The Stream Exchange Protocol: A Secure and Lightweight Tool for Decentralized Connection Establishment

With the growing availability and prevalence of internet-capable devices, the complexity of networks and associated connection management increases. Depending on the use case, different approaches in handling connectivity have emerged over the years, tackling diverse challenges in each distinct area. Exposing centralized web-services facilitates reachability; distributing information in a peer-to-peer fashion offers availability; and segregating virtual private sub-networks promotes confidentiality. A common challenge herein lies in connection establishment, particularly in discovering, and securely connecting to peers. However, unifying different aspects, including the usability, scalability, and security of this process in a single framework, remains a challenge. In this paper, we present the Stream Exchange Protocol (SEP) collection, which provides a set of building blocks for secure, lightweight, and decentralized connection establishment. These building blocks use unique identities that enable both the identification and authentication of single communication partners. By utilizing federated directories as decentralized databases, peers are able to reliably share authentic data, such as current network locations and available endpoints. Overall, this collection of building blocks is universally applicable, easy to use, and protected by state-of-the-art security mechanisms by design. We demonstrate the capabilities and versatility of the SEP collection by providing three tools that utilize our building blocks: a decentralized file sharing application, a point-to-point network tunnel using the SEP trust model, and an application that utilizes our decentralized discovery mechanism for authentic and asynchronous data distribution.

TCP Acknowledgment Optimization in Low Power and Embedded Devices

Paper investigates transport control protocol (TCP) acknowledgment (ACK) optimization in low power or embedded devices to improve their performance on high-speed links by limiting the ACK rate. Today the dominant protocol for interconnecting network devices is the TCP and it has a great influence on the entire network operation if the processing power of network devices is exhausted to the processing data from the TCP stack. Therefore, on high-speed not congested networks the bottleneck is no longer the network link but low-processing power network devices. A new ACK optimization algorithm has been developed and implemented in the Linux kernel. Proposed TCP stack modification minimizes the unneeded technical expenditure from TCP flow by reducing the number of ACKs. The results of performed experiments show that TCP ACK rate limiting leads to the noticeable decrease of CPU utilization on low power devices and an increase of TCP session throughput but does not impact other TCP QoS parameters, such as session stability, flow control, connection management, congestion control or compromises link security. Therefore, more resources of the low-power network devices could be allocated for high-speed data transfer.

Experiential Learning Of Networking Technologies: Evolution Of Socket Programming – Part I

In the 21st century, the internet has become essential part of everyday tasks including banking, interacting with government services, education, entertainment, text/voice/video communication, etc. Individuals access the internet using client-side applications such as a browser or an app on their mobile phone or laptop/desktop. This client-side application communicates with a server-side application, typically running on a web server, which in turn may interact with other business applications. The underlying protocol is typically HTTP [1] running on top of the TCP/IP protocol [2][3]. A typical web server supports a large number (hundreds or thousands) of concurrent TCP connections. The most commonly deployed web servers in use today are Apache server [4], Nginx [5], or Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)[6]. Nginx is mostly used on Linux and IIS runs only on Windows OS. In contrast, Apache web server (which is almost as old as the web itself) is supported on all platforms (Linux, Windows, MacOS, etc.). In its initial release in 1995 (version 1.3), Apache server could serve only a few concurrent clients, but its current release (2.4.41) can support a huge number of concurrent clients. In this article (as well as Part II that will follow), we will present a simplified view of this evolution that nevertheless explains how current web manage such high levels of concurrency. To do so, we will delve into socket programming, which is at the heart of managing TCP connections, and we will examine the key role that it plays in delivering high performance. We have studied both transport layers protocol i.e., TCP [2] and UDP [7], in detail in the last few articles, and we have developed a basic understanding of the working of the transport layer. This is a communication-enabling layer used by applications to exchange application-level data. Simple working of applications using TCP (providing reliable delivery) and UDP (providing best effort delivery) socket programming are provided in [8]. In this article, however, we will discuss increasingly complex levels of socket programming, from simple socket connections to complex connection management that are necessary to attain high TCP performance. We will focus on TCP Socket programming only. UDP socket programming is simply a best effort delivery and socket implementation support does not impact the application communication performance.

Tool of forecasting the natural and migration movement of the population in the region based on simulation methods

The demographic policy of the Russian Federation is aimed at increasing the population in the country. In this connection, management decisions made at the regional level focus at attracting skilled migrants, increasing the birth rate, and reducing mortality. On the one hand, such politics affects the size of the population; on the other hand, the reaction of the population can adjust the policy. In turn, state programs are intended for a long period of time, thus, there is a need to assess the effectiveness of the taken decisions. Therefore, the authors have proposed a concept of an agent-based model of demographic processes at the regional level. In addition, they have developed the model itself, which aims to increase the accuracy of forecasting the population in the face of changing socio-economic indicators. Each of the agents (represented by “Person” and “Region”) have their own set of characteristics. To describe the logic of the agent behavior, the authors have used statistical (regression and cluster analysis) and probability (Bernoulli, Gamma, Betta, exponential distribution) methods. The life cycle of the agent “Person” is presented in the developed state diagram. The testing of the agent-based model was performed in solving the problems of forecasting the population in the Republic of Bashkortostan on the basis of the prognosis data from the RF Ministry of Economic Development. The article also presents experimental research on two scenarios of economic development (basic and conservative). An assessment of changes in fertility, mortality, and migration based on the use of cluster and regression analysis is presented.

An SDN-Based Connectivity Control System for Wi-Fi Devices

In recent years, the prevalence of Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as smartphones, smart appliances, and various sensors has increased. As most IoT devices lack a display or a keypad owing to their tiny size, it is difficult to set connectivity information such as service set identifier (SSID) and password without any help from external devices such as smartphones. Moreover, it is much more complex to apply advanced connectivity options such as SSID hiding, MAC ID filtering, and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) to these devices. Thus, we need a new Wi-Fi network management system which not only facilitates client access operations but also provides a high-level authentication procedure. In this paper, we introduce a remote connectivity control system for Wi-Fi devices based on software-defined networking (SDN) in a wireless environment. The main contributions of the proposed system are twofold: (i) it enables network owner/administrator to manage and approve connection request from Wi-Fi devices through remote services, which is essential for easy connection management across diverse IoT devices; (ii) it also allows fine-grained access control at the device level through remote control. We describe the architecture of SDN-based remote connectivity control of Wi-Fi devices. While verifying the feasibility and performance of the proposed system, we discuss how the proposed system can benefit both service providers and users.