Internet-of-Things (IoT) utilising sensors is effective in performing continuous monitoring, while Blockchain is ideal in guaranteeing integrity and immutability of these IoT data. There are many challenges in integrating IoT and Blockchain together mainly because IoT devices have limited computational resources, and storage capacity while Blockchain processing incurs high CPU cost and high latency in data transfer. We propose a fully distributed edge computing architecture coupled with an efficient storage system that is based on Non-Volatile Memory express Over Fabrics (NVMeOF) to provide efficient IoT data processing for supply chain management. The data is secured using Blockchain at the edge to ensure traceability, security and non-repudiation in the data. An evaluation of our implementation and performance comparison between NVMeOF and SATA storage interfaces for our IoT-Blockchain architecture is presented.

Available bandwidth in important performance criterion for performance. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm called Single Burst (SB) for measuring the available bandwidth between end hosts. Additionally, we provide mathematical analysis to derive approximate upper bounds on amount of exchanged data and measurement latency for SB. Finally, we present a comparison of measurement latency, accuracy, usability, and network overhead among an implementation of SB and two existing available bandwidth measurement tools, i.e., Iperf and pathChirp. As a result, we conclude that SB measures the available bandwidth even under the condition of packet losses, with default settings, with faster response time, and without generating excessive test traffic.

Traditionally, signal-to-noise ratio of a mobile determines the handoff dynamics of the mobile. But in certain cases, precise location of the mobile augmented by information services, such as IEEE 802.21 MIS, can expedite the handoff with similar performance results. We illustrate an experimental system that takes advantage of the mobile's relative location with the neighboring access point to perform proactive handoff. It keeps track of the current location of the mobile and then uses the information from the neighboring networks to help perform the proactive handoff. Proactive handover technique helps the mobile to communicate with these networks before the handover is complete thereby reducing the delay and packet loss. In some cases, location-assisted handover could prove to be more useful compared to the handover technique based on signal-noise-ratio.

Secured and seamless mobility across heterogeneous access networks needs optimization at all layers. Authentication and security association at the link layer is one of the major components of delay during handoff. We propose a network- layer assisted proactive handoff scheme that helps to optimize the handoff process involving link-layer security across multiple subnets. We demonstrate this proactive scheme and analyze the results for IEEE 802.11-based networks for both roaming and non-roaming scenarios. We then compare these results with the pre-authentication techniques offered by IEEE 802.11i.

Proactive handoff mechanisms involving secure pre-authentication and proactive configuration help reduce the delay and transient data loss for real-time communication during movement between homogeneous or heterogeneous access networks. Pre-authentication is meant to perform authentication with a network before a mobile moves into the network. To achieve secure pre- authentication with a target neighboring network, a mobile needs to obtain an IP address of the authentication server from the target network when the mobile is still outside the target network and then to establish a security association with the authentication agent in the target network. This requires the mobile to discover the parameters of various network elements in the target network ahead of time so that the mobile can communicate with these network elements to establish proactive security associations. We describe several approaches for a mobile to discover the network elements in target networks before moving into these target networks. We also describe how network discovery can help provide fast-handoff using secure pre-authentication and proactive IP address acquisition during handover between different access networks.

In a mobile environment, as a mobile node moves from one point of attachment to another during an ongoing application session it is subjected to packet loss due to network and link layer transition. Such packet loss affects the quality of ongoing communication session such as interactive VoIP traffic and streaming media. We provide a solution to this scenario by buffering packets for the mobile node at an access router or network node near the edge of the network where mobile may be moving away from or moving towards. The buffered packets are then forwarded to the mobile node once the handoff process completes. The buffering scheme is used in conjunction with existing mobility protocols, access protocols or as an independent network or link layer mechanism. Ability to control the buffer dynamically provides a reasonable trade-off between delay and packet loss which is within the threshold limit for real-time communication. The overview and mechanisms of such schemes are described and comparisons on existing buffering schemes are also provided

In order to support session-based real-time communication in a highly mobile environment it is desirable to limit end-to-end delay, jitter and packet loss at a certain threshold level. This paper describes a framework of media-independent pre-authentication (MPA), a new handover optimization mechanism that has a potential to address issues on existing mobility management protocols and mobility optimization mechanisms to achieve these values. MPA is a mobile-assisted, secure handover optimization scheme that works over any link-layer and with any mobility management protocol. This paper also presents an initial implementation of MPA and performance results to show how existing protocols could be leveraged to realize the functionalities of MPA and provide the desired results.

In this paper, we propose a new network architecture that supports IEEE 802.11i and WPA and provides the network selection functionality and the functionality to physically separate AAA clients from access points by using PANA (protocol for carrying authentication for network access) as the network access authentication protocol; both functionalities have been difficult to support solely with IEEE 802.11i. We also show our prototype system in which the proposed architecture is realized using a newly developed WPA-capable access point which provides connectivity to multiple networks, namely, a guest network, a management network, and multiple user networks. We also show performance results of the prototype system and an example of usage in an enterprise environment.

This paper describes an IP paging protocol that can be independent of, and also easily optimized for, any mobility management protocol. It is scalable, runs over any radio system, supports arbitrary location update and paging algorithms, and allows IP paging areas to map arbitrarily to IP subnets. Our analysis results show that the protocol can haves significantly lower signaling cost than mobile IP foreign agent paging methods such as P-MIP. This paper also identifies the shortcomings of using IPsec to secure IP paging protocols and proposes a new solution to overcome these shortcomings.

This paper presents the design principles of dynamic service negotiation protocol (DSNP). DSNP is a protocol to negotiate the SLS (service level specification) in the IP layer. It can be used for service negotiation from host to network, network to host, and network to network. The automated negotiation makes service negotiation efficient in terms of time, cost, and correctness. The dynamic negotiation not only allows users to adapt their needs dynamically, but also lets providers utilize the network better. DSNP can be used in both wireline and wireless networks. It is, however, particularly useful in the mobile environment. To demonstrate the usefulness of DSNP, a reference wireless QoS architecture based on DiffServ is presented. Example applications and experimental results are illustrated.

In an effort to realize wireless Internet telephony and multimedia streaming in a highly mobile environment a testbed emulating a wireless Internet has been built. This allows the setting up of multimedia calls between IP mobiles and integration between IP and PSTN end-points in a wireless environment. Different functionalities and components involved with the wireless Internet streaming multimedia have been prototyped and experimented in the testbed. These include signaling, registration, dynamic binding, location management as well as supporting the QoS features for the mobile users. This paper describes some of the components of the testbed and highlights the experiences while building this testbed which could be beneficial to some who plan to build a similar testbed to realize several features and capabilities of Mobile Wireless Internet, before actually bringing to the market.

A work conserving O(1) per-VC queueing algorithm named QLWFQ (Queue Length based Weighted Fair Queueing) for high-speed ATM networks is proposed. The basic process in QLWFQ is the comparison of the current queue length with the weight when a cell arrival or departure occurs. QLWFQ has upward compatibility with fair queueing and FIFO, and can be considered to be a simplified version of weighted round robin. A delay bound and a fairness index are derived analytically for the QLWFQ algorithm. The simulation results for heavily and lightly loaded conditions are also presented. The analytical and simulation results show that QLWFQ achieves a better balance between traffic isolation and traffic sharing than timestamp based algorithms.

The authors analyze the flow enforcement algorithm suitable for regulating the flow of the bursty traffic in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks (for broadband packet switching). The flow enforcement algorithm has two objectives: to force the input traffic to conform to the traffic parameters which are specified by the source itself at its connection time; and to obtain greater performance gain at the cell multiplexer by regulating the flow to some extent. The authors reveal the tradeoff relationship between the regulation level of the cell flow and the improvement of the link performance. The authors first analyze the flow enforcement mechanism to derive the delay distribution and the interdeparture time distribution for cells at the flow enforcer. For the input traffic, they allow the general independent arrivals of cells to represent the traffic burstiness larger than a Poisson distribution. The obtained interdeparture time distributions from the flow enforcer are then used to approximately analyze the performance of the cell multiplexer. For this purpose, a Markov-modulated Poisson process (MMPP) approximation method is extended to investigate the performance of individual traffic stream in the superposed arriving traffic streams.>

Admission control in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks is considered. An ATM switch is modeled as a discrete-time single-server queue at which the following three different kinds of arrival processes are allowed to join together: arrivals of cells with a general interarrival time distribution; Bernoulli arrivals of cells in batches; and interrupted Poisson processes. An exact analysis is given to derive the waiting-time distributions and interdeparture-time distributions for arriving cells subject to admission control in ATM networks. The model is extended to approximately obtain the end-to-end delay distributions for the designated traffic stream. Such an analysis is important for voice or coded video because they require a playout mechanism at the destination. Since the analysis is approximate, the simulation results needed to assess its accuracy are provided. Numerical examples show how the traffic characteristics of the designated traffic stream are affected by the total traffic load at the switching node, the number of other bursty traffic sources, and the degree of burstiness of the traffic source itself.>