Random Early Discard (RED) Queue Evaluation for Congestion Control

Congestion is an un-avoiding issue of networking, and many attempts and mechanisms have been devised to avoid and control congestion in diverse ways. Random Early Discard (RED) is one of such type of algorithm that applies the techniques of Active Queue Management (AQM) to prevent and control congestion and to provide a range of Internet performance facilities. In this chapter, performance of RED algorithm has been measured from different point of views. RED works with Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and since TCP has several variants, the authors investigated which versions of TCP behave well with RED in terms of few network parameters. Also, performance of RED has been compared with its counterpart Drop Tail algorithm. These statistics are immensely necessary to select the best protocol for Internet performance optimization.

The User as a Service

The Web has changed a lot since its inception, 20 years ago, now offering dynamic information and services. The users have also evolved and are no longer mere information consumers, but rather active producers. This calls for a paradigm shift, with the user at the center of the information, service, and collaboration networks, taking the role of active services (able to respond to requests), in equal terms with current service providers. This leads to a unified user model, in which both individual and institutional entities are users and providers, although with different emphasis. To support this approach, the authors present a new Web access device, the browserver, which includes a browser and a server working in close cooperation, with the goal of replacing the classical browser but being backwards compatible with it to ease the migration path. The authors show how it can be implemented and its advantages in the case of typical applications.

Blending Augmented Reality with Real World Scenarios Using Mobile Devices

In this work, the authors present methods that add value to the current Web by connecting administrators of a space such as a city with its visitors. The mobile device has nowadays become an important tool in the hands of visitors of cities and the authors present it as a gateway for the administrators to their visitors. The authors present a method that processes various environmental factors during a visit and uses these factors as a context for presenting the recommendations. In this work, the authors also propose a method that can measure queues in a city, and by knowing the overall picture of the situation, it provides individual recommendations of separate mobile devices accordingly. This chapter shows, therefore, the three main steps in the process of recommendation systems: collecting information, processing the recommendations, and presenting them in an attractive way. In this case the authors focus on presenting recommendations through augmented reality in order to provide an attractive tool for end users, which would, at the end of the day, connect them further to the city over the Internet.

A Comparative Study of Evolutionary Algorithms for Maximizing Reliability of a Flow in Cellular IP Network

The rapid development in technology, witnessed in daily communication, especially in wireless communication, is a good motivation for performance improvement in this field. Cellular IP access network is a suitable environment where a micro mobility of mobile users is implemented and managed. The reliability of Cellular IP network during the communication is an important characteristic measure and must be considered while designing a new model. Evolutionary Algorithms are powerful tools for optimization and problem solving, which require extracting the best solution from a big search space. This chapter explores the reliability issue in Cellular IP of a flow of packets passing through the route from a source to a destination. The main aim of the chapter is to maximize the reliability of the flow passing through a route having number of routers. Two Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), have been used for this purpose, and a comparative study between the two is performed. Experimental studies of the proposed work have also been performed.

Optimizing Path Reliability in IPTV Systems Using Genetic Algorithm

IPTV system is meant to provide TV services through IP networks. IPTV is a next generation technology and is growing rapidly day by day across the globe. Providing TV services through IP networks reflects the audio-video service through the IP networks in IP format. TV packets are media and real-time packets in nature, therefore delivering these packets through the IP network is a big challenge. It needs to be done with utmost care and reliably for the timely delivery of these packets to ensure reliable packet transfer is a big issue in IPTV systems. Reliability, in such systems, depends on the failure rates of various components through which the packet passes. This chapter addresses the reliability issue in IPTV systems and suggests a possible solution to maximize it using Genetic Algorithms. The proposed model explores for the most reliable path among many available paths for the packet delivery. It helps in deciding the best available route passing through which reliability is maximized. Experimental results reveal the efficacy of the model.

Quality of Service (QoS) in WiMAX

The WiMAX technology provides wireless QoS-enabled broadband access for fixed and mobile users at the metropolitan level. It is end-to-end IP based and provides a rich set of QoS support for multimedia-based ubiquitous computing. The main contribution of WiMAX in terms of technology has been over its radio interface, which is based on the IEEE 802.16-2004 and 802.16e protocols. It is a two layer protocol stack, which provides a very robust QoS framework. At the physical layer, it focuses on optimising the use of radio resources. In the MAC layer, the main focus is on efficient scheduling and allocation of bandwidth to meet the QoS requirements of IP sessions. This chapter investigates the WiMAX architecture, its components, and the QoS support provided by the IEEE 802.16 protocol stack. It also examines mobility management issues, end-to-end QoS, and current and future application areas of the technology.

IP Connected Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks in the Future Internet

The Internet of Things is a key concept of the Future Internet. The Internet of Things potentially interconnects billions of small devices in a large ubiquitous infrastructure based on the Internet Protocol (IP). Typically, these devices will be limited in computational capacity, memory, and available energy and will suffer a high data loss rate when integrated into a network infrastructure. This poses significant challenges in the network design. This chapter describes the assumptions, technologies, and challenges for transmitting IPv6 over low power wireless personal area networks (LoWPANs). The authors address the key mechanisms from network aspects down to device design aspects and discuss how technologies interplay to make real application deployment practical for the Internet of Things.

Optical Networking

Telecommunication networks based on optical fiber technology have become a major information transmission system with high capacity optical fiber links encircling the globe in both terrestrial and undersea installation. At present there are numerous passive and active optical devices within a light wave link that perform complex networking functions in the optical domain, such as signal restoration, routing, and switching. Along with the need to understand the functions of these devices comes the necessity to measure both components and network performance and to model and simulate the complex behavior of reliable high capacity networks. This chapter presents the fundamental principles for understanding and applying these issues. This chapter is primarily about TCP/IP network protocols and Ethernet network architectures, but also briefly describes other protocol suites, network architectures, and other significant areas of networking. It explains in simple terms the way networks are put together, and how data packages are sent between networks and subnets, along with how data is routed to the Internet.

Smart Rooms

In this chapter, the authors present a framework to provide useful and accurate information to users based on data collected from rooms in a building comprised of wireless sensor networks. The authors call a room “smart room” when a room is considered suitable for a particular purpose. For instance, a dark room for a conference, a bright room for a party, et cetera, which can be determined according to the data available from various positions of sensors located in each room and a sensor network of a building. The authors undertook the task of designing a semantic inferencing framework for a smart room. This led to automatic extraction of information from the central repository or even when the data is in a transient state (dynamic) in the network. The chapter discusses a practical way of building a query system using semantic Web technology and tools. Similar systems are becoming more feasible nowadays, and industrial leaders are moving forward to build them from commercial view point. The chapter is concluded with some future directions of the system.

Pervasive Internet via Wireless Infrastructure-Based Mesh Networks

With the arrival of Wi-Fi, WiMax, Zigbee, and other wireless network standards, the penetration of Internet in daily life has surged significantly. While the usage of Internet access in urban areas is steadily increasing in recent years, rural people are still suffering from the effect of the digital divide, mainly due to the poor coverage by Internet service providers in remote areas. This chapter aims to provide a cost-effective reliable broadband Internet access solution for rural people in the form of Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) whose coverage can be easily extended in a multi-hop fashion. Starting from a general description of the WMN architecture and protocol developments, this chapter focuses on the primary design issues and challenges for making Internet pervasive through WMN’s that demand innovations in protocols at different layers and perfect integration. The brief discussion on the research works and related experimental testbeds shows that WMN with its unique features seems to be a promising solution to provide next generation Internet access to areas that are too remote to receive it via cable or DSL, or where upgrading the landlines to broadband is highly cost-prohibitive. Finally, this chapter concludes introducing various open issues and research challenges still to be addressed and resolved in coming days to make this solution commercially viable.