1009354
Bistro: a scalable and secure data transfer service for digital government applications
2239697
Performance of batch-based digital signatures
A digital signature is an important type of authentication in a public-key (or asymmetric) cryptographic system, and it is in wide use. The performance of an Internet server computing digital signatures online is limited by the high cost of modular arithmetic. One simple way to improve the performance of the server is to reduce the number of computed digital signatures by combining a set of documents into a batch in a smart way and signing each batch only once. This reduces the demand on the CPU but requires extra information to be sent to clients. We investigate the performance characteristics of online digital signature batching schemes. We give a semi-Markov model of a gated batch-based digital signature server and its approximate solution. We validate the solutions of the analytical model through both emulation and simulation. Our study shows that significant computational benefits can be obtained from batching without significant increases in the amount of additional information that needs to be sent to the clients.
38703217
Design of Scalable Continuous Media Servers
Multimedia applications place high demands for quality-of-service (QoS), performance, and reliability on systems. These stringent requirements make design of cost-effective and scalable systems difficult. Therefore efficient adaptive and dynamic resource management techniques in conjunction with data placement techniques can be of great help in improving performance, scalability, and reliability of such systems. This is the focus of our paper.
14928068
Traffic engineering for MPLS-based virtual private networks
This paper considers the traffic engineering of MPLS-based Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) with multiple classes of service in an offline and centralised setting. We focus on two main issues. Firstly, we point out that the one label switched path (LSP) per ingress-egress pair constraint can be relaxed for the case of MPLS-based VPNs due to the ease in classifying flows on a per-VPN basis. This allows us to use LSP with finer granularity and thus better load balancing. Secondly, we point out that the single objective traffic engineering formulations proposed in literature address only one particular aspect of the traffic engineering problem. In this paper, we propose a multiobjective traffic engineering problem which takes resource usage, link utilisation and number of LSPs into account. The proposed optimisation problem is NP-complete and involves a large number of variables. We propose an heuristic to solve this problem.
38950443
Mechanical Verification of Distributed Algorithms in Higher-Order Logic
The only practical way to verify the correctness of distributed algorithms with a high degree of confidence is to construct machine-checked, formal correctness proofs. In this paper we explain how to do so using HOL an interactive proof assistant for higher order logic developed by Gordon and others. First, we describ how to build an infrastructure in HOL that supports reasoning about distributed algorithms,including formal theories of predicates, temporal logic, labeled transitions systems, simulation of programs, translation of properties, and graphs. Then we demonstrate, via an exemple, how to use the powerful intuition about eventsand causality to guide and structure correctness proofs of distributed algorithms. The example used is the verification of PIF (propagation of information with feedback), which is a simple but typical distributed algorithm due to Segall.
14766680
QoS Driven Parallelization of Resources to Reduce File Download Delay
In this paper, we propose a novel approach for reducing the download time of large files over the Internet. Our approach, known as parallelized file transport protocol (P-FTP), proposes simultaneous downloads of disjoint file portions from multiple file servers. P-FTP server selects file servers for the requesting client on the basis of a variety of QoS parameters, such as available bandwidth and server utilization. The sensitivity analysis of our file server selection technique shows that it performs significantly better than random selection. During the file transfer, P-FTP client monitors the file transfer flows to detect slow servers and congested links and adjusts the file distributions accordingly. P-FTP is evaluated with simulations and real-world implementation. The results show at least 50 percent reduction in download time when compared to the traditional file-transfer approach. Moreover, we have also carried out a simulation-based study to investigate the issues related to large scale deployment of our approach on the Internet. Our results demonstrate that a large number of P-FTP users has no adverse effect on the performance perceived by non-P-FTP users. In addition, the file servers and network are not significantly affected by large scale deployment of P-FTP
16192278
A distributed location service for reducing query failures in geographic ad hoc routing
Location service support is required for mobile nodes using geographic ad hoc routing. The mobile nodes need location information of destinations for sending data packets. Due to mobility or node failures, queries to the location servers may not always succeed. This paper presents a distributed location service (DLS) that employs dual servers to maintain position information of mobile nodes and to achieve efficient performance. With the scheme, the number of failed queries, including no response and erroneous results, can be reduced. DLS has been implemented and evaluated using the ns2 simulator. The experimental results show that DLS not only improved service availability but also location query latency.
9105322
CSCL for community building and digital equity
The Minnesota Educators and Leaders Technology Initiative (MELTI) contributes to community building and digital equity through computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) activities and other project activities. The CSCL activities that include asynchronous, synchronous, and video conferencing are designed to address issues of integration faced by the MELTI participating schools which have high percentage of minority students. The notions of social inclusion and technology literacy play a key role in the CSCL activities design for the purpose of overcoming barriers to digital equity.