Completed Networks Group Projects
In reverse-chronological order the following projects have been successfully completed by the networks research group. Information on our current projects is also available.
AGAVE
AGAVE (A lightweight Approach for Viable End-to-end IP-based QoS Services) is an EU STREP project under the Sixth Framework Programme which aims to propose and validate scalable and practical solutions to end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) across the Internet. AGAVE will specify an open connectivity service-provisioning interface to allow service providers (SPs) to interact with underlying network resources for the provision of IP-based added-value services. The project will investigate a wide range of traffic engineering techniques to realise Network Planes and Parallel Internets, depending on different service requirements and the capabilities of transit domains. A lightweight QoS approach will be developed, based on the principles of differentiated routing with inherent load balancing, resilience and stability, without requiring universal deployment of traditional differentiated forwarding (DiffServ) based paradigms. The proposed solution will be deployable with small incremental additions to the existing best-effort Internet. As a case study, Voice of IP (VoIP) deployment will be specifically investigated in the AGAVE project. For more information, please contact Prof. George Pavlou, or visit the project website.COST
In this project we are currently involved in two actions:- COST 272 Delivery of packet-oriented services via satellites
- COST 290 Traffic and QoS Management in Wireless Multimedia Networks
Euro-NGI
Euro-NGI (Design and Engineering of the Next Generation Internet) is an EU NoE project under the 6th Framework Programme. It aims to create and maintain the most prominent European centre of excellence in Next Generation Internet design and engineering, acting as a "Collective Intelligence Think Tank", representing a major support for the European Information Society industry and leading towards a European leadership in this domain. The Next Generation Internet (NGI) will offer view multi-service/multimedia, mobility, convergence (services and fixed-mobile), Quality-of-Service and variable connectivity as the norm. Euro-NGI objectives are: Mastering the technology diversity (vertical and horizontal integration) for the design of efficient and flexible NGI architectures. Also it aims to provide required innovative traffic engineering architectures adapted to the new requirements and developing the corresponding appropriate quantitative methods. CCSR leads the work on IP Interworking issues and contributes to QoS and security related work packages. For more information, please contact Prof. Zhili Sun, or visit the project website.Mobile VCE
Mobile VCE is the operating name of the Virtual Centre of Excellence in Mobile and Personal Communications Ltd, a collaborative partnership of over twenty of the world's most prominent Mobile Communications companies and eight UK Universities each having long standing specialist expertise in relevant areas. Mobile VCE was formed as an outcome of the Foresight Exercise in 1996 and was endorsed by the UK Government's Department of Trade and Industry. The main activities are embraced in the Core Research Programmes in which all Members participate, sharing in the results. The first such programme, the Core 1 Programme, concluded in Spring 2000 and was a three year programme of advanced research overseen by nominated experts drawn from Industrial Members and comprised four Work Areas: Networks, Services, Terminals and Radio Environment. The follow-on Core 2 Programme began in autumn 1999, building upon the earlier research outputs but at an increased level of manpower - 100 manyears, compared with 50 manyears - extending the work into new areas, "Beyond 3G". Its three Work Areas are Software Based Systems, Networks, Services and Wireless Access. For more information, please contact Prof. George Pavlou, or visit the project website.PAN
PAN (Programmable Ad hoc Networks) is a UK EPSRC project which started in March 2003. The main purpose of the project is to consider programmable ad-hoc networks as an important emerging type of network infrastructure that will complement 3G+ and fixed network infrastructures. PAN will investigate solutions for a Quality of Service (QoS) framework, context-aware QoS support and a middleware-based programmable infrastructure that will allow terminodes to download and activate required protocol and service software dynamically. Quality of service is an area that has not yet been fully addressed in ad hoc networks and it is particularly important for critical applications in the ad hoc environment but also of paramount importance when 3G+ multimedia services are accessed from ad hoc 'terminodes'. QoS could be improved through context-awareness that will combine location information from a location service with connectivity, user input, QoS requirements, and possibly information from other terminodes. Programmability will enable terminodes to align themselves with the network-wide QoS framework and the application-level context-ware QoS support services. The proposed framework for ad hoc terminode programmability will be general enough to support downloading and activation of any required protocols and services in an ad hoc environment. For more information, please contact Prof. George Pavlou, or visit the project website.PAQMAN
PAQMAN (Policy Analysis for Qos MANagament) is a UK EPSRC project which started in April 2004. Policy-based management has been proposed in recent years as a suitable means for managing Quality of Service (QoS) in IP networks. Yet despite research projects, standardisation efforts, and substantial interest from industry, policy-based management is still not a reality. There are some vendor tools, mostly part of virtual private network provisioning toolsets, but policy-based management is still far from being widely adopted despite its potential benefits of flexibility and constrained programmability. One of the reasons for the reticence to adopt this technology is that it is difficult to analyse policies to determine that they will actually work given the capabilities of managed network devices, and to guarantee the stability of the network configuration given that policies may have conflicts leading to unpredictable effects. This project will attempt to address the problems of policy analysis, including conflict detection and validation, and policy refinement using QoS management for IP networks as an application-specific demonstrator. Our overall goal is to make use of the complementary expertise of the Imperial and Surrey groups to integrate formal analysis techniques with policy specification, policy deployment and QoS management techniques for IP networks. For more information, please contact Prof. George Pavlou, or visit the project website.POLYMICS
POLYMICS (POLicY-based MIddleware for Context-aware Services) is a UK EPSRC project which started in July 2003. The project will investigate the application of policy-based management to support context-aware services for 3G mobile networks at three levels: (i) within a middleware layer interposed between network and service; (ii) at service administrator level; and (iii) at user level. A major part will be dedicated to investigating and realising a middleware system for service management and to looking into ways of equipping it with a policy-based management engine. This involves the development of an information model which allows the representation and manipulation through policies of context-aware services; the specification and realisation of a core set of middleware functionality which provide sufficient support to user and service administrator; and the specification and realisation of middleware functionality to efficiently gather the 'context' (i.e. network QoS, terminal capability, terminal location, time and user profile). The middleware policy engine includes means for policy validation, conflict detection and resolution, exception handling and adaptation. Access to these capability through a well-defined set of APIs aims at facilitating the development advanced context-aware, adaptable applications. Another important part of the project will investigate policy-based tools to interface both the service administrator and the user with the middleware, facilitating service configuration and customisation through a high-level policy or rule-based XML interface. Tools, middleware and information model will be validated and evaluated experimentally and will be finally demonstrated through a context-aware service. For more information, please contact Prof. George Pavlou, or visit the project website.SATLIFE
Satellite Access Technologies: Leading Improvements For Europe (SATLIFE) is an EU STREP project under the 6th Research Framework Programme and is the first European project working in the area of two-way satellite systems called DVB-RCS with On-Board Processor (OBP) satellite system called AMZONAS and operated by Hispasat (Spain). AMAZONA was luanch in August 2004 and will operational in early 2005. This system integrates and combines both DVB-S (broadcasting) and DVB-RCS (interactive) into one unique regenerative and multi-spot satellite system. The DVB-RCS return channel standard is employed by all users to access the satellite through a standard uplink. On board, the regenerative payload multiplexes the traffic from diverse sources into one or more DVB-S data streams capable of being received by any standard DVB-S receiver. SATLIFE aims to conduct research on services and networking requirements for OBP DVB-RCS satellites systems. University of Surrey leads the research work on security, QoS and IPv6 over satellites and IP multicast issues. For more information, please contact Prof. Zhili Sun, or visit the project website.SATNEX
The European Satellite Communications Network of Excellence (SatNEx) is an EU NoE project under the 6th Research Framework Programme. The primary goal of SatNEx is to achieve long-lasting integration of the European research in satellite communication and to develop a common base of knowledge, thus contributing to the realization of the European Research Area.MESCAL
MESCAL (Management of End-to-end quality of ServiCe Across the internet at Large) was an EU IST project under the Fifth Framework Programme which proposed and validated scalable, incremental solutions that enable the flexible deployment and delivery of inter-domain Quality of Service (QoS) across the Internet. This involved developing templates, protocols and algorithms for establishing Service Level Specifications (SLS) between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and their customers, including their peers. Scalable solutions for inter-domain Traffic Engineering (TE) were also developed based on enhancements to the existing Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing protocol and associated route selection logic. MESCAL considered both unicast- and multicast-based services and ensured that the proposed solutions are applicable to both IPv4 and IPv6.ANWIRE
Academic Network for Wireless Internet Research in Europe (ANWIRE) was an EU IST project under the Fifth Framework Programme which provided an open framework for the exchange of ideas and results between organisations within Europe in the areas of reconfigurability and adaptability in mobile systems, and disseminated results by providing a forum for the exchange of knowledge and ideas in these areas. In order to effectively achieve this goal, a reference point was established for promoting the European efforts and research achievements in the fields of reconfigurability and adaptability, thus enhancing the visibility of research in the EU. ANWIRE also facilitated the training of researchers and integration of knowledge and results related to the respective research activities.ASP-NET
Application Service Provider Network (ASP-NET) was an EU IST project under the Fifth Framework Programme. Many application software packages are expensive and are resource-demanding (support, maintenance, software upgrades). These factors put pressure on small-to-medium sized enterprises that have limited managerial and technical staff and limited capital for investment in software and hardware infrastructure. Application Service Providers (ASPs) offer a very promising solution to this kind of SMEs' problems: ASPs are third party entities that manage and distribute software-based services and solutions to customers across a wide area network from a central data centre. ASP-NET developed and set-up three example product-service (PS) systems that addressed the technological needs of modern organisations for e-messaging, enterprise project management and human resources management services. The project is intended to demonstrate the increased efficiency of the ASP model over the traditional software sales model, and illustrate the integration, interoperability, and service provision automation of these PS systems.GEOCAST
GEOCAST was an EU IST project under the Fifth Framework Programme. Its objective was to support IP multicast services over broadcast geostationary satellites. Although low-earth-orbiting (LEO) satellite constellation networks have received a lot of attention for their promise of 'Internet in the sky', a more evolutionary approach to satellite-based broadband Internet connectivity is possible via geostationary satellites. This is due to two main properties of the geostationary satellite:- Large amounts of bandwidth are becoming available at high frequencies (Ka band and above) for geostationary use, supplementing the use of the traditional C and Ku bands.
- The ability to broadcast to a large area, making support for broadcast and multicast services more straightforward than with the more complex LEO solution.
ICEBERGS
ICEBERGS was an EU IST project under the Fifth Framework Programme. The ICEBERGS Project designed and validated an integrated broadband communication infrastructure for IP-based multiparty, QoS-sensitive, conversational services, for fixed, mobile and portable terminals topologies, for both business and consumer reference service scenarios. The service architecture was based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and related protocol stack which was deployed onto an innovative Broadband Communication infrastructure composed by (i) both a next generation Ka-band Broadband Satellite and (ii) a portion of the terrestrial Internet upgraded to cope with QoS sensitive multicast services. The Satellite and terrestrial system components were mutually complementary in offering connectivity services for multiparty, QoS-sensitive, multimedia conversational services. The proposed architecture maintained the compatibility with the existing best effort Internet.COST
- COST 253 Service-efficient network interconnection via satellite
- COST 257 Impact of new services on the architecture and performance of broadband networks
- COST 263 Quality of future Internet Services (QofIS)
TEQUILA
TEQUILA (Traffic Engineering for Quality of Service in the Internet, at Large Scale) was an EU IST project under the Fifth Framework Programme which addressed the problem of Quality of Service in the Internet and relies on the emerging Differentiated Services (DiffServ) framework. Quality of Service (QoS) was provided through both control (routing, differentiated forwarding) and management mechanisms (planning, dimensioning, monitoring and dynamic re-configuration). Customer services were provided based on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) which could be altered dynamically. Inter-domain issues were also considered for end-to-end QoS across different administrative domains. The project studied those issues both theoretically, mostly through simulation, and practically, through design and implementation on various testbeds.PRO-NET
Pro-Net (Production of Broadcast Content in an Object-Oriented IP-based Network) was a UK LINK/EPSRC project which was concerned with broadcast production networks which transport real-time audio and video. Pro-Net investigated the possibility of using general purpose networking technologies to realise such networks. The emerging IP Differentiated Services (DiffServ) framework was considered as the basis for Quality of Service support; its suitability for transporting traffic with hard real-time guarantees was evaluated. Pro-Net also considered object-oriented signalling and control mechanisms, based on technologies such as CORBA, Java-RMI while Web-based access to services were provided. The project had both theoretical and practical aspects.MANTRIP
MANTRIP (Management Testing and Reconfiguration of IP-based Networks using Mobile Software Agents) was an EU IST project under the Fifth Framework Programme. It exploited the unique features of the mobile agent technology in order to provide novel toolkits responding to the urgent need for efficient IP network management. Each of these toolkits consisted of a suite of different management tools integrated in common environment. Using the toolkits both users and providers will be able to access information on end-to-end performance and traffic flows, to monitor QoS and audit SLA in terms of throughput, availability and delay. The toolkits enable retrieval of management information, beyond the scope of devices controllable by the individual network administrations or users. The delivered measurement tools provided options for evaluating and comparing services and service quality.VESPER
VESPER (Virtual Home Environment for Service Personalization and Roaming Users) was an EU IST project under the Fifth Framework Programme. VESPER aimed to define, demonstrate and promote a service architecture for provision of VHE across a multi-provider, heterogeneous network and system infrastructure. The project's technical approach, although in line with a long-term vision of IN, benefit exploited concepts, models and service paradigms from the TINA framework, the use of intelligent agent capabilities and other innovative technologies to support roaming users with service portability, session mobility and service scalability. Key results of VESPER included a validated VHE architecture specification with a tested prototype.VIP-TEN
VIP-TEN was a European TEN-Telecom/IST project which started at the beginning of February 2000. It assessed the ability of a EuroSkyWay-based system to support IP-based voice telephony with guaranteed quality of service. The EuroSkyWay Network design is already validated for basic connectivity at the physical and data link layers. Providing an IP telephony service requires additional layering whose feasibility and performance needs to be assessed.BISANTE
The BISANTE (Broadband Integrated Satellite Network Traffic Evaluation) ESPRIT project aimed to support network and service providers in management of their services and capacity planning of their resources, by providing them with a simulation methodology realised in a workbench. In order to design or to dimension networks, it is necessary to study the characteristics of the traffic that the networks will carry. On the other hand, the characteristics of multimedia services traffic are not yet well-known. The network can affect the services as the user-perceived Quality of Service may change due to varying network conditions, but how services are affected is not clearly understood. BISANTE developed a knowledge base of user profiles, characterised and modelled broadband terrestrial, mobile and satellite networks and built a workbench which is able to map user/application characteristics in order to determine the end-to-end QoS that can be supported.MIAMI
The MIAMI (Mobile Intelligent Agents in the Management of the Information Infrastructure) ACTS project aimed to investigate the benefits gained from agent mobility and intelligence in the context of telecommunications network and service management, information services and electronic commerce. The project developed agent-based solutions for managing telecommunication networks and providing advanced communication and information services. These solutions were demonstrated in a pan-European testbed. The communication service provided is an Active Virtual Pipe (AVP). This is an extension of the concept of leased lines or Virtual Private Networks, in the sense that the service can be customised and be dynamically controlled by the service user. This customisation is achieved through mobile intelligent agents, which the user sends to be executed in the provider's domain. The advanced information service which is built using the AVP is a Virtual Enterprise, which is dynamically formed among interested parties through agent negotiations. A mobile agent platform which supports semantically-rich agent interactions was used. We led the performance management aspects of the AVP service. In particular, we concentrated on providing facilities for metric monitoring and summarisation which are flexible, can be customised through user-built algorithms and can result in agents migrating to network elements to perform monitoring tasks without incurring significant management traffic.COPARIS
In order to stimulate growth in the ISDN market, the COPARIS (Common Physical Access Chip for ISDN Systems) ESPRIT project developed an application-specific embedded processor chip capable of implementing a large subset of the existing ISDN line interface standards. This is the forerunner of a generation of advanced telecommunications processors using OMI subsystems than can be extended into a range of future applications. As an example of the benefits COPARIS provided, it allows the production of ISDN home PBXs with a cost of about 50% compared to today's equivalent products. The project developed an evaluation board using the chip with interfaces for Ethernet, Universal Serial Bus (USB) and ISDN Primary Rate Interface (PRI). Our primary tasks included the design and implementation of the ISDN PRI and USB host interfaces as well as the development of an application system for ISDN and Internet Protocol integration.FLOWTHRU
The FlowThru ACTS project aimed to provide a service and network management system by integrating management applications that originated from previous ACTS projects such as VITAL, REFORM and Prospect. In this case, integration brought together aspects of order handling for service access, network planning, configuration management, Quality of Service management, problem handling and accounting processes. There was an automated flow of management information from the service level down through the network and element management levels to the network elements supporting the services. The FlowThru system followed state-of-the-art techniques in describing reusable components, such as using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and emerging technologies for plug-and-play distributed systems such as the Object Management Group (OMG) component model. The various applications were brought together through customisation but without having been developed to form an integrated system in the first place. The project followed the Tele-Management Forum's (TMF) decomposition of business processes, covering aspects of fulfilment (order handling, planning and provisioning), assurance (QoS management, problem handling) and billing (charging, invoicing). Our involvement in the project focused on the fulfilment part, concentrating on components for ATM configuration and connection management.REFORM
The REFORM (REsource and Fault restORation and Management in ATM) ACTS project investigated fault and resource management in ATM networks through close interaction between the control and management planes. While resource and routing management in ATM has been studied in different contexts, the problems of availability and performance have been tackled in isolation. REFORM took an integrated approach, in which the network is dimensioned and provisioned with spare capacity to deal with faults, while at the same time a bandwidth- and routing-management system supervises the network and tries to optimise the use of network resources. The control plane was based on object-oriented signalling while the management plane followed the TINA Network Resource Architecture principles. The REFORM system was based on an experimental ATM testbed, based in Basel, Switzerland, that was provided by the EXPERT project. Since these switches were relatively open, control and management functionality were added, resulting in a REFORM "node" with interfaces based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). Faults were first detected and recovered from in the control plane, with the management plane being informed in order to reconfigure the network over a less stringent timescale. The management plane addressed virtual path planning and design, bandwidth allocation, and manipulation of route priorities for load balancing. Our involvement concentrated on aspects of configuration and performance management. We designed and implemented an ATM network map application similar in concept and design to a TMN configuration Operations System (OS). We also designed the hierarchical Network Resource Monitoring (NRM) subsystem and provided generic metric-monitor objects in CORBA as part of that subsystem.ITHACI
The overall scope of the IthACI (Internet and the ATM: Experiments and Enhancements for Convergence and Integration) ACTS project was to evaluate and contribute to the different technologies that together permit the efficient transport of IP traffic over a public or a private ATM backbone network. IthACI investigated and enhanced methods for the efficient integration of IP and ATM network technologies. It focused on fast layer-two forwarding methods for IP traffic, based around labelled flow mechanisms. The main goal was to improve the performance of the Internet by combining MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) techniques with added-on enhancements for multicast, Quality of Service support, resource management and mobility in multicast environments. In addition, IthACI critically assessed emerging solutions, performed incremental development on existing solutions addressing specific feature enhancements, and made recommendations for implementations, based upon observations of conducted experiments and analysis. To validate its approach, IthACI established three trial islands located in Belgium, Greece, and Germany, where each island used and enhanced a different MPLS solution over ATM. The main MPLS technologies used are tag switching from Cisco, IPSOFACTO from NEC and YALSA from Alcatel Bell. Our involvement in the project was focused on QoS provision and Resource Management.VITAL
The VITAL (Validation of Integrated Telecommunication Architectures for the Long-term) ACTS project aimed to validate the emerging Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture (TINA) as the vehicle for providing future advanced telecommunications services. TINA brings together Intelligent Network (IN) and Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) concepts, using an object-oriented Distributed Processing Environment (DPE) which supports both signalling and management interactions. The VITAL project designed and implemented an Open Distributed Telecommunications Architecture (ODTA) which extends and validates the TINA concepts. Various advanced services were implemented using this architecture, including multi-media, multi-party and mobility service features. The core application is a tele-training application that includes multi-media conferencing and distributed slide presentation facilities. These services were demonstrated in a pan-European environment, by connecting ATM islands in Belgium, Italy, Spain and Portugal through the JAMES European ATM infrastructure. Our research contribution concentrated in configuration management and ATM call- and connection control through distributed object interactions.THESEUS
The objective of the THESEUS (Terminal at High Speed for European Stock Exchange Users) ACTS project was to develop a stock trading terminal with broadband communications capabilities that provides access to all the European stock exchanges through terrestrial and satellite links. This terminal can put into practice the EC directives concerning the opening of the European capital market and enable brokers to trade not only with their national stock exchange but also with all the European stock exchanges. THESEUS has performed three successful demonstrations to the European Commission. The first demonstration was conducted in January 1998, using European ATM national hosts access facilities (through the JAMES project). A second demonstration for secure stock trading using security keys and digital signatures was conducted in April 1998. Finally, a satellite demonstration (through the VANTAGE project) was conducted in July 1998, between a remote THESEUS terminal located in Rome and the Paris stock exchange.EUROSAT
EUROSAT was a three-year program of joint research in Mobile and Personal Communications, Networking and Computer Aided Manufacture.CATALYST
The Catalyst project tested satellite technology in relation to the terrestrial Integrated Broadband Communications (IBC) network. We analysed end-system to end-system communications for client-server architectures across Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) links and satellite relays, interconnecting Ethernet, DQDB and FDDI networks. In the first quarter of 1994 the project demonstrated the world's first ATM connection via satellite at Nanteer, in Paris. This demonstrated the capability of ATM via satellite to support interactive images, joint viewing, multimedia communications and network file systems.CODENET
CODENET was a one-year feasibility study with the aim of providing a satellite network infrastructure to connect local area networks between VSATS located in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Madrid, Toulouse and Guildford.
