@phdthesis{Loh2024, author = {Loh, Frank}, title = {Monitoring the Quality of Streaming and Internet of Things Applications}, edition = {korrigierte Version}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-35096}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-350969}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The ongoing and evolving usage of networks presents two critical challenges for current and future networks that require attention: (1) the task of effectively managing the vast and continually increasing data traffic and (2) the need to address the substantial number of end devices resulting from the rapid adoption of the Internet of Things. Besides these challenges, there is a mandatory need for energy consumption reduction, a more efficient resource usage, and streamlined processes without losing service quality. We comprehensively address these efforts, tackling the monitoring and quality assessment of streaming applications, a leading contributor to the total Internet traffic, as well as conducting an exhaustive analysis of the network performance within a Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), one of the rapidly emerging LPWAN solutions.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Loh2024, author = {Loh, Frank}, title = {Monitoring the Quality of Streaming and Internet of Things Applications}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-34783}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-347831}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The ongoing and evolving usage of networks presents two critical challenges for current and future networks that require attention: (1) the task of effectively managing the vast and continually increasing data traffic and (2) the need to address the substantial number of end devices resulting from the rapid adoption of the Internet of Things. Besides these challenges, there is a mandatory need for energy consumption reduction, a more efficient resource usage, and streamlined processes without losing service quality. We comprehensively address these efforts, tackling the monitoring and quality assessment of streaming applications, a leading contributor to the total Internet traffic, as well as conducting an exhaustive analysis of the network performance within a Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), one of the rapidly emerging LPWAN solutions.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Geissler2022, author = {Geißler, Stefan}, title = {Performance Evaluation of Next-Generation Data Plane Architectures and their Components}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-26015}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-260157}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In this doctoral thesis we cover the performance evaluation of next generation data plane architectures, comprised of complex software as well as programmable hardware components that allow fine granular configuration. In the scope of the thesis we propose mechanisms to monitor the performance of singular components and model key performance indicators of software based packet processing solutions. We present novel approaches towards network abstraction that allow the integration of heterogeneous data plane technologies into a singular network while maintaining total transparency between control and data plane. Finally, we investigate a full, complex system consisting of multiple software-based solutions and perform a detailed performance analysis. We employ simulative approaches to investigate overload control mechanisms that allow efficient operation under adversary conditions. The contributions of this work build the foundation for future research in the areas of network softwarization and network function virtualization.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Koenigbauer2021, author = {K{\"o}nigbauer, Martina}, title = {Adaptives Referenzmodell f{\"u}r hybrides Projektmanagement}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-24751}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-247519}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Das Management von Projekten, welche sowohl einmalige und interdisziplin{\"a}re Aufgabenstellungen als auch individuelle Rahmenbedingungen und Einschr{\"a}nkungen umfassen, stellt eine anspruchsvolle Aufgabe dar. Es gibt einige standardisierte Vorgehensmodelle, die einen organisatorischen Rahmen aus Phasen, Prozessen, Rollen und anzuwendenden Methoden anbieten. Traditionellen Vorgehensmodellen wird in der Regel gefolgt, wenn die zu erzielenden Ergebnisse und der Ablauf eines Projektes auf Basis der zur Verf{\"u}gung stehenden Informationen geplant werden k{\"o}nnen. Agile Vorgehensmodelle werden vorranging genutzt, wenn keine ausreichenden Informationen zur Verf{\"u}gung stehen, um eine vollst{\"a}ndige Planung aufzusetzen. Ihr Fokus liegt darauf, flexibel auf sich {\"a}ndernde Anforderungen einzugehen. Im direkten Austausch mit Kunden werden in meist mehreren aufeinander folgenden Zyklen Zwischenergebnisse bewertet und darauf basierend die jeweils n{\"a}chsten Entwicklungsschritte geplant und umgesetzt. Hybride Vorgehensmodelle werden genutzt, wenn Methoden aus mehreren unterschiedlichen Vorgehensmodellen erforderlich sind, um ein Projekt zu bearbeiten. Die Bedeutung hybrider Vorgehensmodelle hat {\"u}ber die Jahre immer weiter zugenommen. Ihr besonderer Nutzen liegt darin, dass die Methodenauswahl auf den individuellen Kontext eines Projektes angepasst werden kann. Da es in der Praxis aber eine sehr große Anzahl an Methoden gibt, ist die Auswahl der zum Kontext passenden und deren Kombination zu einem individuellen Vorgehensmodell selbst f{\"u}r Experten/-innen eine Herausforderung. Die Forschungsergebnisse der vorliegenden Arbeit zeigen, dass es bisher auch kein Schema zur Unterst{\"u}tzung dieses Prozesses gab. Um diese Forschungsl{\"u}cke zu schließen, wurde ein adaptives Referenzmodell f{\"u}r hybrides Projektmanagement (ARHP) entwickelt. Der wissenschaftliche Beitrag besteht zum einen in der Entwicklung eines Ablaufs zur Selektion und Kombination von zum Kontext passenden Methoden und zum anderen in der Umsetzung des Ablaufs als semi-automatisches Werkzeug. Referenzmodellnutzer/-innen k{\"o}nnen darin ihren individuellen Projektkontext durch die Auswahl zutreffender Kriterien (sogenannter Parameterauspr{\"a}gungen) erfassen. Das ARHP bietet ihnen dann ein Vorgehensmodell an, welches aus miteinander anwendbaren und verkn{\"u}pfbaren Methoden besteht. Da in der Projektmanagement Community h{\"a}ufig schnelle Entscheidungen f{\"u}r ein geeignetes Vorgehensmodell erforderlich sind und selbst Experten/-innen nicht alle Methoden kennen, wird der Nutzen der ''digitalen Beratung'', die das semi-automatische ARHP bietet, als hoch eingestuft. Sowohl die f{\"u}r die Erfassung des Kontextes erforderlichen Parameter als auch die Methoden mit der h{\"o}chsten Praxisrelevanz, wurden anhand einer umfangreichen Umfrage erforscht. Ihr wissenschaftlicher Beitrag besteht unter anderem in der erstmaligen Erfassung von Begr{\"u}ndungen f{\"u}r die Verwendung von Methoden im Rahmen individueller, hybrider Vorgehensmodelle. Zudem erlauben die gesammelten Daten einen direkten Vergleich der Methodennutzung in funktionierenden und nicht funktionierenden hybriden Vorgehensmodellen. Mit der so vorhandenen Datengrundlage wird in drei Design Science Research Zyklen ein Algorithmus entwickelt, der den Adaptionsmechanismus des ARHP bildet. Die Evaluation des ARHP erfolgt anhand des entwickelten semi-automatischen Prototypen unter Einbeziehung von Projektmanagementexperten/-innen. Ausf{\"u}hrungen zur Pflege des ARHP k{\"o}nnen als Handlungsanleitung f{\"u}r Referenzmodellkonstrukteure/-innen verstanden werden. Sie bilden den letzten Teil der Arbeit und zeigen, wie das ARHP kontinuierlich weiterentwickelt werden kann. Zudem wird ein Ausblick darauf gegeben, um welche Themen das ARHP im Rahmen weiterf{\"u}hrender Forschung erweitert werden kann. Dabei handelt es sich zum Beispiel um eine noch st{\"a}rkere Automatisierung und Empfehlungen f{\"u}r das Change Management, welche beide bereits in Vorbereitung sind.}, subject = {Projektmanagement}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Moldovan2021, author = {Moldovan, Christian}, title = {Performance Modeling of Mobile Video Streaming}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-22871}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-228715}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2021}, abstract = {In the past two decades, there has been a trend to move from traditional television to Internet-based video services. With video streaming becoming one of the most popular applications in the Internet and the current state of the art in media consumption, quality expectations of consumers are increasing. Low quality videos are no longer considered acceptable in contrast to some years ago due to the increased sizes and resolution of devices. If the high expectations of the users are not met and a video is delivered in poor quality, they often abandon the service. Therefore, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and video service providers are facing the challenge of providing seamless multimedia delivery in high quality. Currently, during peak hours, video streaming causes almost 58\\% of the downstream traffic on the Internet. With higher mobile bandwidth, mobile video streaming has also become commonplace. According to the 2019 Cisco Visual Networking Index, in 2022 79\% of mobile traffic will be video traffic and, according to Ericsson, by 2025 video is forecasted to make up 76\% of total Internet traffic. Ericsson further predicts that in 2024 over 1.4 billion devices will be subscribed to 5G, which will offer a downlink data rate of 100 Mbit/s in dense urban environments. One of the most important goals of ISPs and video service providers is for their users to have a high Quality of Experience (QoE). The QoE describes the degree of delight or annoyance a user experiences when using a service or application. In video streaming the QoE depends on how seamless a video is played and whether there are stalling events or quality degradations. These characteristics of a transmitted video are described as the application layer Quality of Service (QoS). In general, the QoS is defined as "the totality of characteristics of a telecommunications service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs of the user of the service" by the ITU. The network layer QoS describes the performance of the network and is decisive for the application layer QoS. In Internet video, typically a buffer is used to store downloaded video segments to compensate for network fluctuations. If the buffer runs empty, stalling occurs. If the available bandwidth decreases temporarily, the video can still be played out from the buffer without interruption. There are different policies and parameters that determine how large the buffer is, at what buffer level to start the video, and at what buffer level to resume playout after stalling. These have to be finely tuned to achieve the highest QoE for the user. If the bandwidth decreases for a longer time period, a limited buffer will deplete and stalling can not be avoided. An important research question is how to configure the buffer optimally for different users and situations. In this work, we tackle this question using analytic models and measurement studies. With HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS), the video players have the capability to adapt the video bit rate at the client side according to the available network capacity. This way the depletion of the video buffer and thus stalling can be avoided. In HAS, the quality in which the video is played and the number of quality switches also has an impact on the QoE. Thus, an important problem is the adaptation of video streaming so that these parameters are optimized. In a shared WiFi multiple video users share a single bottleneck link and compete for bandwidth. In such a scenario, it is important that resources are allocated to users in a way that all can have a similar QoE. In this work, we therefore investigate the possible fairness gain when moving from network fairness towards application-layer QoS fairness. In mobile scenarios, the energy and data consumption of the user device are limited resources and they must be managed besides the QoE. Therefore, it is also necessary, to investigate solutions, that conserve these resources in mobile devices. But how can resources be conserved without sacrificing application layer QoS? As an example for such a solution, this work presents a new probabilistic adaptation algorithm that uses abandonment statistics for ts decision making, aiming at minimizing the resource consumption while maintaining high QoS. With current protocol developments such as 5G, bandwidths are increasing, latencies are decreasing and networks are becoming more stable, leading to higher QoS. This allows for new real time data intensive applications such as cloud gaming, virtual reality and augmented reality applications to become feasible on mobile devices which pose completely new research questions. The high energy consumption of such applications still remains an issue as the energy capacity of devices is currently not increasing as quickly as the available data rates. In this work we compare the optimal performance of different strategies for adaptive 360-degree video streaming.}, subject = {Video{\"u}bertragung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Borchert2020, author = {Borchert, Kathrin Johanna}, title = {Estimating Quality of Experience of Enterprise Applications - A Crowdsourcing-based Approach}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-21697}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-216978}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Nowadays, employees have to work with applications, technical services, and systems every day for hours. Hence, performance degradation of such systems might be perceived negatively by the employees, increase frustration, and might also have a negative effect on their productivity. The assessment of the application's performance in order to provide a smooth operation of the application is part of the application management. Within this process it is not sufficient to assess the system performance solely on technical performance parameters, e.g., response or loading times. These values have to be set into relation to the perceived performance quality on the user's side - the quality of experience (QoE). This dissertation focuses on the monitoring and estimation of the QoE of enterprise applications. As building models to estimate the QoE requires quality ratings from the users as ground truth, one part of this work addresses methods to collect such ratings. Besides the evaluation of approaches to improve the quality of results of tasks and studies completed on crowdsourcing platforms, a general concept for monitoring and estimating QoE in enterprise environments is presented. Here, relevant design dimension of subjective studies are identified and their impact of the QoE is evaluated and discussed. By considering the findings, a methodology for collecting quality ratings from employees during their regular work is developed. The method is realized by implementing a tool to conduct short surveys and deployed in a cooperating company. As a foundation for learning QoE estimation models, this work investigates the relationship between user-provided ratings and technical performance parameters. This analysis is based on a data set collected in a user study in a cooperating company during a time span of 1.5 years. Finally, two QoE estimation models are introduced and their performance is evaluated.}, subject = {Quality of Experience}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Metter2019, author = {Metter, Christopher Valentin}, title = {Resilience, Availabilty, and Serviceability Evaluation in Software-defined Networks}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-17678}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-176788}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2019}, abstract = {With the introduction of Software-defined Networking (SDN) in the late 2000s, not only a new research field has been created, but a paradigm shift was initiated in the broad field of networking. The programmable network control by SDN is a big step, but also a stumbling block for many of the established network operators and vendors. As with any new technology the question about the maturity and the productionreadiness of it arises. Therefore, this thesis picks specific features of SDN and analyzes its performance, reliability, and availability in scenarios that can be expected in production deployments. The first SDN topic is the performance impact of application traffic in the data plane on the control plane. Second, reliability and availability concerns of SDN deployments are exemplary analyzed by evaluating the detection performance of a common SDN controller. Thirdly, the performance of P4, a technology that enhances SDN, or better its impact of certain control operations on the processing performance is evaluated.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Lange2019, author = {Lange, Stanislav}, title = {Optimization of Controller Placement and Information Flow in Softwarized Networks}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-17457}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-174570}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2019}, abstract = {The Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm offers network operators numerous improvements in terms of flexibility, scalability, as well as cost efficiency and vendor independence. However, in order to maximize the benefit from these features, several new challenges in areas such as management and orchestration need to be addressed. This dissertation makes contributions towards three key topics from these areas. Firstly, we design, implement, and evaluate two multi-objective heuristics for the SDN controller placement problem. Secondly, we develop and apply mechanisms for automated decision making based on the Pareto frontiers that are returned by the multi-objective optimizers. Finally, we investigate and quantify the performance benefits for the SDN control plane that can be achieved by integrating information from external entities such as Network Management Systems (NMSs) into the control loop. Our evaluation results demonstrate the impact of optimizing various parameters of softwarized networks at different levels and are used to derive guidelines for an efficient operation.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{NguyenNgoc2018, author = {Nguyen-Ngoc, Anh}, title = {On Performance Assessment of Control Mechanisms and Virtual Components in SDN-based Networks}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-16932}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-169328}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2018}, abstract = {This dissertation focuses on the performance evaluation of all components of Software Defined Networking (SDN) networks and covers whole their architecture. First, the isolation between virtual networks sharing the same physical resources is investigated with SDN switches of several vendors. Then, influence factors on the isolation are identified and evaluated. Second, the impact of control mechanisms on the performance of the data plane is examined through the flow rule installation time of SDN switches with different controllers. It is shown that both hardware-specific and controller instance have a specific influence on the installation time. Finally, several traffic flow monitoring methods of an SDN controller are investigated and a new monitoring approach is developed and evaluated. It is confirmed that the proposed method allows monitoring of particular flows as well as consumes fewer resources than the standard approach. Based on findings in this thesis, on the one hand, controller developers can refer to the work related to the control plane, such as flow monitoring or flow rule installation, to improve the performance of their applications. On the other hand, network administrators can apply the presented methods to select a suitable combination of controller and switches in their SDN networks, based on their performance requirements}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{DinhXuan2018, author = {Dinh-Xuan, Lam}, title = {Quality of Experience Assessment of Cloud Applications and Performance Evaluation of VNF-Based QoE Monitoring}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-16918}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-169182}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2018}, abstract = {In this thesis various aspects of Quality of Experience (QoE) research are examined. The work is divided into three major blocks: QoE Assessment, QoE Monitoring, and VNF Performance Evaluation. First, prominent cloud applications such as Google Docs and a cloud-based photo album are explored. The QoE is characterized and the influence of packet loss and delay is studied. Afterwards, objective QoE monitoring for HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming (HAS) in the cloud is investigated. Additionally, by using a Virtual Network Function (VNF) for QoE monitoring in the cloud, the feasibility of an interworking of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and cloud paradigm is evaluated. To this end, a VNF that exploits deep packet inspection technique was used to parse the video traffic. An algorithm is then designed accordingly to estimate video quality and QoE based on network and application layer parameters. To assess the accuracy of the estimation, the VNF is measured in different scenarios under different network QoS and the virtual environment of the cloud architecture. The insights show that the different geographical deployments of the VNF influence the accuracy of the video quality and QoE estimation. Various Service Function Chain (SFC) placement algorithms have been proposed and compared in the context of edge cloud networks. On the one hand, this research is aimed at cloud service providers by providing methods for evaluating QoE for cloud applications. On the other hand, network operators can learn the pitfalls and disadvantages of using the NFV paradigm for such a QoE monitoring mechanism.}, subject = {Quality of Experience}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Seufert2017, author = {Seufert, Michael Thomas}, title = {Quality of Experience and Access Network Traffic Management of HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-15413}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-154131}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The thesis focuses on Quality of Experience (QoE) of HTTP adaptive video streaming (HAS) and traffic management in access networks to improve the QoE of HAS. First, the QoE impact of adaptation parameters and time on layer was investigated with subjective crowdsourcing studies. The results were used to compute a QoE-optimal adaptation strategy for given video and network conditions. This allows video service providers to develop and benchmark improved adaptation logics for HAS. Furthermore, the thesis investigated concepts to monitor video QoE on application and network layer, which can be used by network providers in the QoE-aware traffic management cycle. Moreover, an analytic and simulative performance evaluation of QoE-aware traffic management on a bottleneck link was conducted. Finally, the thesis investigated socially-aware traffic management for HAS via Wi-Fi offloading of mobile HAS flows. A model for the distribution of public Wi-Fi hotspots and a platform for socially-aware traffic management on private home routers was presented. A simulative performance evaluation investigated the impact of Wi-Fi offloading on the QoE and energy consumption of mobile HAS.}, subject = {Quality of Experience}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Burger2017, author = {Burger, Valentin}, title = {Performance Evalution and Optimization of Content Delivery Networks}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-15276}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-152769}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are networks that distribute content in the Internet. CDNs are increasingly responsible for the largest share of traffic in the Internet. CDNs distribute popular content to caches in many geographical areas to save bandwidth by avoiding unnecessary multihop retransmission. By bringing the content geographically closer to the user, CDNs also reduce the latency of the services. Besides end users and content providers, which require high availability of high quality content, CDN providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are interested in an efficient operation of CDNs. In order to ensure an efficient replication of the content, CDN providers have a network of (globally) distributed interconnected datacenters at different points of presence (PoPs). ISPs aim to provide reliable and high speed Internet access. They try to keep the load on the network low and to reduce cost for connectivity with other ISPs. The increasing number of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, high definition video content and high resolution displays result in a continuous growth in mobile traffic. This growth in mobile traffic is further accelerated by newly emerging services, such as mobile live streaming and broadcasting services. The steep increase in mobile traffic is expected to reach by 2018 roughly 60\% of total network traffic, the majority of which will be video. To handle the growth in mobile networks, the next generation of 5G mobile networks is designed to have higher access rates and an increased densification of the network infrastructure. With the explosion of access rates and number of base stations the backhaul of wireless networks will become congested. To reduce the load on the backhaul, the research community suggests installing local caches in gateway routers between the wireless network and the Internet, in base stations of different sizes, and in end-user devices. The local deployment of caches allows keeping the traffic within the ISPs network. The caches are organized in a hierarchy, where caches in the lowest tier are requested first. The request is forwarded to the next tier, if the requested object is not found. Appropriate evaluation methods are required to optimally dimension the caches dependent on the traffic characteristics and the available resources. Additionally methods are necessary that allow performance evaluation of backhaul bandwidth aggregation systems, which further reduce the load on the backhaul. This thesis analyses CDNs utilizing locally available resources and develops the following evaluations and optimization approaches: Characterization of CDNs and distribution of resources in the Internet, analysis and optimization of hierarchical caching systems with bandwidth constraints and performance evaluation of bandwidth aggregation systems.}, subject = {CDN-Netzwerk}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Gebert2017, author = {Gebert, Steffen Christian}, title = {Architectures for Softwarized Networks and Their Performance Evaluation}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-15063}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-150634}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2017}, abstract = {This thesis contributes to several issues in the context of SDN and NFV, with an emphasis on performance and management. The main contributions are guide lines for operators migrating to software-based networks, as well as an analytical model for the packet processing in a Linux system using the Kernel NAPI.}, subject = {Telekommunikationsnetz}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Hirth2016, author = {Hirth, Matthias Johannes Wilhem}, title = {Modeling Crowdsourcing Platforms - A Use-Case Driven Approach}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-14072}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-140726}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Computer systems have replaced human work-force in many parts of everyday life, but there still exists a large number of tasks that cannot be automated, yet. This also includes tasks, which we consider to be rather simple like the categorization of image content or subjective ratings. Traditionally, these tasks have been completed by designated employees or outsourced to specialized companies. However, recently the crowdsourcing paradigm is more and more applied to complete such human-labor intensive tasks. Crowdsourcing aims at leveraging the huge number of Internet users all around the globe, which form a potentially highly available, low-cost, and easy accessible work-force. To enable the distribution of work on a global scale, new web-based services emerged, so called crowdsourcing platforms, that act as mediator between employers posting tasks and workers completing tasks. However, the crowdsourcing approach, especially the large anonymous worker crowd, results in two types of challenges. On the one hand, there are technical challenges like the dimensioning of crowdsourcing platform infrastructure or the interconnection of crowdsourcing platforms and machine clouds to build hybrid services. On the other hand, there are conceptual challenges like identifying reliable workers or migrating traditional off-line work to the crowdsourcing environment. To tackle these challenges, this monograph analyzes and models current crowdsourcing systems to optimize crowdsourcing workflows and the underlying infrastructure. First, a categorization of crowdsourcing tasks and platforms is developed to derive generalizable properties. Based on this categorization and an exemplary analysis of a commercial crowdsourcing platform, models for different aspects of crowdsourcing platforms and crowdsourcing mechanisms are developed. A special focus is put on quality assurance mechanisms for crowdsourcing tasks, where the models are used to assess the suitability and costs of existing approaches for different types of tasks. Further, a novel quality assurance mechanism solely based on user-interactions is proposed and its feasibility is shown. The findings from the analysis of existing platforms, the derived models, and the developed quality assurance mechanisms are finally used to derive best practices for two crowdsourcing use-cases, crowdsourcing-based network measurements and crowdsourcing-based subjective user studies. These two exemplary use-cases cover aspects typical for a large range of crowdsourcing tasks and illustrated the potential benefits, but also resulting challenges when using crowdsourcing. With the ongoing digitalization and globalization of the labor markets, the crowdsourcing paradigm is expected to gain even more importance in the next years. This is already evident in the currently new emerging fields of crowdsourcing, like enterprise crowdsourcing or mobile crowdsourcing. The models developed in the monograph enable platform providers to optimize their current systems and employers to optimize their workflows to increase their commercial success. Moreover, the results help to improve the general understanding of crowdsourcing systems, a key for identifying necessary adaptions and future improvements.}, subject = {Open Innovation}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schwartz2016, author = {Schwartz, Christian}, title = {Modeling and Evaluation of Multi-Stakeholder Scenarios in Communication Networks}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-13388}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-133887}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Today's Internet is no longer only controlled by a single stakeholder, e.g. a standard body or a telecommunications company. Rather, the interests of a multitude of stakeholders, e.g. application developers, hardware vendors, cloud operators, and network operators, collide during the development and operation of applications in the Internet. Each of these stakeholders considers different KPIs to be important and attempts to optimise scenarios in its favour. This results in different, often opposing views and can cause problems for the complete network ecosystem. One example of such a scenario are Signalling Storms in the mobile Internet, with one of the largest occurring in Japan in 2012 due to the release and high popularity of a free instant messaging application. The network traffic generated by the application caused a high number of connections to the Internet being established and terminated. This resulted in a similarly high number of signalling messages in the mobile network, causing overload and a loss of service for 2.5 million users over 4 hours. While the network operator suffers the largest impact of this signalling overload, it does not control the application. Thus, the network operator can not change the application traffic characteristics to generate less network signalling traffic. The stakeholders who could prevent, or at least reduce, such behaviour, i.e. application developers or hardware vendors, have no direct benefit from modifying their products in such a way. This results in a clash of interests which negatively impacts the network performance for all participants. The goal of this monograph is to provide an overview over the complex structures of stakeholder relationships in today's Internet applications in mobile networks. To this end, we study different scenarios where such interests clash and suggest methods where tradeoffs can be optimised for all participants. If such an optimisation is not possible or attempts at it might lead to adverse effects, we discuss the reasons.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Hartmann2015, author = {Hartmann, Matthias}, title = {Optimization and Design of Network Architectures for Future Internet Routing}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-11416}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-114165}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2015}, abstract = {At the center of the Internet's protocol stack stands the Internet Protocol (IP) as a common denominator that enables all communication. To make routing efficient, resilient, and scalable, several aspects must be considered. Care must be taken that traffic is well balanced to make efficient use of the existing network resources, both in failure free operation and in failure scenarios. Finding the optimal routing in a network is an NP-complete problem. Therefore, routing optimization is usually performed using heuristics. This dissertation shows that a routing optimized with one objective function is often not good when looking at other objective functions. It can even be worse than unoptimized routing with respect to that objective function. After looking at failure-free routing and traffic distribution in different failure scenarios, the analysis is extended to include the loop-free alternate (LFA) IP fast reroute mechanism. Different application scenarios of LFAs are examined and a special focus is set on the fact that LFAs usually cannot protect all traffic in a network even against single link failures. Thus, the routing optimization for LFAs is targeted on both link utilization and failure coverage. Finally, the pre-congestion notification mechanism PCN for network admission control and overload protection is analyzed and optimized. Different design options for implementing the protocol are compared, before algorithms are developed for the calculation and optimization of protocol parameters and PCN-based routing. The second part of the thesis tackles a routing problem that can only be resolved on a global scale. The scalability of the Internet is at risk since a major and intensifying growth of the interdomain routing tables has been observed. Several protocols and architectures are analyzed that can be used to make interdomain routing more scalable. The most promising approach is the locator/identifier (Loc/ID) split architecture which separates routing from host identification. This way, changes in connectivity, mobility of end hosts, or traffic-engineering activities are hidden from the routing in the core of the Internet and the routing tables can be kept much smaller. All of the currently proposed Loc/ID split approaches have their downsides. In particular, the fact that most architectures use the ID for routing outside the Internet's core is a poor design, which inhibits many of the possible features of a new routing architecture. To better understand the problems and to provide a solution for a scalable routing design that implements a true Loc/ID split, the new GLI-Split protocol is developed in this thesis, which provides separation of global and local routing and uses an ID that is independent from any routing decisions. Besides GLI-Split, several other new routing architectures implementing Loc/ID split have been proposed for the Internet. Most of them assume that a mapping system is queried for EID-to-RLOC mappings by an intermediate node at the border of an edge network. When the mapping system is queried by an intermediate node, packets are already on their way towards their destination, and therefore, the mapping system must be fast, scalable, secure, resilient, and should be able to relay packets without locators to nodes that can forward them to the correct destination. The dissertation develops a classification for all proposed mapping system architectures and shows their similarities and differences. Finally, the fast two-level mapping system FIRMS is developed. It includes security and resilience features as well as a relay service for initial packets of a flow when intermediate nodes encounter a cache miss for the EID-to-RLOC mapping.}, subject = {Netzwerk}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Wamser2015, author = {Wamser, Florian}, title = {Performance Assessment of Resource Management Strategies for Cellular and Wireless Mesh Networks}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-11151}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-111517}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The rapid growth in the field of communication networks has been truly amazing in the last decades. We are currently experiencing a continuation thereof with an increase in traffic and the emergence of new fields of application. In particular, the latter is interesting since due to advances in the networks and new devices, such as smartphones, tablet PCs, and all kinds of Internet-connected devices, new additional applications arise from different areas. What applies for all these services is that they come from very different directions and belong to different user groups. This results in a very heterogeneous application mix with different requirements and needs on the access networks. The applications within these networks typically use the network technology as a matter of course, and expect that it works in all situations and for all sorts of purposes without any further intervention. Mobile TV, for example, assumes that the cellular networks support the streaming of video data. Likewise, mobile-connected electricity meters rely on the timely transmission of accounting data for electricity billing. From the perspective of the communication networks, this requires not only the technical realization for the individual case, but a broad consideration of all circumstances and all requirements of special devices and applications of the users. Such a comprehensive consideration of all eventualities can only be achieved by a dynamic, customized, and intelligent management of the transmission resources. This management requires to exploit the theoretical capacity as much as possible while also taking system and network architecture as well as user and application demands into account. Hence, for a high level of customer satisfaction, all requirements of the customers and the applications need to be considered, which requires a multi-faceted resource management. The prerequisite for supporting all devices and applications is consequently a holistic resource management at different levels. At the physical level, the technical possibilities provided by different access technologies, e.g., more transmission antennas, modulation and coding of data, possible cooperation between network elements, etc., need to be exploited on the one hand. On the other hand, interference and changing network conditions have to be counteracted at physical level. On the application and user level, the focus should be on the customer demands due to the currently increasing amount of different devices and diverse applications (medical, hobby, entertainment, business, civil protection, etc.). The intention of this thesis is the development, investigation, and evaluation of a holistic resource management with respect to new application use cases and requirements for the networks. Therefore, different communication layers are investigated and corresponding approaches are developed using simulative methods as well as practical emulation in testbeds. The new approaches are designed with respect to different complexity and implementation levels in order to cover the design space of resource management in a systematic way. Since the approaches cannot be evaluated generally for all types of access networks, network-specific use cases and evaluations are finally carried out in addition to the conceptual design and the modeling of the scenario. The first part is concerned with management of resources at physical layer. We study distributed resource allocation approaches under different settings. Due to the ambiguous performance objectives, a high spectrum reuse is conducted in current cellular networks. This results in possible interference between cells that transmit on the same frequencies. The focus is on the identification of approaches that are able to mitigate such interference. Due to the heterogeneity of the applications in the networks, increasingly different application-specific requirements are experienced by the networks. Consequently, the focus is shifted in the second part from optimization of network parameters to consideration and integration of the application and user needs by adjusting network parameters. Therefore, application-aware resource management is introduced to enable efficient and customized access networks. As indicated before, approaches cannot be evaluated generally for all types of access networks. Consequently, the third contribution is the definition and realization of the application-aware paradigm in different access networks. First, we address multi-hop wireless mesh networks. Finally, we focus with the fourth contribution on cellular networks. Application-aware resource management is applied here to the air interface between user device and the base station. Especially in cellular networks, the intensive cost-driven competition among the different operators facilitates the usage of such a resource management to provide cost-efficient and customized networks with respect to the running applications.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Hock2014, author = {Hock, David Rog{\´e}r}, title = {Analysis and Optimization of Resilient Routing in Core Communication Networks}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-10168}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-101681}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, pages = {175}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Routing is one of the most important issues in any communication network. It defines on which path packets are transmitted from the source of a connection to the destination. It allows to control the distribution of flows between different locations in the network and thereby is a means to influence the load distribution or to reach certain constraints imposed by particular applications. As failures in communication networks appear regularly and cannot be completely avoided, routing is required to be resilient against such outages, i.e., routing still has to be able to forward packets on backup paths even if primary paths are not working any more. Throughout the years, various routing technologies have been introduced that are very different in their control structure, in their way of working, and in their ability to handle certain failure cases. Each of the different routing approaches opens up their own specific questions regarding configuration, optimization, and inclusion of resilience issues. This monograph investigates, with the example of three particular routing technologies, some concrete issues regarding the analysis and optimization of resilience. It thereby contributes to a better general, technology-independent understanding of these approaches and of their diverse potential for the use in future network architectures. The first considered routing type, is decentralized intra-domain routing based on administrative IP link costs and the shortest path principle. Typical examples are common today's intra-domain routing protocols OSPF and IS-IS. This type of routing includes automatic restoration abilities in case of failures what makes it in general very robust even in the case of severe network outages including several failed components. Furthermore, special IP-Fast Reroute mechanisms allow for a faster reaction on outages. For routing based on link costs, traffic engineering, e.g. the optimization of the maximum relative link load in the network, can be done indirectly by changing the administrative link costs to adequate values. The second considered routing type, MPLS-based routing, is based on the a priori configuration of primary and backup paths, so-called Label Switched Paths. The routing layout of MPLS paths offers more freedom compared to IP-based routing as it is not restricted by any shortest path constraints but any paths can be setup. However, this in general involves a higher configuration effort. Finally, in the third considered routing type, typically centralized routing using a Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture, simple switches only forward packets according to routing decisions made by centralized controller units. SDN-based routing layouts offer the same freedom as for explicit paths configured using MPLS. In case of a failure, new rules can be setup by the controllers to continue the routing in the reduced topology. However, new resilience issues arise caused by the centralized architecture. If controllers are not reachable anymore, the forwarding rules in the single nodes cannot be adapted anymore. This might render a rerouting in case of connection problems in severe failure scenarios infeasible.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Jarschel2014, author = {Jarschel, Michael}, title = {An Assessment of Applications and Performance Analysis of Software Defined Networking}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-10079}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-100795}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2014}, abstract = {With the introduction of OpenFlow by the Stanford University in 2008, a process began in the area of network research, which questions the predominant approach of fully distributed network control. OpenFlow is a communication protocol that allows the externalization of the network control plane from the network devices, such as a router, and to realize it as a logically-centralized entity in software. For this concept, the term "Software Defined Networking" (SDN) was coined during scientific discourse. For the network operators, this concept has several advantages. The two most important can be summarized under the points cost savings and flexibility. Firstly, it is possible through the uniform interface for network hardware ("Southbound API"), as implemented by OpenFlow, to combine devices and software from different manufacturers, which increases the innovation and price pressure on them. Secondly, the realization of the network control plane as a freely programmable software with open interfaces ("Northbound API") provides the opportunity to adapt it to the individual circumstances of the operator's network and to exchange information with the applications it serves. This allows the network to be more flexible and to react more quickly to changing circumstances as well as transport the traffic more effectively and tailored to the user's "Quality of Experience" (QoE). The approach of a separate network control layer for packet-based networks is not new and has already been proposed several times in the past. Therefore, the SDN approach has raised many questions about its feasibility in terms of efficiency and applicability. These questions are caused to some extent by the fact that there is no generally accepted definition of the SDN concept to date. It is therefore a part of this thesis to derive such a definition. In addition, several of the open issues are investigated. This Investigations follow the three aspects: Performance Evaluation of Software Defined Networking, applications on the SDN control layer, and the usability of SDN Northbound-API for creation application-awareness in network operation. Performance Evaluation of Software Defined Networking: The question of the efficiency of an SDN-based system was from the beginning one of the most important. In this thesis, experimental measurements of the performance of OpenFlow-enabled switch hardware and control software were conducted for the purpose of answering this question. The results of these measurements were used as input parameters for establishing an analytical model of the reactive SDN approach. Through the model it could be determined that the performance of the software control layer, often called "Controller", is crucial for the overall performance of the system, but that the approach is generally viable. Based on this finding a software for analyzing the performance of SDN controllers was developed. This software allows the emulation of the forwarding layer of an SDN network towards the control software and can thus determine its performance in different situations and configurations. The measurements with this software showed that there are quite significant differences in the behavior of different control software implementations. Among other things it has been shown that some show different characteristics for various switches, in particular in terms of message processing speed. Under certain circumstances this can lead to network failures. Applications on the SDN control layer: The core piece of software defined networking are the intelligent network applications that operate on the control layer. However, their development is still in its infancy and little is known about the technical possibilities and their limitations. Therefore, the relationship between an SDN-based and classical implementation of a network function is investigated in this thesis. This function is the monitoring of network links and the traffic they carry. A typical approach for this task has been built based on Wiretapping and specialized measurement hardware and compared with an implementation based on OpenFlow switches and a special SDN control application. The results of the comparison show that the SDN version can compete in terms of measurement accuracy for bandwidth and delay estimation with the traditional measurement set-up. However, a compromise has to be found for measurements below the millisecond range. Another question regarding the SDN control applications is whether and how well they can solve existing problems in networks. Two programs have been developed based on SDN in this thesis to solve two typical network issues. Firstly, the tool "IPOM", which enables considerably more flexibility in the study of effects of network structures for a researcher, who is confined to a fixed physical test network topology. The second software provides an interface between the Cloud Orchestration Software "OpenNebula" and an OpenFlow controller. The purpose of this software was to investigate experimentally whether a pre-notification of the network of an impending relocation of a virtual service in a data center is sufficient to ensure the continuous operation of that service. This was demonstrated on the example of a video service. Usability of the SDN Northbound API for creating application-awareness in network operation: Currently, the fact that the network and the applications that run on it are developed and operated separately leads to problems in network operation. SDN offers with the Northbound-API an open interface that enables the exchange between information of both worlds during operation. One aim of this thesis was to investigate whether this interface can be exploited so that the QoE experienced by the user can be maintained on high level. For this purpose, the QoE influence factors were determined on a challenging application by means of a subjective survey study. The application is cloud gaming, in which the calculation of video game environments takes place in the cloud and is transported via video over the network to the user. It was shown that apart from the most important factor influencing QoS, i.e., packet loss on the downlink, also the type of game type and its speed play a role. This demonstrates that in addition to QoS the application state is important and should be communicated to the network. Since an implementation of such a state conscious SDN for the example of Cloud Gaming was not possible due to its proprietary implementation, in this thesis the application "YouTube video streaming" was chosen as an alternative. For this application, status information is retrievable via the "Yomo" tool and can be used for network control. It was shown that an SDN-based implementation of an application-aware network has distinct advantages over traditional network management methods and the user quality can be obtained in spite of disturbances.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Klein2014, author = {Klein, Dominik Werner}, title = {Design and Evaluation of Components for Future Internet Architectures}, issn = {1432-8801}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-9313}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-93134}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Die derzeitige Internetarchitektur wurde nicht in einem geplanten Prozess konzipiert und entwickelt, sondern hat vielmehr eine evolutionsartige Entwicklung hinter sich. Ausl{\"o}ser f{\"u}r die jeweiligen Evolutionsschritte waren dabei meist aufstrebende Anwendungen, welche neue Anforderungen an die zugrundeliegende Netzarchitektur gestellt haben. Um diese Anforderungen zu erf{\"u}llen, wurden h{\"a}ufig neuartige Dienste oder Protokolle spezifiziert und in die bestehende Architektur integriert. Dieser Prozess ist jedoch meist mit hohem Aufwand verbunden und daher sehr tr{\"a}ge, was die Entwicklung und Verbreitung innovativer Dienste beeintr{\"a}chtigt. Derzeitig diskutierte Konzepte wie Software-Defined Networking (SDN) oder Netzvirtualisierung (NV) werden als eine M{\"o}glichkeit angesehen, die Altlasten der bestehenden Internetarchitektur zu l{\"o}sen. Beiden Konzepten gemein ist die Idee, logische Netze {\"u}ber dem physikalischen Substrat zu betreiben. Diese logischen Netze sind hochdynamisch und k{\"o}nnen so flexibel an die Anforderungen der jeweiligen Anwendungen angepasst werden. Insbesondere erlaubt das Konzept der Virtualisierung intelligentere Netzknoten, was innovative neue Anwendungsf{\"a}lle erm{\"o}glicht. Ein h{\"a}ufig in diesem Zusammenhang diskutierter Anwendungsfall ist die Mobilit{\"a}t sowohl von Endger{\"a}ten als auch von Diensten an sich. Die Mobilit{\"a}t der Dienste wird hierbei ausgenutzt, um die Zugriffsverz{\"o}gerung oder die belegten Ressourcen im Netz zu reduzieren, indem die Dienste zum Beispiel in f{\"u}r den Nutzer geographisch nahe Datenzentren migriert werden. Neben den reinen Mechanismen bez{\"u}glich Dienst- und Endger{\"a}temobilit{\"a}t sind in diesem Zusammenhang auch geeignete {\"U}berwachungsl{\"o}sungen relevant, welche die vom Nutzer wahrgenommene Dienstg{\"u}te bewerten k{\"o}nnen. Diese L{\"o}sungen liefern wichtige Entscheidungshilfen f{\"u}r die Migration oder {\"u}berwachen m{\"o}gliche Effekte der Migration auf die erfahrene Dienstg{\"u}te beim Nutzer. Im Falle von Video Streaming erm{\"o}glicht ein solcher Anwendungsfall die flexible Anpassung der Streaming Topologie f{\"u}r mobile Nutzer, um so die Videoqualit{\"a}t unabh{\"a}ngig vom Zugangsnetz aufrechterhalten zu k{\"o}nnen. Im Rahmen dieser Doktorarbeit wird der beschriebene Anwendungsfall am Beispiel einer Video Streaming Anwendung n{\"a}her analysiert und auftretende Herausforderungen werden diskutiert. Des Weiteren werden L{\"o}sungsans{\"a}tze vorgestellt und bez{\"u}glich ihrer Effizienz ausgewertet. Im Detail besch{\"a}ftigt sich die Arbeit mit der Leistungsanalyse von Mechanismen f{\"u}r die Dienstmobilit{\"a}t und entwickelt eine Architektur zur Optimierung der Dienstmobilit{\"a}t. Im Bereich Endger{\"a}temobilit{\"a}t werden Verbesserungen entwickelt, welche die Latenz zwischen Endger{\"a}t und Dienst reduzieren oder die Konnektivit{\"a}t unabh{\"a}ngig vom Zugangsnetz gew{\"a}hrleisten. Im letzten Teilbereich wird eine L{\"o}sung zur {\"U}berwachung der Videoqualit{\"a}t im Netz entwickelt und bez{\"u}glich ihrer Genauigkeit analysiert.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Lehrieder2013, author = {Lehrieder, Frank}, title = {Performance Evaluation and Optimization of Content Distribution using Overlay Networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-6420}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-76018}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2013}, abstract = {The work presents a performance evaluation and optimization of so-called overlay networks for content distribution in the Internet. Chapter 1 describes the importance which have such networks in today's Internet, for example, for the transmission of video content. The focus of this work is on overlay networks based on the peer-to-peer principle. These are characterized by the fact that users who download content, also contribute to the distribution process by sharing parts of the data to other users. This enables efficient content distribution because each user not only consumes resources in the system, but also provides its own resources. Chapter 2 of the monograph contains a detailed description of the functionality of today's most popular overlay network BitTorrent. It explains the various components and their interaction. This is followed by an illustration of why such overlay networks for Internet service providers (ISPs) are problematic. The reason lies in the large amount of inter-ISP traffic that is produced by these overlay networks. Since this inter-ISP traffic leads to high costs for ISPs, they try to reduce it by improved mechanisms for overlay networks. One optimization approach is the use of topology awareness within the overlay networks. It provides users of the overlay networks with information about the underlying physical network topology. This allows them to avoid inter-ISP traffic by exchanging data preferrentially with other users that are connected to the same ISP. Another approach to save inter-ISP traffic is caching. In this case the ISP provides additional computers in its network, called caches, which store copies of popular content. The users of this ISP can then obtain such content from the cache. This prevents that the content must be retrieved from locations outside of the ISP's network, and saves costly inter-ISP traffic in this way. In the third chapter of the thesis, the results of a comprehensive measurement study of overlay networks, which can be found in today's Internet, are presented. After a short description of the measurement methodology, the results of the measurements are described. These results contain data on a variety of characteristics of current P2P overlay networks in the Internet. These include the popularity of content, i.e., how many users are interested in specific content, the evolution of the popularity and the size of the files. The distribution of users within the Internet is investigated in detail. Special attention is given to the number of users that exchange a particular file within the same ISP. On the basis of these measurement results, an estimation of the traffic savings that can achieved by topology awareness is derived. This new estimation is of scientific and practical importance, since it is not limited to individual ISPs and files, but considers the whole Internet and the total amount of data exchanged in overlay networks. Finally, the characteristics of regional content are considered, in which the popularity is limited to certain parts of the Internet. This is for example the case of videos in German, Italian or French language. Chapter 4 of the thesis is devoted to the optimization of overlay networks for content distribution through caching. It presents a deterministic flow model that describes the influence of caches. On the basis of this model, it derives an estimate of the inter-ISP traffic that is generated by an overlay network, and which part can be saved by caches. The results show that the influence of the cache depends on the structure of the overlay networks, and that caches can also lead to an increase in inter-ISP traffic under certain circumstances. The described model is thus an important tool for ISPs to decide for which overlay networks caches are useful and to dimension them. Chapter 5 summarizes the content of the work and emphasizes the importance of the findings. In addition, it explains how the findings can be applied to the optimization of future overlay networks. Special attention is given to the growing importance of video-on-demand and real-time video transmissions.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Zinner2012, author = {Zinner, Thomas}, title = {Performance Modeling of QoE-Aware Multipath Video Transmission in the Future Internet}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-6106}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-72324}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2012}, abstract = {Internet applications are becoming more and more flexible to support diverge user demands and network conditions. This is reflected by technical concepts, which provide new adaptation mechanisms to allow fine grained adjustment of the application quality and the corresponding bandwidth requirements. For the case of video streaming, the scalable video codec H.264/SVC allows the flexible adaptation of frame rate, video resolution and image quality with respect to the available network resources. In order to guarantee a good user-perceived quality (Quality of Experience, QoE) it is necessary to adjust and optimize the video quality accurately. But not only have the applications of the current Internet changed. Within network and transport, new technologies evolved during the last years providing a more flexible and efficient usage of data transport and network resources. One of the most promising technologies is Network Virtualization (NV) which is seen as an enabler to overcome the ossification of the Internet stack. It provides means to simultaneously operate multiple logical networks which allow for example application-specific addressing, naming and routing, or their individual resource management. New transport mechanisms like multipath transmission on the network and transport layer aim at an efficient usage of available transport resources. However, the simultaneous transmission of data via heterogeneous transport paths and communication technologies inevitably introduces packet reordering. Additional mechanisms and buffers are required to restore the correct packet order and thus to prevent a disturbance of the data transport. A proper buffer dimensioning as well as the classification of the impact of varying path characteristics like bandwidth and delay require appropriate evaluation methods. Additionally, for a path selection mechanism real time evaluation mechanisms are needed. A better application-network interaction and the corresponding exchange of information enable an efficient adaptation of the application to the network conditions and vice versa. This PhD thesis analyzes a video streaming architecture utilizing multipath transmission and scalable video coding and develops the following optimization possibilities and results: Analysis and dimensioning methods for multipath transmission, quantification of the adaptation possibilities to the current network conditions with respect to the QoE for H.264/SVC, and evaluation and optimization of a future video streaming architecture, which allows a better interaction of application and network.}, subject = {Video{\"u}bertragung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schlosser2011, author = {Schlosser, Daniel}, title = {Quality of Experience Management in Virtual Future Networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-5719}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-69986}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Aktuell beobachten wir eine drastische Vervielf{\"a}ltigung der Dienste und Anwendungen, die das Internet f{\"u}r den Datentransport nutzen. Dabei unterscheiden sich die Anforderungen dieser Dienste an das Netzwerk deutlich. Das Netzwerkmanagement wird durch diese Diversit{\"a}t der nutzenden Dienste aber deutlich erschwert, da es einem Datentransportdienstleister kaum m{\"o}glich ist, die unterschiedlichen Verbindungen zu unterscheiden, ohne den Inhalt der transportierten Daten zu analysieren. Netzwerkvirtualisierung ist eine vielversprechende L{\"o}sung f{\"u}r dieses Problem, da sie es erm{\"o}glicht f{\"u}r verschiedene Dienste unterschiedliche virtuelle Netze auf dem gleichen physikalischen Substrat zu betreiben. Diese Diensttrennung erm{\"o}glicht es, jedes einzelne Netz anwendungsspezifisch zu steuern. Ziel einer solchen Netzsteuerung ist es, sowohl die vom Nutzer erfahrene Dienstg{\"u}te als auch die Kosteneffizienz des Datentransports zu optimieren. Dar{\"u}ber hinaus wird es mit Netzwerkvirtualisierung m{\"o}glich das physikalische Netz so weit zu abstrahieren, dass die aktuell fest verzahnten Rollen von Netzwerkbesitzer und Netzwerkbetreiber entkoppelt werden k{\"o}nnen. Dar{\"u}ber hinaus stellt Netzwerkvirtualisierung sicher, dass unterschiedliche Datennetze, die gleichzeitig auf dem gleichen physikalischen Netz betrieben werden, sich gegenseitig weder beeinflussen noch st{\"o}ren k{\"o}nnen. Diese Arbeit  besch{\"a}ftigt sich mit ausgew{\"a}hlten Aspekten dieses Themenkomplexes und fokussiert sich darauf, ein virtuelles Netzwerk mit bestm{\"o}glicher Dienstqualit{\"a}t f{\"u}r den Nutzer zu betreiben und zu steuern. Daf{\"u}r wird ein Top-down-Ansatz gew{\"a}hlt, der von den Anwendungsf{\"a}llen, einer m{\"o}glichen Netzwerkvirtualisierungs-Architektur und aktuellen M{\"o}glichkeiten der Hardwarevirtualisierung ausgeht. Im Weiteren fokussiert sich die Arbeit dann in Richtung Bestimmung und Optimierung der vom Nutzer erfahrenen Dienstqualit{\"a}t (QoE) auf Applikationsschicht und diskutiert M{\"o}glichkeiten zur Messung und {\"U}berwachung von wesentlichen Netzparametern in virtualisierten Netzen.}, subject = {Netzwerkmanagement}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Duelli2012, author = {Duelli, Michael}, title = {Heuristic Design and Provisioning of Resilient Multi-Layer Networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-5600}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-69433}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2012}, abstract = {To jointly provide different services/technologies, like IP and Ethernet or IP and SDH/SONET, in a single network, equipment of multiple technologies needs to be deployed to the sites/Points of Presence (PoP) and interconnected with each other. Therein, a technology may provide transport functionality to other technologies and increase the number of available resources by using multiplexing techniques. By providing its own switching functionality, each technology creates connections in a logical layer which leads to the notion of multi-layer networks. The design of such networks comprises the deployment and interconnection of components to suit to given traffic demands. To prevent traffic loss due to failures of networking equipment, protection mechanisms need to be established. In multi-layer networks, protection usually can be applied in any of the considered layers. In turn, the hierarchical structure of multi-layer networks also bears shared risk groups (SRG). To achieve a cost-optimal resilient network, an appropriate combination of multiplexing techniques, technologies, and their interconnections needs to be found. Thus, network design is a combinatorial problem with a large parameter and solution space. After the design stage, the resources of a multi-layer network can be provided to traffic demands. Especially, dynamic capacity provisioning requires interaction of sites and layers, as well as accurate retrieval of constraint information. In recent years, generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) and path computation elements (PCE) have emerged as possible approaches for these challenges. Like the design, the provisioning of multi-layer networks comprises a variety of optimization parameters, like blocking probability, resilience, and energy efficiency. In this work, we introduce several efficient heuristics to approach the considered optimization problems. We perform capital expenditure (CAPEX)-aware design of multi-layer networks from scratch, based on IST NOBEL phase 2 project's cost and equipment data. We comprise traffic and resilience requirements in different and multiple layers as well as different network architectures. On top of the designed networks, we consider the dynamic provisioning of multi-layer traffic based on the GMPLS and PCE architecture. We evaluate different PCE deployments, information retrieval strategies, and re-optimization. Finally, we show how information about provisioning utilization can be used to provide a feedback for network design.}, subject = {Mehrschichtsystem}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Staehle2011, author = {Staehle, Barbara}, title = {Modeling and Optimization Methods for Wireless Sensor and Mesh Networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-4967}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-64884}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Im Internet der Zukunft werden Menschen nicht nur mit Menschen, sondern auch mit „Dingen", und sogar „Dinge" mit „Dingen" kommunizieren. Zus{\"a}tzlich wird das Bed{\"u}rfnis steigen, immer und {\"u}berall Zugang zum Internet zu haben. Folglich gewinnen drahtlose Sensornetze (WSNs) und drahtlose Mesh-Netze (WMNs) an Bedeutung, da sie Daten {\"u}ber die Umwelt ins Internet liefern, beziehungsweise einfache Internet-Zugangsm{\"o}glichkeiten schaffen. In den vier Teilen dieser Arbeit werden unterschiedliche Modellierungs- und Optimierungsmethoden f{\"u}r WSNs und WMNs vorgestellt. Der Energieverbrauch ist die wichtigste Metrik, wenn es darum geht die Kommunikation in einem WSN zu optimieren. Da sich in der Literatur sehr viele unterschiedliche Energiemodelle finden, untersucht der erste Teil der Arbeit welchen Einfluss unterschiedliche Energiemodelle auf die Optimierung von WSNs haben. Aufbauend auf diesen {\"U}berlegungen besch{\"a}ftigt sich der zweite Teil der Arbeit mit drei Problemen, die {\"u}berwunden werden m{\"u}ssen um eine standardisierte energieeffiziente Kommunikations-L{\"o}sung f{\"u}r WSNs basierend auf IEEE 802.15.4 und ZigBee zu realisieren. F{\"u}r WMNs sind beide Probleme von geringem Interesse, die Leistung des Netzes jedoch umso mehr. Der dritte Teil der Arbeit f{\"u}hrt daher Algorithmen f{\"u}r die Berechnung des Max-Min fairen (MMF) Netzwerk-Durchsatzes in WMNs mit mehreren Linkraten und Internet-Gateways ein. Der letzte Teil der Arbeit untersucht die Auswirkungen des LRA-Konzeptes. Dessen grundlegende Idee ist die folgende. Falls f{\"u}r einen Link eine niedrigere Datenrate als theoretisch m{\"o}glich verwendet wird, sinkt zwar der Link-Durchsatz, jedoch ist unter Umst{\"a}nden eine gr{\"o}ßere Anzahl von gleichzeitigen {\"U}bertragungen m{\"o}glich und der Gesamt-Durchsatz des Netzes kann sich erh{\"o}hen. Mithilfe einer analytischen LRA Formulierung und einer systematischen Studie kann gezeigt werden, dass eine netzwerkweite Zuordnung robusterer Datenraten als n{\"o}tig zu einer Erh{\"o}hung des MMF Netzwerk-Durchsatzes f{\"u}hrt. Desweitern kann gezeigt werden, dass sich LRA positiv auf die Leistungsf{\"a}higkeit eines IEEE 802.11 WMNs auswirkt und f{\"u}r die Optimierung des Netzes genutzt werden kann.}, subject = {Drahtloses Sensorsystem}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Henjes2010, author = {Henjes, Robert}, title = {Performance Evaluation of Publish/Subscribe Middleware Architectures}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-4536}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-53388}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2010}, abstract = {While developing modern applications, it is necessary to ensure an efficient and performant communication between different applications. In current environments, a middleware software is used, which supports the publish/subscribe communication pattern. Using this communication pattern, a publisher sends information encapsulated in messages to the middleware. A subscriber registers its interests at the middleware. The monograph describes three different steps to determine the performance of such a system. In a first step, the message throughput performance of a publish/subscribe in different scenarios is measured using a Java Message Service (JMS) based implementation. In the second step the maximum achievable message throughput is described by adapted models depending on the filter complexity and the replication grade. Using the model, the performance characteristics of a specific system in a given scenario can be determined. These numbers are used for the queuing model described in the third part of the thesis, which supports the dimensioning of a system in realistic scenarios. Additionally, we introduce a method to approximate an M/G/1 system numerically in an efficient way, which can be used for real time analysis to predict the expected performance in a certain scenario. Finally, the analytical model is used to investigate different possibilities to ensure the scalability of the maximum achievable message throughput of the overall system.}, subject = {Middleware}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Klein2010, author = {Klein, Alexander}, title = {Performance Issues of MAC and Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-4465}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-52870}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2010}, abstract = {The focus of this work lies on the communication issues of Medium Access Control (MAC) and routing protocols in the context of WSNs. The communication challenges in these networks mainly result from high node density, low bandwidth, low energy constraints and the hardware limitations in terms of memory, computational power and sensing capabilities of low-power transceivers. For this reason, the structure of WSNs is always kept as simple as possible to minimize the impact of communication issues. Thus, the majority of WSNs apply a simple one hop star topology since multi-hop communication has high demands on the routing protocol since it increases the bandwidth requirements of the network. Moreover, medium access becomes a challenging problem due to the fact that low-power transceivers are very limited in their sensing capabilities. The first contribution is represented by the Backoff Preamble-based MAC Protocol with Sequential Contention Resolution (BPS-MAC) which is designed to overcome the limitations of low-power transceivers. Two communication issues, namely the Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) delay and the turnaround time, are directly addressed by the protocol. The CCA delay represents the period of time which is required by the transceiver to detect a busy radio channel while the turnaround time specifies the period of time which is required to switch between receive and transmit mode. Standard Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) protocols do not achieve high performance in terms of packet loss if the traffic is highly correlated due to the fact that the transceiver is not able to sense the medium during the switching phase. Therefore, a node may start to transmit data while another node is already transmitting since it has sensed an idle medium right before it started to switch its transceiver from receive to transmit mode. The BPS-MAC protocol uses a new sequential preamble-based medium access strategy which can be adapted to the hardware capabilities of the transceivers. The protocol achieves a very low packet loss rate even in wireless networks with high node density and event-driven traffic without the need of synchronization. This makes the protocol attractive to applications such as structural health monitoring, where event suppression is not an option. Moreover, acknowledgments or complex retransmission strategies become almost unnecessary since the sequential preamble-based contention resolution mechanism minimizes the collision probability. However, packets can still be lost as a consequence of interference or other issues which affect signal propagation. The second contribution consists of a new routing protocol which is able to quickly detect topology changes without generating a large amount of overhead. The key characteristics of the Statistic-Based Routing (SBR) protocol are high end-to-end reliability (in fixed and mobile networks), load balancing capabilities, a smooth continuous routing metric, quick adaptation to changing network conditions, low processing and memory requirements, low overhead, support of unidirectional links and simplicity. The protocol can establish routes in a hybrid or a proactive mode and uses an adaptive continuous routing metric which makes it very flexible in terms of scalability while maintaining stable routes. The hybrid mode is optimized for low-power WSNs since routes are only established on demand. The difference of the hybrid mode to reactive routing strategies is that routing messages are periodically transmitted to maintain already established routes. However, the protocol stops the transmission of routing messages if no data packets are transmitted for a certain time period in order to minimize the routing overhead and the energy consumption. The proactive mode is designed for high data rate networks which have less energy constraints. In this mode, the protocol periodically transmits routing messages to establish routes in a proactive way even in the absence of data traffic. Thus, nodes in the network can immediately transmit data since the route to the destination is already established in advance. In addition, a new delay-based routing message forwarding strategy is introduced. The forwarding strategy is part of SBR but can also be applied to many routing protocols in order to modify the established topology. The strategy can be used, e.g. in mobile networks, to decrease the packet loss by deferring routing messages with respect to the neighbor change rate. Thus, nodes with a stable neighborhood forward messages faster than nodes within a fast changing neighborhood. As a result, routes are established through nodes with correlated movement which results in fewer topology changes due to higher link durations.}, subject = {Routing}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Oechsner2010, author = {Oechsner, Simon}, title = {Performance Challenges and Optimization Potential of Peer-to-Peer Overlay Technologies}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-4159}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-50015}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2010}, abstract = {In today's Internet, building overlay structures to provide a service is becoming more and more common. This approach allows for the utilization of client resources, thus being more scalable than a client-server model in this respect. However, in these architectures the quality of the provided service depends on the clients and is therefore more complex to manage. Resource utilization, both at the clients themselves and in the underlying network, determine the efficiency of the overlay application. Here, a trade-off exists between the resource providers and the end users that can be tuned via overlay mechanisms. Thus, resource management and traffic management is always quality-of-service management as well. In this monograph, the three currently significant and most widely used overlay types in the Internet are considered. These overlays are implemented in popular applications which only recently have gained importance. Thus, these overlay networks still face real-world technical challenges which are of high practical relevance. We identify the specific issues for each of the considered overlays, and show how their optimization affects the trade-offs between resource efficiency and service quality. Thus, we supply new insights and system knowledge that is not provided by previous work.}, subject = {Overlay-Netz}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Pries2010, author = {Pries, Jan Rastin}, title = {Performance Optimization of Wireless Infrastructure and Mesh Networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-3723}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-46097}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2010}, abstract = {Future broadband wireless networks should be able to support not only best effort traffic but also real-time traffic with strict Quality of Service (QoS) constraints. In addition, their available resources are scare and limit the number of users. To facilitate QoS guarantees and increase the maximum number of concurrent users, wireless networks require careful planning and optimization. In this monograph, we studied three aspects of performance optimization in wireless networks: resource optimization in WLAN infrastructure networks, quality of experience control in wireless mesh networks, and planning and optimization of wireless mesh networks. An adaptive resource management system is required to effectively utilize the limited resources on the air interface and to guarantee QoS for real-time applications. Thereby, both WLAN infrastructure and WLAN mesh networks have to be considered. An a-priori setting of the access parameters is not meaningful due to the contention-based medium access and the high dynamics of the system. Thus, a management system is required which dynamically adjusts the channel access parameters based on the network load. While this is sufficient for wireless infrastructure networks, interferences on neighboring paths and self-interferences have to be considered for wireless mesh networks. In addition, a careful channel allocation and route assignment is needed. Due to the large parameter space, standard optimization techniques fail for optimizing large wireless mesh networks. In this monograph, we reveal that biology-inspired optimization techniques, namely genetic algorithms, are well-suitable for the planning and optimization of wireless mesh networks. Although genetic algorithms generally do not always find the optimal solution, we show that with a good parameter set for the genetic algorithm, the overall throughput of the wireless mesh network can be significantly improved while still sharing the resources fairly among the users.}, subject = {IEEE 802.11}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Hossfeld2009, author = {Hoßfeld, Tobias}, title = {Performance Evaluation of Future Internet Applications and Emerging User Behavior}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-3067}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-37570}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2009}, abstract = {In future telecommunication systems, we observe an increasing diversity of access networks. The separation of transport services and applications or services leads to multi-network services, i.e., a future service has to work transparently to the underlying network infrastructure. Multi-network services with edge-based intelligence, like P2P file sharing or the Skype VoIP service, impose new traffic control paradigms on the future Internet. Such services adapt the amount of consumed bandwidth to reach different goals. A selfish behavior tries to keep the QoE of a single user above a certain level. Skype, for instance, repeats voice samples depending on the perceived end-to-end loss. From the viewpoint of a single user, the replication of voice data overcomes the degradation caused by packet loss and enables to maintain a certain QoE. The cost for this achievement is a higher amount of consumed bandwidth. However, if the packet loss is caused by congestion in the network, this additionally required bandwidth even worsens the network situation. Altruistic behavior, on the other side, would reduce the bandwidth consumption in such a way that the pressure on the network is released and thus the overall network performance is improved. In this monograph, we analyzed the impact of the overlay, P2P, and QoE paradigms in future Internet applications and the interactions from the observing user behavior. The shift of intelligence toward the edge is accompanied by a change in the emerging user behavior and traffic profile, as well as a change from multi-service networks to multi-networks services. In addition, edge-based intelligence may lead to a higher dynamics in the network topology, since the applications are often controlled by an overlay network, which can rapidly change in size and structure as new nodes can leave or join the overlay network in an entirely distributed manner. As a result, we found that the performance evaluation of such services provides new challenges, since novel key performance factors have to be first identified, like pollution of P2P systems, and appropriate models of the emerging user behavior are required, e.g. taking into account user impatience. As common denominator of the presented studies in this work, we focus on a user-centric view when evaluating the performance of future Internet applications. For a subscriber of a certain application or service, the perceived quality expressed as QoE will be the major criterion of the user's satisfaction with the network and service providers. We selected three different case studies and characterized the application's performance from the end user's point of view. Those are (1) cooperation in mobile P2P file sharing networks, (2) modeling of online TV recording services, and (3) QoE of edge-based VoIP applications. The user-centric approach facilitates the development of new mechanisms to overcome problems arising from the changing user behavior. An example is the proposed CycPriM cooperation strategy, which copes with selfish user behavior in mobile P2P file sharing system. An adequate mechanism has also been shown to be efficient in a heterogeneous B3G network with mobile users conducting vertical handovers between different wireless access technologies. The consideration of the user behavior and the user perceived quality guides to an appropriate modeling of future Internet applications. In the case of the online TV recording service, this enables the comparison between different technical realizations of the system, e.g. using server clusters or P2P technology, to properly dimension the installed network elements and to assess the costs for service providers. Technologies like P2P help to overcome phenomena like flash crowds and improve scalability compared to server clusters, which may get overloaded in such situations. Nevertheless, P2P technology invokes additional challenges and different user behavior to that seen in traditional client/server systems. Beside the willingness to share files and the churn of users, peers may be malicious and offer fake contents to disturb the data dissemination. Finally, the understanding and the quantification of QoE with respect to QoS degradations permits designing sophisticated edge-based applications. To this end, we identified and formulated the IQX hypothesis as an exponential interdependency between QoE and QoS parameters, which we validated for different examples. The appropriate modeling of the emerging user behavior taking into account the user's perceived quality and its interactions with the overlay and P2P paradigm will finally help to design future Internet applications.}, subject = {Leistungsbewertung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Maeder2008, author = {M{\"a}der, Andreas}, title = {Performance Models for UMTS 3.5G Mobile Wireless Systems}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-2766}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-32525}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2008}, abstract = {Mobile telecommunication systems of the 3.5th generation (3.5G) constitute a first step towards the requirements of an all-IP world. As the denotation suggests, 3.5G systems are not completely new designed from scratch. Instead, they are evolved from existing 3G systems like UMTS or cdma2000. 3.5G systems are primarily designed and optimized for packet-switched best-effort traffic, but they are also intended to increase system capacity by exploiting available radio resources more efficiently. Systems based on cdma2000 are enhanced with 1xEV-DO (EV-DO: evolution, data-optimized). In the UMTS domain, the 3G partnership project (3GPP) specified the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, consisting of High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and its counterpart High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) or Enhanced Uplink. The focus of this monograph is on HSPA systems, although the operation principles of other 3.5G systems are similar. One of the main contributions of our work are performance models which allow a holistic view on the system. The models consider user traffic on flow-level, such that only on significant changes of the system state a recalculation of parameters like bandwidth is necessary. The impact of lower layers is captured by stochastic models. This approach combines accurate modeling and the ability to cope with computational complexity. Adopting this approach to HSDPA, we develop a new physical layer abstraction model that takes radio resources, scheduling discipline, radio propagation and mobile device capabilities into account. Together with models for the calculation of network-wide interference and transmit powers, a discrete-event simulation and an analytical model based on a queuing-theoretical approach are proposed. For the Enhanced Uplink, we develop analytical models considering independent and correlated other-cell interference.}, subject = {Mobilfunk}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Martin2008, author = {Martin, R{\"u}diger}, title = {Resilience, Provisioning, and Control for the Network of the Future}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-2504}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-28497}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2008}, abstract = {The Internet sees an ongoing transformation process from a single best-effort service network into a multi-service network. In addition to traditional applications like e-mail,WWW-traffic, or file transfer, future generation networks (FGNs) will carry services with real-time constraints and stringent availability and reliability requirements like Voice over IP (VoIP), video conferencing, virtual private networks (VPNs) for finance, other real-time business applications, tele-medicine, or tele-robotics. Hence, quality of service (QoS) guarantees and resilience to failures are crucial characteristics of an FGN architecture. At the same time, network operations must be efficient. This necessitates sophisticated mechanisms for the provisioning and the control of future communication infrastructures. In this work we investigate such echanisms for resilient FGNs. There are many aspects of the provisioning and control of resilient FGNs such as traffic matrix estimation, traffic characterization, traffic forecasting, mechanisms for QoS enforcement also during failure cases, resilient routing, or calability concerns for future routing and addressing mechanisms. In this work we focus on three important aspects for which performance analysis can deliver substantial insights: load balancing for multipath Internet routing, fast resilience concepts, and advanced dimensioning techniques for resilient networks. Routing in modern communication networks is often based on multipath structures, e.g., equal-cost multipath routing (ECMP) in IP networks, to facilitate traffic engineering and resiliency. When multipath routing is applied, load balancing algorithms distribute the traffic over available paths towards the destination according to pre-configured distribution values. State-of-the-art load balancing algorithms operate either on the packet or the flow level. Packet level mechanisms achieve highly accurate traffic distributions, but are known to have negative effects on the performance of transport protocols and should not be applied. Flow level mechanisms avoid performance degradations, but at the expense of reduced accuracy. These inaccuracies may have unpredictable effects on link capacity requirements and complicate resource management. Thus, it is important to exactly understand the accuracy and dynamics of load balancing algorithms in order to be able to exercise better network control. Knowing about their weaknesses, it is also important to look for alternatives and to assess their applicability in different networking scenarios. This is the first aspect of this work. Component failures are inevitable during the operation of communication networks and lead to routing disruptions if no special precautions are taken. In case of a failure, the robust shortest-path routing of the Internet reconverges after some time to a state where all nodes are again reachable - provided physical connectivity still exists. But stringent availability and reliability criteria of new services make a fast reaction to failures obligatory for resilient FGNs. This led to the development of fast reroute (FRR) concepts for MPLS and IP routing. The operations of MPLS-FRR have already been standardized. Still, the standards leave some degrees of freedom for the resilient path layout and it is important to understand the tradeoffs between different options for the path layout to efficiently provision resilient FGNs. In contrast, the standardization for IP-FRR is an ongoing process. The applicability and possible combinations of different concepts still are open issues. IP-FRR also facilitates a comprehensive resilience framework for IP routing covering all steps of the failure recovery cycle. These points constitute another aspect of this work. Finally, communication networks are usually over-provisioned, i.e., they have much more capacity installed than actually required during normal operation. This is a precaution for various challenges such as network element failures. An alternative to this capacity overprovisioning (CO) approach is admission control (AC). AC blocks new flows in case of imminent overload due to unanticipated events to protect the QoS for already admitted flows. On the one hand, CO is generally viewed as a simple mechanism, AC as a more complex mechanism that complicates the network control plane and raises interoperability issues. On the other hand, AC appears more cost-efficient than CO. To obtain advanced provisioning methods for resilient FGNs, it is important to find suitable models for irregular events, such as failures and different sources of overload, and to incorporate them into capacity dimensioning methods. This allows for a fair comparison between CO and AC in various situations and yields a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both concepts. Such an advanced capacity dimensioning method for resilient FGNs represents the third aspect of this work.}, subject = {Backbone-Netz}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Binzenhoefer2007, author = {Binzenh{\"o}fer, Andreas}, title = {Performance Analysis of Structured Overlay Networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-2250}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-26291}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2007}, abstract = {Overlay networks establish logical connections between users on top of the physical network. While randomly connected overlay networks provide only a best effort service, a new generation of structured overlay systems based on Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) was proposed by the research community. However, there is still a lack of understanding the performance of such DHTs. Additionally, those architectures are highly distributed and therefore appear as a black box to the operator. Yet an operator does not want to lose control over his system and needs to be able to continuously observe and examine its current state at runtime. This work addresses both problems and shows how the solutions can be combined into a more self-organizing overlay concept. At first, we evaluate the performance of structured overlay networks under different aspects and thereby illuminate in how far such architectures are able to support carrier-grade applications. Secondly, to enable operators to monitor and understand their deployed system in more detail, we introduce both active as well as passive methods to gather information about the current state of the overlay network.}, subject = {Overlay-Netz}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Milbrandt2007, author = {Milbrandt, Jens}, title = {Performance Evaluation of Efficient Resource Management Concepts for Next Generation IP Networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-1991}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-23332}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2007}, abstract = {Next generation networks (NGNs) must integrate the services of current circuit-switched telephone networks and packet-switched data networks. This convergence towards a unified communication infrastructure necessitates from the high capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operational expenditures (OPEX) due to the coexistence of separate networks for voice and data. In the end, NGNs must offer the same services as these legacy networks and, therefore, they must provide a low-cost packet-switched solution with real-time transport capabilities for telephony and multimedia applications. In addition, NGNs must be fault-tolerant to guarantee user satisfaction and to support business-critical processes also in case of network failures. A key technology for the operation of NGNs is the Internet Protocol (IP) which evolved to a common and well accepted standard for networking in the Internet during the last 25 years. There are two basically different approaches to achieve QoS in IP networks. With capacity overprovisioning (CO), an IP network is equipped with sufficient bandwidth such that network congestion becomes very unlikely and QoS is maintained most of the time. The second option to achieve QoS in IP networks is admission control (AC). AC represents a network-inherent intelligence that admits real-time traffic flows to a single link or an entire network only if enough resources are available such that the requirements on packet loss and delay can be met. Otherwise, the request of a new flow is blocked. This work focuses on resource management and control mechanisms for NGNs, in particular on AC and associated bandwidth allocation methods. The first contribution consists of a new link-oriented AC method called experience-based admission control (EBAC) which is a hybrid approach dealing with the problems inherent to conventional AC mechanisms like parameter-based or measurement-based AC (PBAC/MBAC). PBAC provides good QoS but suffers from poor resource utilization and, vice versa, MBAC uses resources efficiently but is susceptible to QoS violations. Hence, EBAC aims at increasing the resource efficiency while maintaining the QoS which increases the revenues of ISPs and postpones their CAPEX for infrastructure upgrades. To show the advantages of EBAC, we first review today's AC approaches and then develop the concept of EBAC. EBAC is a simple mechanism that safely overbooks the capacity of a single link to increase its resource utilization. We evaluate the performance of EBAC by its simulation under various traffic conditions. The second contribution concerns dynamic resource allocation in transport networks which implement a specific network admission control (NAC) architecture. In general, the performance of different NAC systems may be evaluated by conventional methods such as call blocking analysis which has often been applied in the context of multi-service asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks. However, to yield more practical results than abstract blocking probabilities, we propose a new method to compare different AC approaches by their respective bandwidth requirements. To present our new method for comparing different AC systems, we first give an overview of network resource management (NRM) in general. Then we present the concept of adaptive bandwidth allocation (ABA) in capacity tunnels and illustrate the analytical performance evaluation framework to compare different AC systems by their capacity requirements. Different network characteristics influence the performance of ABA. Therefore, the impact of various traffic demand models and tunnel implementations, and the influence of resilience requirements is investigated. In conclusion, the resources in NGNs must be exclusively dedicated to admitted traffic to guarantee QoS. For that purpose, robust and efficient concepts for NRM are required to control the requested bandwidth with regard to the available transmission capacity. Sophisticated AC will be a key function for NRM in NGNs and, therefore, efficient resource management concepts like experience-based admission control and adaptive bandwidth allocation for admission-controlled capacity tunnels, as presented in this work are appealing for NGN solutions.}, subject = {Ressourcenmanagement}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Menth2004, author = {Menth, Michael}, title = {Efficient admission control and routing for resilient communication networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-846}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-9949}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2004}, abstract = {This work is subdivided into two main areas: resilient admission control and resilient routing. The work gives an overview of the state of the art of quality of service mechanisms in communication networks and proposes a categorization of admission control (AC) methods. These approaches are investigated regarding performance, more precisely, regarding the potential resource utilization by dimensioning the capacity for a network with a given topology, traffic matrix, and a required flow blocking probability. In case of a failure, the affected traffic is rerouted over backup paths which increases the traffic rate on the respective links. To guarantee the effectiveness of admission control also in failure scenarios, the increased traffic rate must be taken into account for capacity dimensioning and leads to resilient AC. Capacity dimensioning is not feasible for existing networks with already given link capacities. For the application of resilient NAC in this case, the size of distributed AC budgets must be adapted according to the traffic matrix in such a way that the maximum blocking probability for all flows is minimized and that the capacity of all links is not exceeded by the admissible traffic rate in any failure scenario. Several algorithms for the solution of that problem are presented and compared regarding their efficiency and fairness. A prototype for resilient AC was implemented in the laboratories of Siemens AG in Munich within the scope of the project KING. Resilience requires additional capacity on the backup paths for failure scenarios. The amount of this backup capacity depends on the routing and can be minimized by routing optimization. New protection switching mechanisms are presented that deviate the traffic quickly around outage locations. They are simple and can be implemented, e.g, by MPLS technology. The Self-Protecting Multi-Path (SPM) is a multi-path consisting of disjoint partial paths. The traffic is distributed over all faultless partial paths according to an optimized load balancing function both in the working case and in failure scenarios. Performance studies show that the network topology and the traffic matrix also influence the amount of required backup capacity significantly. The example of the COST-239 network illustrates that conventional shortest path routing may need 50\% more capacity than the optimized SPM if all single link and node failures are protected.}, subject = {Kommunikation}, language = {en} }