Popularization of network technologies requires a more efficient use of the existing infrastructure as well as introducing new services and mechanisms. The areas that the laboratory focuses on are service pricing and quality assurance, traffic routing mechanisms and network security, and in particular:
Traffic Routing and Network Congestion Prevention
The main objective is to develop mechanisms that would allow optimized utilization of the existing infrastructure and prevent congestion. Such mechanisms are closely related to Quality of Service (QoS) assurance technologies, and in fact are their foundations. Thanks to their scalability, the most promising are decentralized algorithms, based on pricing coordination and transmission window width management.
The research aims at achieving an efficient combination of bandwidth allocation methods with routing algorithms, which also involves existing standards like IPv6, ECN or MPLS that support full differentiation of service classes (DiffServ) using available equipment. In addition, methods that allow associating network usage prices with the actual quality of provided services are developed. The application of such mechanisms is the only way to ensure widespread and inexpensive broadband Internet access in a not very distant future.
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SLA Creation and Negotiation Support
In order to achieve a competitive edge on the continuously evolving market, companies have to react quickly to customers' needs and steps that competitors take. Consequently, economic modelling methods are necessary to negotiate the rates and parameters of the offered services. Especially important seems to be the SLA creating process (also in negotiations) that apart from rate definitions, involves quality guarantees. This, in turn, is directly related to the traffic routing techniques mentioned above, as it requires the evaluation of the network's ability to provide the quality specified in the SLA, and of the economic consequences of a potential failure that may result in contractual financial penalties.
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Network Security
An essential aspect of efficient network operation is security, i.e. the ability to prevent unauthorized access to data and devices as well as to ward off denial of service attacks (DoS and DDoS) that have recently become common. The work focuses on supporting basic security mechanisms (e.g. firewall systems), and preparing recommendations for their correct application. Some tasks are more complex, for example developing methods for early detection of attempted attacks. These methods use anomaly detection and packet correlation analyses, and to some extent, computer simulation.
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Simulators
Using simulations to research the proposed algorithms and test network performance in various conditions is another key responsibility. Since the scope of work is quite extensive, a range of simulators is necessary: from relatively simple simulators used in economic analyses to complex network simulators (including packet simulators (e.g. ns2). The main strategy is to develop parallel and asynchronous simulation methods.
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