Dependable networks

Introduction

Here is a short video introduction about the track

With increasing dependency of our society on the Internet, it becomes paramount to understand the operation of the Internet, both its core components and connected wireless and mobile communication systems. A first step is to measure and analyse the traffic flow over the Internet to gain a deeper understanding on the performance bottlenecks, anomalies, or attacks. While this was easy in the early days of the Internet where there were very few connected nodes running simple applications, same is hard to claim nowadays. Now, the Internet consists of tens of thousands of autonomous systems at the network core and billions of connected devices at the network edge. The applications are diverse in their requirements; some are delay tolerant, some can only tolerate a few tens of milliseconds latency such as Augmented Reality applications. There is a need for novel methods to conduct global-scale network measurements and to understand this complex ecosystem. With the developed tools, one can investigate deployment of new technologies, the security, resilience as well as societal impact of the Internet.

Dependability of a system depends on the dependability of its components. Hence, this track aims at not only understanding dependability of the Internet core but also its connected wireless and mobile communication infrastructures such as WiFi or cellular networks. With the increasing number of connected wireless devices and the volume of traffic generated by these devices, it becomes a challenge for the network providers, e.g., WiFi and 4G/5G, to use the limited radio spectrum efficiently. The network providers have to allocate their resources (e.g., spectrum, antenna) and deploy their network infrastructure to meet an estimated traffic load and requirements of the applications consumed by their users. For example, vehicular communications require a high degree of message delivery reliability for safety services while some smart industry applications require an ultra-reliable low latency communication. Spectrum sharing approaches or dependability analysis of the wireless communication systems in the face of possible failures are interesting directions to explore. Ensuring reliability of vehicular communications is crucial especially for safety-critical services. We are interested in applying the state-of-the-art communication paradigms to meet the reliability and performance requirements on such challenging scenarios.

Internet is like a living organism: it is in constant change with new technologies being deployed at the network core and at the edge. It is crucial to understand the implications of these new technologies such as network function virtualisation or software-defined networking on the dependability and performance of the Internet. Analytical modelling, data analysis, protocol design, and simulations help to develop further insights into these described questions and potential solutions.

A key research challenge that students of this track will be confronted with is the question of how to improve the dependability and efficiency of communication networks which include the Internet and wireless networks (WiFi, 4/5G) to serve a diverse set of use cases ranging from vehicular scenarios to immersive media applications.

Information

For specific information on the content of this track, you may contact the track chair: Suzan Bayhan.