6291041
On suitability of Euclidean embedding of internet hosts
In this paper, we investigate the suitability of embedding Internet hosts into a Euclidean space given their pairwise distances (as measured by round-trip time). Using the classical scaling and matrix perturbation theories, we first establish the (sum of the) magnitude of negative eigenvalues of the (doubly-centered, squared) distance matrix as a measure of suitability of Euclidean embedding. We then show that the distance matrix among Internet hosts contains negative eigenvalues of large magnitude, implying that embedding the Internet hosts in a Euclidean space would incur relatively large errors. Motivated by earlier studies, we demonstrate that the inaccuracy of Euclidean embedding is caused by a large degree of triangle inequality violation (TIV) in the Internet distances, which leads to negative eigenvalues of large magnitude. Moreover, we show that the TIVs are likely to occur locally, hence, the distances among these close-by hosts cannot be estimated accurately using a global Euclidean embedding, in addition, increasing the dimension of embedding does not reduce the embedding errors. Based on these insights, we propose a new hybrid model for embedding the network nodes using only a 2-dimensional Euclidean coordinate system and small error adjustment terms. We show that the accuracy of the proposed embedding technique is as good as, if not better, than that of a 7-dimensional Euclidean embedding.
5876943
Adaptive packet sampling for flow volume measurement
Traffic measurement and monitoring are an important component of network management and traffic engineering. With high-speed Internet backbone links, efficient and effective packet sampling techniques for traffic measurement and monitoring are not only desirable, but also increasingly becoming a necessity. Since the utility of sampling depends on the accuracy and economy of measurement, it is important to control sampling error. In this paper we propose and analyze an adaptive, stratified random packet sampling technique for flow-level traffic measurement. In particular, we address the theoretical and practical issues involved. Through theoretical studies and experiments, we demonstrate that the proposed sampling technique provides unbiased estimation of flow size with controllable error bound, in terms of both packet and byte counts for elephant flows, while avoiding excessive oversampling.
3065647
A core stateless bandwidth broker architecture for scalable support of guaranteed services
We present a novel bandwidth broker architecture for scalable support of guaranteed services that decouples the QoS control plane from the packet forwarding plane. More specifically, under this architecture, core routers do not maintain any QoS reservation states, whether per-flow or aggregate. Instead, the QoS reservation states are stored at and managed by a bandwidth broker. There are several advantages of such a bandwidth broker architecture. Among others, it avoids the problem of inconsistent QoS states faced by the conventional hop-by-hop, distributed admission control approach. Furthermore, it allows us to design efficient admission control algorithms without incurring any overhead at core routers. The proposed bandwidth broker architecture is designed based on a core stateless virtual time reference system developed recently. This virtual time reference system provides a unifying framework to characterize, in terms of their abilities to support delay guarantees, both the per-hop behaviors of core routers and the end-to-end properties of their concatenation. We focus on the design of efficient admission control algorithms under the proposed bandwidth broker architecture. We consider both per-flow end-to-end guaranteed delay services and class-based guaranteed delay services with flow aggregation. Using our bandwidth broker architecture, we demonstrate how admission control can be done on a per domain basis instead of on a "hop-by-hop" basis. Such an approach may significantly reduce the complexity of the admission control algorithms. In designing class-based admission control algorithms, we investigate the problem of dynamic flow aggregation in providing guaranteed delay services and devise a new apparatus to effectively circumvent this problem. We conduct detailed analyses to provide theoretical underpinning for our schemes as well as to establish their correctness. Simulations are also performed to demonstrate the efficacy of our schemes.
14053219
Distributed Algorithm for Service Replication in Service Overlay Network
The service overlay network (SON) is an effective mean to deploy end-to-end QoS guaranteed content delivery services on the current Internet. We model the content delivery service on a SON as a service delivery tree (SDT). Previous studies have addressed the optimal distribution tree formulation issues. In this paper, we focus on the problem of maximizing the total operation profit of the SON. In [1], authors introduced a cost model for optimal bandwidth provisioning in SON. In this paper, we extended this concept and propose an alternative approach to maximize the total effective throughput of SDT as well as to minimize the QoS violation penalty of the SON by service replication. We present both centralized and distributed algorithms for the placement of replicated servers on the SDT. Experiments are carried to quantify the merit, effectiveness and the scalability of the proposed service replication algorithm. In particular, the performance gain is very close to the exhaustive search. The algorithm performs well when we scale up the service overlay networks. Finally, we show that one only needs to perform a small number of replications to attain the optimal gain.
14141879
Improving VoIP quality through path switching
The current best-effort Internet cannot readily provide the service guarantees that VoIP applications often require. Path switching can potentially address this problem without requiring new network mechanisms, simply by leveraging the robustness to performance variations available from connectivity options such as multi-homing and overlays. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness and benefits of path switching in improving the quality of VoIP applications, and demonstrate its feasibility through the design and implementation of a prototype gateway. We argue for an application-driven path switching system that accounts for both network path characteristics and application-specific factors (e.g., codec algorithms, playout buffering schemes). We also develop an application path quality estimator based on the ITU-T E-model for voice quality assessment, and an application-driven path switching algorithm that dynamically adapts the time scales over which path switching decisions are made to maximize voice quality. Through network emulation and experiments over a wide-area multi-homed test bed, we show that, with sufficient path diversity, path switching can yield meaningful improvements in voice quality. Hence by exploiting the inherent path diversity of the Internet, application-driven path switching is a viable option in providing quality-of-service to applications.
16878671
Full-sharing: efficient bandwidth scheduling for video streaming over broadband cable networks (BCNs)
Broadband Cable Networks (BCNs) bring high-speed Internet access to home and make emerging multimedia streaming applications feasible. However, bandwidth contention is still a challenging problem in providing efficient IP-based Video-On-Demand (VOD) service on BCNs, due to the lack of effective approaches to exploit the unique characteristics of BCNs. To address the bandwidth contention issue, we propose an efficient video scheduling technique, called full-sharing scheduling in this paper. This technique fully exploits the unique characteristics of BCNs to reduce the bandwidth consumption of video sessions sharing a cable channel of fixed capacity, thereby maximizing the number of simultaneous video sessions on the single channel. Furthermore, we analyze the expected bandwidth and the session blocking probability of a video under the full-sharing scheduling. Based on this analysis, we design an efficient video assignment mechanism for maximizing the profit of a VOD system in scheduling videos on BCNs. Through both analysis and simulation, we show that our approach minimizes the bandwidth consumption of video sessions compared with the previous approaches and has significant advantages on BCNs. The proposed approach is also directly applicable on other broadcast/multicast networks in which clients have sufficient buffer and downstream bandwidth, e.g., satellite broadband networks.
16604369
Reusing legacy COBOL code with UML collaboration diagrams via a Wide Spectrum Language
Many legacy systems were developed in COBOL, which still play an important role in business. It is an unavoidable issue for organisations to maintain or replace these COBOL systems. In order to make a better use of these legacy COBOL systems, research on modelling and reusing COBOL code are significant. This paper presents an approach to modelling legacy COBOL code with UML collaboration diagrams via a Wide Spectrum Language (WSL). Firstly, legacy COBOL code is transferred into WSL, which is an intermediate language. Secondly, WSL representation is restructured to eliminate GOTO statements. Then an object concept model is created by operating WSL representation. Finally, the collaboration diagrams are constructed based on this object concept model. These collaboration diagrams express the dynamic behaviour of the system, using the structural class and relationship elements of the model, and facilitate engineers to understand and reuse legacy COBOL code.
32938113
Slotted Optical Burst Switching (SOBS) Networks
In this paper we study Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks. Since OBS still suffers high loss ratio due to the lack of buffer at the OBS core routers, we study methods to reduce the loss without using optical buffers. We consider time-slotted OBS called Slotted OBS (SOBS), where routers are synchronized and only send fixed length bursts at the beginning of time slots. Our simulation results show that SOBS reduces the packet loss probability significantly. Moreover, we show that SOBS can be implemented with little or no additional cost and has other advantages such as the better supporting of Quality of Service (QoS).
3682795
Multibody grouping via orthogonal subspace decomposition
Multibody structure from motion could be solved by the factorization approach. However, the noise measurements would make the segmentation difficult when analyzing the shape interaction matrix. This paper presents an orthogonal subspace decomposition and grouping technique to approach such a problem. We decompose the object shape spaces into signal subspaces and noise subspaces. We show that the signal subspaces of the object shape spaces are orthogonal to each other. Instead of using the shape interaction matrix contaminated by noise, we introduce the shape signal subspace distance matrix for shape space grouping. Outliers could be easily identified by this approach. The robustness of the proposed approach lies in the fact that the shape space decomposition alleviates the influence of noise, and has been verified with extensive experiments.
6801587
Performance analysis of k-fold multicast networks
Multicast involves transmitting information from a single source to multiple destinations, and is an important operation in high-performance networks. A k-fold multicast network was recently proposed as a cost-effective solution to providing better quality-of-service functions in supporting real-world multicast applications. To give a quantitative basis for network designers to determine the suitable value of system parameter k under different traffic loads, in this paper, we propose an analytical model for the performance of k-fold multicast networks under Poisson traffic. We first give the stationary distribution of network states, and then derive the throughput and blocking probability of the network. We also conduct extensive simulations to validate the analytical model, and the results show that the analytical model is very accurate under the assumptions made. The analytical and simulation results reveal that by increasing the fold of the network, network throughput increases very fast when the fanouts of multicast connections are relatively small, compared with the network size.
2916019
Pseudogene.org: a comprehensive database and comparison platform for pseudogene annotation
The Pseudogene.org knowledgebase serves as a comprehensive repository for pseudogene annotation. The definition of a pseudogene varies within the literature, resulting in significantly different approaches to the problem of identification. Consequently, it is difficult to maintain a consistent collection of pseudogenes in detail necessary for their effective use. Our database is designed to address this issue. It integrates a variety of heterogeneous resources and supports a subset structure that highlights specific groups of pseudogenes that are of interest to the research community. Tools are provided for the comparison of sets and the creation of layered set unions, enabling researchers to derive a current ‘consensus’ set of pseudogenes. Additional features include versatile search, the capacity for robust interaction with other databases, the ability to reconstruct older versions of the database (accounting for changing genome builds) and an underlying object-oriented interface designed for researchers with a minimal knowledge of programming. At the present time, the database contains more than 100 000 pseudogenes spanning 64 prokaryote and 11 eukaryote genomes, including a collection of human annotations compiled from 16 sources.