Tutorials

 

MPLS - Timeliness, benefits, and deployment from the origins, to ATM, to Optical Networks

Mario Baldi, Politecnico di Torino, ITALIA

 

Derived from a proprietary fast packet switching technique, MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) has played various roles throughout the years. It has been an approach for the deployment of IP over ATM networks, a solution in utilizing ATM hardware within IP networks, a traffic engineering enhancement for IP, and finally a unifying control plane technology. This tutorial provides an overview of MPLS from its inspiring principles to its various fields of application. By retracing the evolution of MPLS, the tutorial discusses how it became the next technology promising to satisfy present and future networking needs. Particular emphasis is given to the application of MPLS for traffic engineering: the limitations of IP with respect to the realization and operation of large backbones are first analyzed, then, traffic engineering features, together with the underlying mechanisms and protocols, that enable MPLS to overcome such limitations are illustrated. The relations between MPLS and different infrastructure technologies, such as Ethernet, PPP, ATM and FR, DWDM, and circuit switching are explained. The tutorial describes how MPLS signaling protocols are used for set-up and restoration of MPLS Label Switched Paths (LSPs), possibly generalized in terms of circuits, optical channels, and sub-lambda channels.

 

Biography: Mario Baldi is Associate Professor of Computer Networks and head of the Computer Networks Group (NetGroup) at the Department of Computer Engineering of Politecnico di Torino (Technical University of Turin), Italy and Vice President for Protocol Architecture at Synchrodyne Networks, Inc., New York. He received his M.S. Degree Summa Cum Laude in Electrical Engineering in 1993, and his Ph.D. in Computer and System Engineering in 1998 both from Politecnico di Torino. He was Assistant Professor on tenure track at Politecnico di Torino from 1997 to 2002. He joined Synchrodyne Networks, Inc. in November 1999. Mario Baldi has been Honorary Visiting Professor at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Adjunct Professor at Univerity of Illinois at Chicago, Visiting Professor at Institut de Technologie du Cambodge, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and visiting researcher at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, at Columbia University, New York, NY, and at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), Berkeley, CA. As part of his extensive research activity at Politecnico di Torino, Mario Baldi has been leading various networking research projects, involving Universities and industrial partners, funded by European Union, Local Government, and various companies, including Telecommunications Carriers, such as Infostrada and Telecom Italia, and research institutions, such as Telecom Italia Labs and Microsoft Research. Mario Baldi provides on a regular basis consultancy and training services, both directly to companies and through various training and network consultancy centers. He co-authored over 50 papers on various networking related topics and two books, one on internetworking and one on switched local area networks.

Mario Baldi is co-inventor in two patents issued by the United States Patent Office in the field of optical networking, in fourteen applications to the United States Patent Office in the fields of high performance networking and security, and two applications to International Patent Offices in the field of high performance networking. His research interests include internetworking, high performance switching, optical networking, quality of service, multimedia over packet networks, voice over IP, and computer networks in general.

 

 

 

Next Generation Networks and wireless networks: QoS aspects

Pascal Lorenz, Universite de Haute Alsace, FRANCE

 

Emerging Internet Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms are expected to enable wide spread use of real time services such as VoIP and videoconferencing. The "best effort" Internet delivery cannot be used for the new multimedia applications. New technologies and new standards are necessary to offer Quality of Service (QoS) for these multimedia applications. Therefore new communication architectures integrate mechanisms allowing guaranteed QoS services as well as high rate communications. The service level agreement with a mobile Internet user is hard to satisfy, since there may not be enough resources available in some parts of the network the mobile user is moving into. The emerging Internet QoS architectures, differentiated services and integrated services, do not consider user mobility. QoS mechanisms enforce a differentiated sharing of bandwidth among services and users. Thus, there must be mechanisms available to identify traffic flows with different QoS parameters, and to make it possible to charge the users based on requested quality. The integration of fixed and mobile wireless access into IP networks presents a cost effective and efficient way to provide seamless end-to-end connectivity and ubiquitous access in a market where the demand for mobile Internet services has grown rapidly and predicted to generate billions of dollars in revenue. This tutorial covers to the issues of QoS provisioning in heterogeneous networks and Internet access over future wireless networks as well as ATM, MPLS, DiffServ, IntServ frameworks. It discusses the characteristics of the Internet, mobility and QoS provisioning in wireless and mobile IP networks. This tutorial also covers routing, security, baseline architecture of the inter-networking protocols and end to end traffic management issues.

 

Biography: Pascal Lorenz [SM ‘00] (lorenz@ieee.org) received a PhD degree from the University of Nancy, France. Between 1990 and 1995 he was a research engineer at WorldFIP Europe and at Alcatel-Alsthom. He is a professor at the University of Haute-Alsace and responsible of the Network and Telecommunication Research Group. His research interests include QoS, wireless networks and high-speed networks. He was the Program and Organizing Chair of the IEEE ICATM'98, ICATM'99, ECUMN'00, ICN'01, ECUMN'02 and ICT'03, ICN’04 conferences and co-program chair of ICC’04. Since 2000, he is a Technical Editor of the IEEE Communications Magazine Editorial Board. He is the secretary of the IEEE ComSoc Communications Systems Integration and Modelling Technical Committee. He is a member of many international program committees and he has served as a guest editor for a number of journals including Telecommunications Systems, IEEE Communications Magazine and LNCS. He has organized and chaired several technical sessions and gave tutorials at major international conferences. He is the author of 3 books and 95 international publications in journals and conferences.

 

 

 

Groupware – computers supporting human communication and collaboration

Gottfried Luderer, Arizona State University, USA

 

The use of computers has had a considerable impact on the way people communicate with each other, for work as well as for private activities.  The crucial role is played by enabling software running on networked computers. We take a broad look at this field, commercially known as “groupware” or academically as “Computer-Supported Collaborative Work”. Starting with its historic origins, we cover the evolution into a maturing field and conclude with a glimpse at the current state of the art. The emphasis on technology in the early years has by now receded, and we see the almost universal acceptance and exploitation of web and internet technology. Early systems allowed text messages in real time between individuals or within a group. Presence awareness via “buddy lists” was one of the first features. Free-format communication based on XML removed the restriction to plain text. Control features added a moderator and delayed delivery, separation based on content or location lead to formation of streams or channels.  We are particularly interested in the types of applications, with an expansion into what is called “social networking”. How are these systems or networks used, and what can be done with them? What new concepts have they added?

Some examples of groupware will be examined: Internet Relay Chat, AOL’s Instant Messaging (AIM), Jabber, bulletin and message boards, Wiki as used in Wikipedia, and finally Groove Virtual Office. Recent new directions include adding video to voice and text, and the inclusion of mobile devices like cell phones and PDAs

 

Biography: Dr. Gottfried W. R. Luderer was appointed Professor, ISS Chair of Telecommunication, at Arizona State University in the Fall of 1990. His current research program in networking includes work in the areas of control of ISDN/Broadband ISDN networks, mobile communication networks, and multimedia communication, which ranges from call processing for intelligent network services to network management. Research emphasis is on advanced software technologies for development of telecommunication networks, as used in switches, for signaling and in network management, with a focus on object and component technology and formal definition techniques. From 1965 to 1989, Dr. Luderer was with AT&T Bell Labs, at last directing research on next generation switch architectures, based on fast packet switching technology on the hardware side and object-oriented design technology on the software side, resulting in some of the earliest demonstration networks for multimedia communication. Dr. Luderer holds Diplomingenieur (M.S) and Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. He holds two patents. While at Bell Labs, he taught at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, and at Princeton University. He is member of ACM, IEEE, IEEE Computer and Communication Societies.

 

 

 

Tools for Teaching Network Planning

Algirdas Paktas, London Metropolitan University, UK

 

Tutorial is providing overview of using tools for teaching Network Planning. This is done using module IM213 “Network Planning and Management” (Dept. Computing, Communications Technology and Mathematics, London Metropolitan University)  as example. Tutorial consists of four parts. The first part of the Tutorial is devoted to the general overview of the IM213 set up. The second part is presenting introduction to network design problem with particular attention paid to Performability and Dependability issues. The third part looks at the use of WAN design tool Delite which is demonstrated using actual Laboratory assignment. Part four is devoted to presenting Network Simulator ns-2 and Network Animator nam.

 

Biography: Prof. Algirdas Pakštas received his M.Sc. in Radiophysics and Electronics in 1980 from the Irkutsk State University,  Ph.D. in Systems Programming in 1987 from the Institute of Control Sciences. Currently he is with the London Metropolitan University, Department of Computing, Communications Technology and Mathematics where he is doing research the area of Communications Software Engineering and is teaching courses “Network Planning and Management” and “Computer Systems and Networks”. He is active in the following IEEE Communications Society Technical Committees: TC on Communications Software and TC on Multimedia Communications. He has published 3 research monographs (2 authored and 1 edited) and more than 140 other publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the ACM and the New York Academy of Sciences. He is currently a member of the Editorial Boards of the IEEE Communications Magazine, Cybernetics and Systems Analysis, Journal of Information and Organizational Sciences” and “CompSIS”.

 

2005 International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks
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