telecommunications services. However, recent works have pointed out that Java-based implementations of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) stack, the fundamental signalling protocol in the convergent telephone-IP world, perform poorly if they are executed by large multi-core servers, typically used in data centres. The problem lies in the combination of the SIP protocol semantics with the Java language features, which does not allow fully exploiting the computing capabilities of multi-core architectures. To face this problem, we propose a solution to improve the throughput and signalling latency of applications implemented by using Java-based SIP application servers. It consists of the joint usage of virtualization and parallelization techniques. We have performed an extensive measurement campaign by using an open source application server compliant with the JSLEE (JAIN Service Logic Execution Environment) specifications. The rationale of this choice is that JSLEE application servers are currently regarded as very promising candidates for deploying telecom services. Results show that it is possible improving performance in terms of throughput and signalling latency by running more instances of the JSLEE server in parallel, each of them into separate virtual machines deployed on the same server. This improvement can increase throughput values of about 64% and, in the maximum throughput condition, the call set up latency can be nearly halved.

In emergency scenarios, like those following a earthquake, road accident in tunnel, large fire and so on, the possibility to track personnel engaged in providing first aid and rescue services is of paramount importance, also in order to promptly manage unexpected and potentially hazardous situations. While in open areas the precision, accuracy and availability of GPS service is enough in most cases, in partially obstructed environments, such as urban canyon, or indoor, GPS service is not available or the quality of provided estimates could be quite coarse. While the literature reports a lot of solutions able to overcome these limitations of the GPS system in standard settings, in emergency scenarios these solutions could be partially or completely unavailable, raising serious concerns about their suitability in these situations. In this paper, we propose a localization and tracking system based on the usage of IEEE 802.11 technology for augmenting the GPS coverage where it is scarce, and to completely substitute it where it is missing, e.g. indoor. The system is characterized by ease of deployment and usage by non-technical personnel, such as that engaged in rescue services in emergency scenarios. In order to assess the feasibility of the proposed solution, we implemented a proof-of-concepts prototype made up of low-cost commercial off-the-shelf components. The preliminary performance tests we performed confirm the effectiveness of proposed system.

The standard framework proposed by the JAIN SLEE specifications is emerging as a viable alternative for the development of advanced telecom services. The Mobicents JSLEE platform is the only open source implementation of those specifications. Its tuning is not trivial since it relies on several Java technologies implemented in multiple abstract layers. In this paper, we present the implementation of two realistic benchmark services and the relevant test campaign for the performance analysis of the Mobicents JAIN SLEE platform, with the aim of optimizing the achievable system throughput, for using it in a carrier-grade environment.

The WiMAX technology has all the necessary features to effectively provide multicast/broadcast services: (i) it is a broadband access technology, (ii) being wireless, it has intrinsic broadcast capabilities, and (iii) it can provide differentiated quality of service levels. Leveraging on these features, we propose a signaling architecture for multicast/broadcast services exploiting the MBS specification in the Mobile WiMAX standard. The signalling is orchestrated by a JAIN SLEE server. We illustrate this architecture, which is highly modular and based on standard communication protocols (i.e. HTTP, SIP, IGMP), and focus on the design and implementation of the signaling part for a multicast video streaming service.

The growing interest in developing value-added services based on Internet Telephony brings into sharp focus several issues related to service creation. It becomes compelling for developers to take advantage of a platform that could offer high-level APIs and standard interfaces, in order to reduce the time-to-market and extend the service portability over multiple networks and devices. The Java community is tackling those issues within the Java APIs for Integrated Networks (JAIN) activity, utilizing Java Enterprise Edition technologies in order to ease the development process of telecommunication services. This paper describes a SIP-based call control service for Internet Telephony, designed for an IP-PSTN converged scenario. The service has a Back-To-Back User Agent (B2BUA) architecture and is deployed into a Service Logic Execution Environment (SLEE). Our SLEE is based on Mobicents, an open-source platform for telecom applications, which offers an implementation of the JAIN SLEE specifications. We present the design and a comparative performance evaluation of different architectural implementations of the service, carried out with SIPp, an open-source SIP traffic generation tool.

In this work, carried out in the framework of the IST Project EDCINE, we present some key issues related to the distribution of digital cinema contents through an IP network infrastructure. One of the main criticalities of the system is the huge size of the contents to be transported. From the operator perspective, this criticality translates into the objective of optimizing the usage of network resources while complying with the quality of service constraints, along with the need of keeping the overall management cost low. The goal of this paper is to present the network architecture and procedures, as well as the relevant mathematical models for analyzing the distribution of pre-recorded movies and live events.

In this paper, we consider a per-call, usage-based tariff model to charge for IP services with guaranteed quality. This model is based on the virtual delay, which is a quality of service (QoS) index that describes an improved IP service provided by a network domain. We show how to compute the virtual delay, and how to make it dependent on the service demand. Then, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our tariff model to tune revenues, blocking probability, and resource utilization in a meaningful application scenario. Our goal is to give some directions for network resource dimensioning and pricing purposes, which depend on the service demand.

In this paper, we present a solution to control automatically a wireless access network and we focus on load balancing target. The reference scenario is that of a single administrative domain that offers a heterogeneous wireless access. We propose a monitoring procedure able to track the access network context, i.e., the current state of resources, the amount of service demand, and the wireless access points available to mobile terminals. To this end, we exploit a cooperative brokerage framework, distributed between terminals and network. The access network context is the input of a selection process that aims to distribute suitably mobile users among available access points. The objective is to balance the users demand, thus improving the quality of the service. The numerical analysis shows the effectiveness of the proposed system in an 802.11b access network.

An improved IP network service (e.g., for real time services) is expected in the near future in both wired and wireless environments. In this regard, handover capabilities are extremely important and challenging, in particular if their use in operation must be seamless. One of the main steps to achieve seamless handover is the quick discovery of the IP addresses and service capabilities of candidate access routers to hand over to. We present a push-mode-multicast based solution to discover and update timely information about wireless resources. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of signaling burden and discovery time with respect to solutions already presented in the literature.

Advanced mobility management is a key issue in providing nomadic users with QoS-enabled services in the future Internet. To improve the mobile IP performance, a crucial role is played by the discovery and selection of the access router to handover. This procedure is of great importance to enable the other additional mobility-related protocols to speed up handover. This paper presents and evaluates a novel approach for carrying out this task, based on a fully distributed process, which also allows timely inter-technology handovers.

IETF developed two main approaches to provide QoS aware services in the Internet: integrated services (IntServ) and differentiated services (DiffServ). Both have well known pros and cons. The stateful IntServ has a greater level of accuracy and a finer level of granularity. The stateless DiffServ possesses excellent scaling properties, but lacks a standardized admission control scheme and, upon overload in a given service class, degradation of service can occur. To provide QoS in DiffServ, three possible strategies are: (i) plain and heavy over-dimensioning; (ii) admission control at the borders of the DiffServ region, coupled with suitable assumptions on the distribution of the traffic within the region, which can lead to over-dimensioning, even if less severe than the previous one; (iii) per-node (i.e., within the region) admission control. Following RFC2990, we proposed an "admission control function which can determine whether to admit a service differentiated flow along the nominated network path", i.e., the third of the above strategies. This function, named GRIP (Gauge & Gate Reservation with Independent Probing), can provide strict QoS guarantees by means of stateless DiffServ-compliant procedures. This feature is paid for with a potential loss of efficiency, with respect to an ideal, stateful admission control. The goal of this paper is to evaluate analytically such loss of efficiency, in a specific scenario. In other words, we estimate how much resources we can waste if we go stateless and avoid state maintenance functions. The comparison between stateless and stateful approaches is performed under the constraint of strictly offering the same performance levels, in terms of, e.g., loss probability and delay.

Ultra wide band (UWB) radio is an interesting radio paradigm for the provision of wireless access to the Internet, in the short-range area. The UWB technology has the potential to combine reduced transceiver complexity with low power consumption, flexible configuration of the radio links and robustness with respect to multipath fading. The IST project WHYLESS.COM, funded by the European Union, is studying the potentiality of this technique for the development of an open mobile access network, i.e., an access network based on a versatile air interface, which, when combined with suitable IP-based operations, can provide an open platform to support QoS aware services. In this paper, we present a proposal for a network architecture where UWB radio access procedures are combined with a stateless IP QoS paradigm.

Providing QoS support over mobile IP networks is a non-trivial task. An important aspect of this issue is that IP mobility does not require intermediate routers to handle connection states, while connection state management is assumed in classical proposals for QoS support (e.g. RSVP), when support of per-flow admission control is aimed at. Such differences in the basic assumptions of QoS and mobility proposals have to be overcome, to provide a comprehensive and homogeneous solution. This paper builds on recent studies, which have proven that per flow admission control is indeed possible over stateless IP frameworks. In particular, the paper shows that a stateless, distributed admission control called GRIP (Gauge and Gate Reservation with Independent Probing) can be applied to Mobile IP scenarios without any major modification in the mobility management mechanism. GRIP relies the decision to admit a new flow upon the successful and timely delivery of IP probe packets independently generated by the end points. When applied within a mobile context, GRIP leaves each mobile node in charge of dynamically selecting the appropriate end point peer during handover. This feature allows limiting the scope of handover-driven admission control procedures to the network part where the path has changed. This is conformant with the spirit of local handover in micromobility architectures. Our proposal is then a first effort towards a joint support of QoS and mobility over a stateless IP domain.

Distributed Admission Control in IP DiffServ environments is an emerging and promising research area. Distributed admission control solutions share the idea that no coordination among network routers (i.e. explicit signaling) is necessary, when the decision whether to admit or reject a new offered flow is pushed to the edge of the IP network. Proposed solutions differ in the degree of complexity required in internal network routers, and result in a different robustness and effectiveness in controlling the accepted traffic. This paper builds on a recently proposed distributed admission control solution, called GRIP (Gauge&Gate Reservation with Independent Probing), designed to integrate the flexibility and scalability advantages of a fully distributed operation with the performance effectiveness of admission control mechanisms based on traffic measurements. We show that, in the assumption that traffic sources are Dual-Leaky-Bucket shaped, GRIP allows providing deterministic performance guarantees (i.e., number of accepted flows per node never greater than a predetermined threshold). Tight QoS performance are made possible even in impulsive load conditions (i.e., sudden activation of several flows), thanks to the introduction of a "stack" mechanism in each network node. A thorough performance evaluation of the conservative effects of the stack show that the throughput reduction brought about by this mechanism is tolerable, and limited to about 15%.

Current satellite systems operate according to circuit switching transfer modes. To improve flexibility and efficiency, several kinds of packet switching systems have been proposed. However, it appears that full packet switches are still considered complex and expensive, when implemented on board the satellites. For the time being, a compromise has been found in satellite networks with dynamic bandwidth allocation capabilities (DBAC). Such systems are based on classical circuit switches, but the DBAC payload allows the changing dynamically of the capacity of each connection, without the need for tearing-down and setting-up again the connection itself. In this paper we consider a DBAC satellite system and define algorithms to allocate the bandwidth so as to provide deterministic and statistical QoS guarantees. The traffic sources are regulated by standard dual leaky buckets (DLB). We define bandwidth-handling policies, design connection admission control rules and evaluate analytically the system performance. As expected, the numerical results show a significant increase of the overall utilisation factor of our system, when compared with a plain circuit-switching solution.

The amount of resources necessary for genome processing services in clouds is huge. The introduction of suitable service orchestration procedures in cloud networks is therefore essential. The current achievements on SDN and NFV for cloud management are a valuable starting point for research. In this paper, we consider different classes of genome processing services and, for each of them, formulate an integer linear programming problem. The proposed solutions leverage network replacement caching, which is a key element for improving scalability of service deployment all the optimization strategies. Results show significant reduction of exchanged traffic volume and transfer time.