Network line speeds have increased at a significant rate. Unfortunately, network performance has not been able to keep pace with increases in line speed. This is due to the majority of packets being less than or equal to 100 bytes in addition to network routers not being able to scale well with the increased number of packets. In this paper we present our solution, JumboGen, an approach that will allow for a higher utilization of larger packet sizes on a domain-wise basis. Through simulations and experimentation, we show that the dynamic creation of jumbo packets decreases the number of packets processed by core routers and does not have an adverse impact on link utilization or fairness. The final result of JumboGen is a reduction in the number of packets seen by core routers which directly improves network scalability.

It has been recently suggested that uncongested links could be completely ignored when evaluating Internet’s performance. In particular, based on the observation that only the congested links along the path of each flow introduce sizable queueing delays and dependencies among flows, it has been shown that one can infer the performance of the larger Internet by creating and observing a suitably scaleddown replica, consisting of the congested links only. Given that the majority of Internet links are uncongested, it has been demonstrated that this approach can be used to greatly simplify and expedite performance prediction.

In this paper, we present a shortest-path-based algorithm, called local shortest path (LSP), for topology control in wireless multihop networks. In this algorithm, each node locally computes the shortest paths connecting itself to nearby nodes based on some link weight function, and then it selects all the second nodes on the shortest paths as its logical neighbors in the final topology. Any energy model can be employed in LSP to design the link weight function whose value represents the power consumption required in the transmission along a link. We analytically prove that such a simple algorithm maintains network connectivity and guarantees that the minimal energy path between any two nodes is preserved in the final topology. Simulation results show that LSP can reduce the energy consumption, especially in heterogenous networks.

Wireless mesh networks (WMN) have attracted considerable interest in recent years as a convenient, flexible and low-cost alternative to wired communication infrastructures in many contexts. However, the great majority of research on metropolitan-scale WMN has been centered around maximization of available bandwidth, suitable for non-real-time applications such as Internet access for the general public. On the other hand, the suitability of WMN for missioncritical infrastructure applications remains by and large unknown, as protocols typically employed in WMN are, for the most part, not designed for real-time communications. In this paper, we describe the Smart Transport and Roads Communications (STaRComm) project at National ICT Australia (NICTA), which sets a goal of designing a wireless mesh network architecture to solve the communication needs of the traffic control system in Sydney, Australia. This system, known as SCATS (Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System) and used in over 100 cities around the world, connects a hierarchy of several thousand devices — from individual traffic light controllers to regional computers and the central Traffic Management Centre (TMC) - and places stringent requirements on the reliability and latency of the data exchanges. We discuss our experience in the deployment of an initial testbed consisting of 7 mesh nodes placed at intersections with traffic lights, and share the results and insights learned from our measurements and initial trials in the process.

In this paper we present a peer-to-peer dialup architecture for accelerated “Internet access” in the developing world. Our proposed architecture provides a mechanism for multiplexing the scarce and expensive international Internet bandwidth over higher bandwidth p2p dialup connections within a developing country. Our system combines a number of architectural components, such as incentive-driven p2p data transfer, intelligent connection interleaving and content-prefetching. This paper presents a detailed design, implementation and evaluation of our dialup p2p data transfer architecture inspired by Bittorrent.