FO-Sketch: A Fast Oblivious Sketch for Secure Network Measurement Service in the Cloud

Network measurements are the foundation for network applications. The metrics generated by those measurements help applications improve their performance of the monitored network and harden their security. As severe network attacks using leaked information from a public cloud exist, it raises privacy and security concerns if directly deployed in network measurement services in a third-party public cloud infrastructure. Recent studies, most notably OblivSketch, demonstrated the feasibility of alleviating those concerns by using trusted hardware and Oblivious RAM (ORAM). As their performance is not good enough, and there are certain limitations, they are not suitable for broad deployment. In this paper, we propose FO-Sketch, a more efficient and general network measurement service that meets the most stringent security requirements, especially for a large-scale network with heavy traffic volume and burst traffic. Let a mergeable sketch update the local flow statistics in each local switch; FO-Sketch merges (in an Intel SGX-created enclave) these sketches obliviously to form a global “one big sketch” in the cloud. With the help of Oblivious Shuffle, Divide and Conquer, and SIMD speedup, we optimize all of the critical routines in our FO-Sketch to make it 17.3x faster than a trivial oblivious solution. While keeping the same level of accuracy and packet processing throughput as non-oblivious Elastic Sketch, our FO-Sketch needs only ∼4.5 MB enclave memory space in total to record metrics and for PORAM to store the global sketch in the cloud. Extensive experiments demonstrate that, for the recommended setting, it takes only ∼ 0.6 s in total to rebuild those data during each measurement interval.

Design and implementation of the data acquisition system of a large scale network based on four-in-one meters

For households, water supply, power supply, pipeline gas and centralized heating are necessaries to maintain the normal life of a family. For Chinese urban families, water, electricity, gas, warm services are often provided by different government utility companies. Aimed at the shortage of the manual measurement of the above mentioned services‘ consumptions, a new mechanism using network metering devices is proposed in this paper. Based on the general network measurement mechanism and through analysis, this paper proposes using meter communication network as the public communication network of various metering devices, forming wireless mesh network by metering devices, constituting a virtual private network by the power company’s network, and accessing to metering network based on SCEP protocol and certificates of devices. Under this new network measurement mechanism, a network routing optimization strategy, a data acquisition protocol based on IPv6 and a mesh network management system are designed, and preliminary experiments have been carried on. Experimental results show that the proposed mechanism can realize functions through the network, including the control of multi-measuring devices, topology discovery, data acquisition, fulfilling the multi-meter data acquisition system via network.

A Network Measurement System for NFV Networks based on SDN

As a promising innovation to totally change how we design, install and oversee different organizations, Software-based Network Function Virtualization (NFV) empowers hardware-free, adaptable, quickand proficient network service process. With the expanding prevalence of NFV, the Internet has likewise changed to be a hybrid environment where NFV-based network exists together with traditional gadgets. To ease our understanding, plan, assess and handling of such novel organization environment, there is an incredible requirement for new NFV-compatible measurement framework which is still missing till now. To overcome this issue, a framework, named Software Defined Network Measurement System (SDNMS) is introduced. First the architecture of SDNMS is proposed. In this design, a conventional strategy to portray the working method of the network measurement is defined. This technique can likewise be used to produce network measurement middle box (NMMB) in a particular location of the NFV network as per the customized description file, and to flexibly install the network measurement function. Besides, the innovation of virtual network measurement function (VNMF) joined with LXC is said to be shape NMMB function.Thirdly, a control strategy is introduced to control the beginning, stop, and update NMMB to produce a particular network measurement system. At last, a model of SDNMS with network observing function to screen network performance anomalies and locate fault is presented. Test results have shown that SDNMS design and related advancements are practical and successful to launch and control network measurement functions in NFV network. We trust SDNMS could give another strategy to experts to do network management and examine at the age of NFV

Welfare Implications in Intermediary Networks

Competitive pressures have forced many traditional companies to evolve into a platform-based business model. Trade commissions and even supreme courts recognize the need for economic analysis as the nature of competition changes in the market. There have been many mergers and acquisitions across platform-based businesses. In the ride-sharing sector, Lyft and Didi Chuxing were initially in a partnership to thwart Uber but Uber merged its operation with Didi Chuxing eventually. Amazon and Walmart competed fiercely to buy the Indian online retailer Flipkart, which Walmart eventually won. Traditional antitrust models studying the implications of mergers do not consider the underlying network structure of these intermediary markets. This is the main focus of our model and analysis. We provide a network measurement to evaluate the effect of mergers on welfare. Our analysis shows that because of the underlying networks mergers can sometimes improve welfare.