A number of projects are currently being conducted within and with the
co-operation of the CNA lab which have direct relevance to the E-NEXT
proposal.
IP network load balancing and optimisation. A project concerned
with optimal intra-domain routing. We investigate how optimisation
techniques can be applied to IP-networks in order to better utilise
network resources and to avoid congestion by balancing load over
several paths, more information at the load balancing home page.
The Winternet Project. A national Swedish project, involving
four institutions (including the CNA group) over a three year period
which are looking at new routing approaches to allow better
aggregation of routing information, router and switch architectures
with network processors, quality of service and high layer switching.
Also new Internet architectures unconstrained by current practise will
be investigated. Application service overlays, protocols and tools for
services that are common for application overlays will be looked at
and self-regulating traffic control. A description of each of the
topics can be found at the Winternet home page.
Multi-access networks. With the proliferation of wireless
networks, plus new fixed line access methods, users now have the
choice to connect to the Internet using more than one technology. In
many cities ADSL, cable modem, broadband or conventional modem access
will be available as fixed access plus increasingly more wireless
technologies such as GPRS, IEEE 801.11, Bluetooth, GSM and 3G being
available soon. Multi-access systems will soon be on the market,
possibly being built using a single receiver. This will allow users to
choose the technology to use given a set of preferences, these may be
the bandwidth, QoS, price, power consumption etc. This project will
look at the software technology available to evaluate and make the
choice of the "best connect" option.
Small protocol implementations. The lwIP project has shown that
it is possible to implement a full TCP/IP stack using minimal
RAM. This makes lwIP suitable for use in embedded systems with tens of
kilobytes of free RAM and around 40 kilobytes of ROM (for the
code). One current area of interest is using small TCP/IP stacks, like
lwIP, in sensors networks.
Voice over IP. Internet telephony is beginning to make a
breakthrough as an Internet application. Both with end users and
operators using the Internet to carry voice traffic. Both users and
operators can make substantial financial savings by using cheaper IP
based equipment than traditional expensive telecoms equipment. The
focus of this work is to evaluate and improve the current levels of
quality and reliability as far as operators and users are concerned.
Measurement Infrastructures A series of past and present
projects have involved extensive measurement efforts. These range from
low level link layer power consumption measurements of the IEEE 802.11
protocol (802.11
power) through packet level traces of "flows" in the Internet (elephants),
packet voice measurements (voip quality) as
part of a previous EU COST 263 project to measuring the end behaviour
of users when browsing the (end user behaviour).
A short pdf document of CNA's measurment activities has been
compiled.
A full list of SICS projects (past and present) is here.
