Research Projects

EU FET IST Autonomic Network Architecture

    The Autonomic Network Architecture (ANA) integrated project is co-sponsored by the European Commission under the Information Society Technology (IST) priority on Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) under the 6th Framework Programme.

    The ANA project aims at exploring novel ways of organizing and using networks beyond legacy Internet technology. The ultimate goal is to design and develop a novel network architecture that enables flexible, dynamic, and fully autonomic formation of network nodes as well as whole networks. It will allow dynamic adaptation and re-organisation of the network according to the working, economical and social needs of the users. This is expected to be especially challenging in a mobile context where new resources become available dynamically, administrative domains change frequently, and the economic models may vary.

    The scientific objective of this proposal is to identify fundamental autonomic network principles. Moreover, this project will build, demonstrate, and test such an autonomic network architecture. The key attribute is that such a network scales in a functional way that is, the network can extend both horizontally (more functionality) as well as vertically (different ways of integrating abundant functionality).

    The challenge addressed in this project is to come up with a network architecture and to fill it with the functionality needed to demonstrate the feasibility of autonomic networking within the coming 4 years.

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Voice over IP (VoIP) Security, Spam (SPIT) Detection and Prevention

    Development of a SPIT Prevention System for the detection of Spam over Internettelefony (SPIT) and the handling of it in various ways. Also the security protocol HIP is tested in an VoIP environment in the SIP over HIP Integration Project (SHIP).

EU IST Eurolabs

    EuroLabs is a European FP6 project that integrates new networking technologies, applications and services. These components are combined to make up five interconnected testbeds, located in Belgium , France , Germany , Hungary and Switzerland . Whilst each centre will specialize in certain technologies, the features will be transferable to all sites.

    The testbeds give the opportunity to participate - and support the participation of others - in interoperability events, such as ETSI Plugtests, and to integrate network components and applications into showcases.

    Connectivity between the distributed testbeds, and also to similar sites around the world, is achieved through GÉANT and other networks that will emerge during the FP6 timeframe.

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EU IST Ambient Networks

    Ambient Networks (AN) is an integrated project (IP) co-sponsored by the European Commission under the Information Society Technology (IST) priority under the 6th Framework Programme. The project addresses the strategic objective of "Mobile and Wireless Systems Beyond 3G".

    The Ambient Networks project will create network solutions for mobile and wireless systems beyond 3G. It will enable scalable and affordable wireless networking while providing rich and easy-to-use communication services for all. It is geared towards increasing competition and cooperation in an environment populated by a multitude of user devices, wireless technologies, network operators, and business actors.

    Ambient Networks offers a fundamentally new vision based on the dynamic composition of networks to avoid adding to the growing patchwork of extensions to existing architectures. This will provide access to any network, including mobile personal networks, through instant establishment of inter-network agreements.

    The project adopts the design paradigm of horizontally structured mobile systems that offer common control functions to a wide range of different applications and air-interface technologies. Such a radical change requires the definition of new interfaces and a multitude of standards in key areas of future media- and context-aware, multi-domain mobile networks.

    The projects' results comprise a complete, coherent wireless network solution; an architecture for self-configuring network components that reduces deployment and operational costs and a complete protocol suite for network composition. The results will facilitate incremental market introduction of new services, and will stimulate sustainable growth in the European mobile communications sector.

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Intelligent Modular Firewall Functions

    the development of intelligent IP firewall functions, to be included in NEC commercial IP router platforms.

IETF Next Steps in Signalling (NSIS)

    Standardization in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS) Working Group: I was actively involved from the start of the working group. NSIS Requirements Document (editor), NAT/Firewall Traversal standardization and supervision of implementation.

MPLS/GMPLS Management

    GMPLS Management System: Development of a GMPLS management system based on HP OpenView, to be used for a new NEC line of products in the area of MPLS and GMPLS switches. Includes the standardization in the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). Editor of the MPLS information model for release V2.7 of the DMTF network information model.

Policy-based Management

    Based on the IETF Policy Framework, we work on policy-based management of MPLS networks. The purpose of this work is to describe an information model for representing MPLS policies, including MPLS for traffic engineering and QoS. The policy-based management approach is used to facilitate efficient and reliable network operations in an MPLS domain. For the QoS-related part, the Policy Framework QoS Information Model of the IETF Policy Framework WG is extended with new classes for controlling and managing the lifecycle of Label Switched Paths (LSPs) and for mapping of traffic onto existing LSPs. This information model may be used by a management system to optimize network performance through the necessary network provisioning actions.

     Additionally, I was working at the "Policy Core Information Model Extension", where we brough in the experience with the MPLS model to enhance the core model with more generic mechanisms, and add some elements to be used as toolkit for submodels in various areas of policy-based management.

IST Next Generation Networks Laboratory (NGNLAB)

    A project financed by the fifth European research framework programme. The overall objective of the distributed Next Generation Networks Laboratory (NGN LAB) is to become an advanced IP-based network and services environment that enables researchers located around Europe to solve problems using a common platform.

    The NGN LAB will be used to test new network configurations, protocols, applications, conformance tests to standards, so as to guarantee interworking and interoperability in a heterogeneous network environment. As with any other laboratory, certain tools and techniques will be specific to the domain of the research, but much of the expensive basic infrastructure and support can be shared across disciplines. The NGN LAB will be a facility with significant critical mass, having a high profile within and outside Europe, and enabling improved opportunities for developing European consensus on technological issues and evolution trends.

    The two new technologies further studied and tested in the project include IPv6 and Differentiated Service based QoS in IP networks.

Differentiated Services and QoS Control in the Internet

    The emergence of distributed multimedia applications and the growing mission-critical use of the Internet highlights the need for more reliable, secure and high performance communications and delivery of services. The challenge of supporting a variety of applications with differing characteristics and requirements at adequate service levels has led to the development of Quality of Service (QoS) technologies and enabling mechanisms in the past few years. Traffic engineering and dynamic control of resources in the network to deliver the required QoS for applications, and network wide provisioning, administration, monitoring and control of QoS, have become key capabilities for Internet Service Providers.

    We are developing the architectural concepts and framework for QoS Control in IP networks. QoS control that is directly linked to user services and needs, will offer a more compelling value proposition to service providers. The proposed architecture includes support of user-level policies, which are envisioned as translations from Service Level Agreements in part or as a whole, as well as support of network-wide management policies, which a service provider typically needs to implement.

    I was involved as a technical leader in planning, design, and building various prototypes addressing the challenges of providing guaranteed services to customers. The work includes service provisioning, service specification, service negotiation, and appropriate network configuration and management tools.

     Other projects in the area of Differentiated Services are: (1) EURESCOM P1006 DISCMAN (May 00 - March 01): The project addressed control and management issues in DiffServ/MPLS networks. I attended some meetings and did minor paper work. (2) Linux-DiffServ implementation in collaboration with the University of Bern in Switzerland (April 00 - now): I was in charge of the project from NEC. The tasks includes supervision of the project and the definition of the 3rd year work plan.

Service Management in a Telecom Environment based on Active Network Technology

    Active networking, where network nodes perform customized processing of packets, is a rapidly expanding field of research. This project is based on the assumption that active networking technology will mature to a point  where it can be commercially deployed on a larger scale. We investigate  the realization of service provisioning and service management in a  telecom environment that is based on active networking technology, primarily with respect to customer-provider interactions. Compared to conventional networking technology, active networking concepts enable additional flexibility in supporting management tasks. We outline a framework that allows customers, on the one hand, to access and manage  a service in a providerÕs domain, and, on the other hand, to outsource a  service and its management to a service provider. Our framework has the  properties of supporting (1) generic, i.e., service-independent, interfaces  for service provisioning and management, and (2) customized service  abstractions and control functions, according to a customer's requirements. Further, we describe how some of the key concepts of this framework can  be realized in an active networking testbed that we built.

Broadband Exchange for Trans-European USage

    The goal of the project is to take further the initial steps taken in the are a of teleteaching by the BETEL application towards a full-fledged CSCW application.

    To that effect the major enhancement will be the development of functions sup porting distributed group work in addition to the teleteaching support. The set of functions that will be developed in the project are best captured by the so-called virtual community paradigm. In case of BETEUS the operations can consist o f working, teaching, learning, project management and technical design.

The Telepoly Project (German)

    The Telepoly project was started as a teleteaching project between ETH Zurich and EPF Lausanne. In the mean time various other locations have been added. The project uses an ATM infrastructure for the transmision of high-quality audio and video streams (bi-directonal, multi-point distrubution of 3 A/V-streams). Especially, the very good audio quality makes the system useful for interactive, symoultaneous teleteaching in real lecturing ennvironments.

Coordination, Implementation and Operation of multimedia services (CIO)

    RACE Project R2060 JVTOS (Joint Viewing and Tele-Operation Service) is a teleservice developped by the CIO partners. It enables two or more persons to commonly use any application software at the same time on different workstations (Suns, SGIs, Macs and PCs).
    The application has to be available on one of the participating workstations only, while the other partners receive the shared user interface via the network. JVTOS also allows audio-visual conversation among all subscribers, but it's more than a pure conferencing systems and offers new ways to collaborate.

     

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