MTDos-SDN is a Moving Target Defense (MTD) framework designed to protect Software-Defined Networking (SDN) from reconnaissance and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The MTDos-SDN framework employs a variety of MTD strategies, including IP shuffling and redirection to a honeynet, offering a flexible defense strategy against attackers. Using SDN, the MTDos-SDN framework dynamically alters the attack surface of the network. The framework undergoes several performance evaluations aimed at assessing its efficiency in countering DDoS attacks and its influence on network parameters such as throughput and latency. The findings indicate that MTDos-SDN successfully lowers the attack surface and complicates the attackers’ efforts to sustain a persistent threat within the network, all while preserving satisfactory performance levels.

Providing Quality of Service (QoS) in Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is challenging, due to the numerous connections that vehicles can maintain, termed multihoming setups. P4-NEON employs a multi-criteria decision-making algorithm to improve multihoming in VANETs by leveraging segment routing within the IPv6 data plane. The entire data plane is programmed with P4 and uses In-band Network Telemetry to collect relevant performance data of ongoing data flows. This information improves Quality of Service decisions, such as minimizing delay and packet loss. P4-NEON is an all-encompassing solution featuring visualization tools for presenting live network statistics and active data flow paths. By employing segment routing within the IPv6 data plane, P4-NEON achieved better load balancing in the scenario studied, effectively lowered the average delay for Emergency Flows relative to others, and decreased the occurrence of out-of-order packets, all while maintaining other performance metrics evaluated during testing.

SUMMARY: APAtizer is a tool designed to analyze alternative polyadenylation events on RNA-sequencing data. The tool handles different file formats, including BAM, htseq, and DaPars bedGraph files. It provides a user-friendly interface that allows users to generate informative visualizations, including Volcano plots, heatmaps, and gene lists. These outputs allow the user to retrieve useful biological insights such as the occurrence of polyadenylation events when comparing two biological conditions. In addition, it can perform differential gene expression, gene ontology analysis, visualization of Venn diagram intersections, and correlation analysis. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Source code and example case studies for APAtizer are available at https://github.com/GeneRegulationi3S/APAtizer/.

Modern technology advancements such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) have been employed in distinct scenarios such as cloud computing and wireless networks, and have made network administration simpler since it gives greater flexibility in centralizing the configurations of a network and its data. Several SDN controllers have started to offer Authorization, Authentication, and Accounting (AAA) services to improve user management and security, including support for OAuth2.0. However, basic authentication schemes using the tuple username and password are not considered secure nowadays (prone to brute force attacks), or the use of basic tokens in OAuth 2.0 is propitious to security vulnerabilities not meeting the security requirements in current and future use cases dealing with authentication. Therefore, the main objective of this work is the design and evaluation of the FedAAA-SDN framework enabling authentication, authorization, and accounting mechanisms in SDN controllers controlling different types of networks. In particular, the FedAAA-SDN framework enables federated authentication and authorization processes for network functions by enabling the conveyance of identity and authentication information across heterogeneous domains/networks, allowing also network operators to enforce authorization policies for network functions in wired and wireless networks. A FedAAA-SDN proof of concept is implemented with OpenDaylight as the SDN controller, OpenID Connect as the authentication and authorization mechanism, and Keycloak as the OpenID Provider. FedAAA-SDN also includes the concept of trust levels and trust policies that rely on the context information of a user’s device and associated connected access networks. The implementation of the FedAAA-SDN framework proof of concept involves modifications in the OpenDaylight AAA filter component to secure all the interactions with the several network applications/subcomponents of the OpenDaylight SDN controller. STRIDE security analysis demonstrates that the FedAAA-SDN framework is able to reduce the number of threats.

Mobile malware is a malicious code specifically designed to target mobile devices to perform multiple types of fraud. The number of attacks reported each day is increasing constantly and is causing an impact not only at the end-user level but also at the network operator level. Malware like FluBot contributes to identity theft and data loss but also enables remote Command & Control (C2) operations, which can instrument infected devices to conduct Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Current mobile device-installed solutions are not effective, as the end user can ignore security warnings or install malicious software. This article designs and evaluates MONDEO-Tactics5G - a multistage botnet detection mechanism that does not require software installation on end-user devices, together with tactics for 5G network operators to manage infected devices. We conducted an evaluation that demonstrates high accuracy in detecting FluBot malware, and in the different adaptation strategies to reduce the risk of DDoS while minimising the impact on the clients' satisfaction by avoiding disrupting established sessions.

The utilisation of resources from a fairness perspective has been an extensively researched topic, either to enhance the quality of services or to allow spectrum sharing, among others. One method to define forwarding routes is through flow algorithms, which aim to find optimal paths between nodes where capacity constraints are of interest. SALEM is an approach to enable fairness in services competing for resources in wireless mesh environments. SALEM implements a multicommodity flow heuristic, based on a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation, to consider fairness in reliability, delay and energy objectives and is constrained by bandwidth and link usage criteria. SALEM is implemented in the ONOS controller to enable a fair utilisation of links in a topology replicating a real-world scenario. Within a time complexity that is directly related to the topology, the number of users and available services, the results of SALEM demonstrate its feasibility to run in production-ready networks with minimal overhead.

Federated Identity Management enables convenient mechanisms to authenticate users and to authorize services, applications to specific users’ resources. SAML and OpenID Connect that relies on OAuth 2.0 are commonly employed to enable Single-Sign-On features. Despite their wide usage in several domains (enterprise, web applications) they only aim to identify entities like persons and do not consider the different trust levels that a person can have with its devices, or even with the services provided by organisations participating or not in federated scenarios. BIANFE stands as a proposal for object identification and authentication in federated and non federated scenarios, considering the trust relations between end-users and the applications/services running in its devices. As work in progress, BIANFE tackles primarily the identification issue for objects, considering interoperability and privacy issues.

Mission Critical Services (MCS) are associated with public safety networks and their support has been progressively introduced in LTE/5G standards. MCS are composed by distinct functions that are required for voice and critical data communications, along with strict security requirements. Service Function Chaining (SFC) allows the delivery of end-to-end services and considers the order of flows (i.e. functions that must be applied before others) and the components on which such functions can be performed (i.e. at cloud or edge nodes). This paper proposes the design of SFC policies to chain Service Functions of MCS, considering the roles of vehicles in wildfire combating scenarios. The evaluated SFC policies consider security functions at edge nodes with distinct computational platforms. The achieved results demonstrate that the SFC policies need to be carefully designed to reduce disruption of services in MCS scenarios.

Mobile devices are used for communication and for tasks that are sensitive and subject to tampering. Indeed, attacks can be performed on the users' devices without user awareness, this represents additional risk in mission critical scenarios, such as Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR). Intrusion Detection Systems are important for scenarios where information leakage is of crucial importance, since they allow to detect possible attacks to information assets (e.g., installation of malware), or can even compromise the security of PPDR personnel. HyIDS is an Hybrid IDS for Android and supporting the stringent security requirements of PPDR, by comprising agents that continuously monitor mobile device and periodically transmit the data to an analysis framework at the Command Control Center (CCC). The data collection retrieves resource usage metrics for each installed application such as CPU, memory usage, and incoming and outgoing network traffic. At the CCC, the HyIDS employs Machine Learning techniques to identify patterns that are consistent with malware signatures based on the data collected from the applications. The HyIDS's evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed solution has low impact on the mobile device in terms of battery consumption and CPU/memory usage.

The Domain Name Service (DNS) is a vital service in the Internet. Much more than a simple translation mechanism, it also allows higher profile functionalities such as load balancing and enhanced content distribution. In the scope of cloud computing, DNS is foreseen as an elastic and robust service, supporting failover mechanisms, decentralised configuration and multi-tenant isolation. This paper presents and validates a cloud-based architecture for DNS as Service, considering the expected principles of security, scalability and elasticity. The obtained results reveal that the proposed architecture is capable of accommodating a high-load of DNS queries per second by dynamically managing the amount of used resources, enforcing a constraint of reduced query latency (<; 1s). Additionally, it also incorporates failover monitoring mechanisms to ensure the stability of the system. The performed assessment in Fed4FIRE testbeds shows that this approach allows for reduction of operational costs, managing used resources according to the service's load introduced by the simultaneous clients and by appropriately scaling in or out DNS servers independently of the underlying cloud infrastructure platform (e.g. OpenStack, Amazon Web Services).

The location of data centres is crucial when mobile network operators are moving towards cloudified mobile networks to optimize resource utilization and to improve performance of services. Quality of Experience (QoE) can be enhanced in terms of content access latency, by placing user content at locations where they will be present in the future. The Follow-Me Cloud (FMC) concept aims at optimising operations of moving Mobile Network Operators Services towards cloudified environments, where Information Centric Networking (ICN) and the appropriate content migration policies are of paramount importance. However, several factors need to be considered, including user movements and mobility prediction (MP), content popularity, and migration. This paper addresses all these aspects by implementing a fully integrated multi-criteria FMC and mobility prediction mechanisms (MP-FMC) on a cloud infrastructure. Experimental evaluation shows that MP-FMC can be orchestrated on-demand within a reasonable time frame, and it could deliver ≈ 33% improvement of content retrieval time.

With the increasing usage of mobile devices for traffic-heavy applications, mobile operators struggle for delivering good performance while, at the same time, optimizing resource consumption. By resorting to Information-Centric Networking and mobile cloud computing paradigms, mobile operators are able to tackle this challenge, simultaneously supporting more users and reducing operational costs. In this paper we propose a Mobile Follow-Me Cloud (M-FMC) model for enhancing the migration of content caches located at the edge of cloudified mobile networks, leveraging the benefits of such paradigms. This is achieved by accounting for content popularity and user mobility, optimizing systems' caches according to user interests and improving resource management. Evaluation results demonstrate that M-FMC model achieves more than 90% accuracy in real-time selection of content objects to be migrated between caches. This performance is reflected in higher cache-hit rates, therefore representing an improvement in content-access latency and overall bandwidth savings.

Cloud computing enables the on-demand delivery of resources for a multitude of services and gives the opportunity for small agile companies to compete with large industries. In the telco world, cloud computing is currently mostly used by mobile network operators (MNO) for hosting non-critical support services and selling cloud services such as applications and data storage. MNOs are investigating the use of cloud computing to deliver key telecommunication services in the access and core networks. Without this, MNOs lose the opportunities of both combining this with over-the-top (OTT) and value-added services to their fundamental service offerings and leveraging cost-effective commodity hardware. Being able to leverage cloud computing technology effectively for the telco world is the focus of mobile cloud networking (MCN). This paper presents the key results of MCN integrated project that includes its architecture advancements, prototype implementation, and evaluation. Results show the efficiency and the simplicity that a MNO can deploy and manage the complete service lifecycle of fully cloudified, composed services that combine OTT/IT- and mobile-network-based services running on commodity hardware. The extensive performance evaluation of MCN using two key proof-of-concept scenarios that compose together many services to deliver novel converged elastic, on-demand mobile-based but innovative OTT services proves the feasibility of such fully virtualized deployments. Results show that it is beneficial to extend cloud computing to telco usage and run fully cloudified mobile-network-based systems with clear advantages and new service opportunities for MNOs and end-users.

Network management includes several operations that aim to maximize Fault, Configuration, Account, Performance and Security (FCAPS) goals. Performance improvement often relies on multiple criteria, leading to NP-Hard optimisation problems. Very often, optimization mechanisms are narrowed to a specific scenario or present deployment issues due to their associated complexity. Others, despite reducing complexity, have accuracy issues that lead to the selection of non-optimal solutions. MeTHODICAL is an accurate optimisation technique for path selection in multihoming scenarios that enhances network management FCAPS goals by being flexible enough to operate on distinct scenarios, supporting different applications and services and with reduced deployment complexity.

Quality of Resilience (QoR) is natively connected to cloud computing to enable high-availability of services and secure access to information. QoR, in such dynamic contexts, cannot simply rely on reactive protection models, such as the primary-backup model supported by the Stream Control Transport Protocol (SCTP). Indeed, proactive mechanisms are required to enable an optimal QoR. In this paper we propose the use of multiple criteria that assess the performance of services operating in the cloud to trigger proactive resilient mechanisms. Such criteria, considering the maximization of benefits and decrease of costs, are combined through Multiple Attribute Decision Mechanisms (MADM) to optimize quality of resilience, going beyond mechanisms relying simply on network criteria. In this context, TOPSIS and MeTH are implemented to enhance data transfer services. Evaluation results, from the tests performed in the cloud environment of a Telecom Operator, demonstrate that MeTH is able to enhance high volume data transfers in comparison to TOPSIS and also to improve resilience support of SCTP, in the presence of different kinds of failures, network conditions and server loads.

This paper introduces EVA, a mechanism that enhances VoIP applications by optimizing path selection, taking into consideration multihoming, traffic performance and application performance criteria. These criteria are hierarchically organized according to their type, which can be classified as benefits or costs. EVA solves the NP-hard path selection problem through a MADM technique that employs a new distance function and a stability factor to select paths with optimal quality, while assuring the highest quality of experience during the VoIP call. The EVA solution mitigates unstable scoring, commonly found in MADM techniques, while keeping the same complexity O(m·n). EVA is evaluated analytically using data from a wireless testbed with multihomed hosts. Results demonstrate that EVA selects paths with high quality of experience levels and it is able to maintain the quality levels throughout the sessions. Moreover, when compared to similar techniques, the proposed approach demonstrates higher flexibility and adaptability to heterogeneous scenarios with different characteristics.

Mobile and multi-access devices have become commonplace today. In this context, nodes have multiple interfaces that can form the foundation for the always best connected paradigm. Mobile IPv6, the staple mobility management technology for the Internet, enables nodes to roam between different networks while minimising session disruption due to handovers. However, in standard MIPv6, a mobile node can register only a single IP address as its Care-of-Address (CoA), therefore the multiplicity of network interfaces may be managed suboptimally while simultaneous multi-access is not possible. Recently, MIPv6 has been extended with a much-anticipated feature, namely Multiple Care-of Address (MCoA) registration. MCoA allows a MIPv6 node to register all active addresses configured on the respective interfaces and then use them at will, possibly in an alternating fashion as well as simultaneously. MCoA is anticipated to improve the performance of multimedia applications, yet this is still to be quantified. This paper provides a first answer to this question. In particular, we employ simulation to evaluate the benefits for multimedia applications, such as VoIP and video, from the use of MCoA. We compare the MCoA results with those obtained when MIPv6 with single address registration is used based on objective multimedia evaluation metrics, such as PESQ. In addition we examine the tradeoffs between application benefits and signaling costs for the network.

Resilience, load balancing and ubiquitous support can be improved by multihoming configurations that explore the plurality of wireless technologies available nowadays. Nevertheless, efficient multihoming configurations require support from all layers, as for instance in, network protocols which must incorporate mechanisms to support multiple addresses. Multiple Care of Addresses Registration (MCoA) is a protocol that extends Mobile IPv6 to enable the registration of multiple addresses. This paper presents mCoA++, our publicly available simulation model for OMNeT++ which implements the Multiple Care of Addresses Registration protocol recently standardized by IETF. Filling a gap in the MCoA specification, mCoA++ incorporates cross-layer mechanisms that tailor address selection according to application requirements. We evaluate our mCoA++ implementation and compare simulation code performance with xMIPv6. We find that mCoA++ adds multiple care of address support in OMNeT++ without introducing any significant overhead.

VoIP applications are being widely used in today's networks challenging their capabilities to provide a good quality of experience level to the users. In particular, new wireless broadband technologies, such as WiMAX, are being deployed and need to be evaluated to check the performance levels of VoIP services. The work presented in this paper is a unique contribution assessing the VoIP sessions quality on a real WiMAX test-bed, using UDP/RTP and DCCP transport protocols. VoIP quality is measured according the quality perceived by the end users as well as through conventional network parameters, such as one-way delay and packet loss. The results put in evidence a good quality for VoIP services with 60 simultaneous users in a WiMAX link with resources pre-provisioned. Moreover, in the scenarios tested, DCCP has not shown enhanced performance when compared with UDP/RTP, despite the congestion control mechanisms natively supported.

Although IEEE 802.16 has emerged as one of the major candidates for next generation networks, it is also clear that in the near future the combination of several technologies will be required. In this sense, the support of mobility in heterogeneous environments, addressing broadband wireless, is one of the main requirements in next generation networks. This paper evaluates an architecture based on the recently standardized IEEE 802.21 framework, integrating both mobility and quality of service (QoS) mechanisms, through an advanced mobility scenario using a real WiMAX testbed. This architecture supports seamless mobility in broadband wireless access (BWA) networks, integrates different technologies, such as WiMAX and Wi-Fi, and thus, it is suitable for next generation network environments. The results, obtained through real experimentation of the implemented architecture, show that it is able to provide QoS under dynamic scenarios, with fast integrated QoS and mobility signaling.

The anticipated deployment of IEEE 802.16-based wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs) will usher a new era in broadband wireless communications. The adoption of the WiMAX technology for remote areas, for example, can address challenging scenarios in a cost-effective manner. While WiMAX Forum documents describe an architecture that inherently supports quality of service and mobility, several areas are left uncovered. We present an architecture which integrates WiMAX, quality of service and mobility management frameworks over heterogeneous networks, developing mechanisms for seamless handovers. Our approach takes into consideration the expected deployment of, on the one hand, the IEEE 802.21 (Media Independent Handover) proposed standard and, on the other, the IETFstandardized Next Steps in Signalling framework. The first contributions of this paper comprise a specification of the mechanisms for make-before-break vertical handovers taking quality of service signalling into account and the integration in a heterogeneous environment. The latter contribution is an empirical evaluation of the proposed architecture using a testbed demonstrator. We quantify the processing delays of the main components in our prototype implementation when a terminal hands over between different access technologies, demonstrating the potential of the proposed architecture.

Ubiquitous broadband Internet access is an important requirement to satisfy user demands and support a new set of real time services and applications. IEEE 802.16, as a broadband wireless access technology, can significantly contribute in this area. It is able to provide high throughput over large distances, with intrinsic QoS support, in line-of-Sight and Non- line-of-Sight environments. This paper discusses a network architecture, based on IEEE 802.16 d compliant equipments, which is able to support real-time services with QoS integration through dynamic configuration of the 802.16 channel, using the NSIS framework. Tests have been carried out to evaluate the QoS performance of the defined architecture, demonstrating that it is perfectly capable of handling and supporting real time services, using dynamic configuration of the 802.16 channel, without introducing an excessive cost in the network.

Mobile WiMAX defines an architecture for metropolitan area broadband wireless access networks based on IEEE 802.16e. One of the most important characteristics of WiMAX is support of applications with different QoS requirements in terms of delay, jitter and bandwidth. We briefly review IEEE 802.16 and the mobile WiMAX network reference model and discuss how IEEE 802.21 can enhance mobility management. Mobile WiMAX is often cited as an important 4G contender. We evaluate via simulation its capacity to support real time applications in high-speed vehicular scenarios and assess the potential of using cross-layer information made available by IEEE 802.21/MIH. Our results indicate that using MIH information allows for the fulfillment of multimedia application requirements. On the other hand, the requirements of such applications are far from being fulfilled when MIH assistant information is not employed.