Anycast solutions over Wild Area IP Networks to unlock Clouds of Objects and Devices applications

General Context

Lot of software companies are now promoting some cloud solutions to implement crowd sourcing and sensors network applications (in a large scale software approach), but also software assistants for personal health, smart home, mobile worker assistance, shopping area, custom transportation guide ... in a more personal, digital and confidential way. Thanks to the improvement of networks performances, the cloud is also the way to dematerialize our own computers (like home boxes, smart phones, personnal computers, labtop computers,... of their computing capabilities while conserving the interaction capabilities for them and for more and more new everyday life objects) [3][2].

Technical Context and Purpose of the project:

to progress toward such kind of clouds we need new approaches to manage Objects and Devices and their integration in a Cloud framework over IP. Then, one main difficulty to use Web Services for Device over a classical LAN (local area network) is the use of UDP/IP Multicast and Broadcast that is not supported by IPv4.

UPnP is one of the example of such Web Service for Device protocol (like Device Profile for Web Service of W3C). Because these protocols must manage appearance, publication on the fly of the description of the service when the device appears and disappearance, they need anycast (unicast + multicast + broadcast over IP) communications with all the potential clients, even on differents LANs.

Various solutions exist but all are not yet testable by everyone and even robust. We can cite for example:

• a Libupnp solution with a Device Relay Software to connect two remote LANs (this was tested and works !) [4].
• IPv6 standard capability to configure over the IP network a set of computers over numerous LAN to belong to a same anycast network and then preconfigure routers between them [1].
• the creation of IP tunnel or a VPN (Virtual Privacy Network) between each of the LANs where computers that we want integrate, are.
• or simply, the subscription to a cloud provider that solved the problem in its networked infrastructure.

The main purpose of this project is:

• to study all the solutions we can try for anycast between LANs over IP. For example using IPv6, but that implies to be able to find a UPnP protocol using the IPv6 stack [1].
• to test locally all of these and at least Device Relay solution of libupnp, between the new IMREDD (Institut Méditerranéen du Risque, de lEnvironnement et du Développement Durable) in Nice and our Ubiquarium (Ubiquituous Computing Experiments Lab) in Sophia Antipolis.
• to test these solution remotely with our international partners : M2M group of ESPRITech in Tunisia and the SINTEF (Stiftelsen for industriell og teknisk forskning) in Norway.
• and finally to design overall applications that use various remote Web services for Devices of these different sites as proofs of concept and testbeds for the what we call the Cloud of the Physical Objects and Devices.

The used Software Tools will be:

• WComp middleware Layer 1 : to compose Web service for Device at runtime using a lightweight components model for composition (over Microsoft .Net Framework and Mono .Net for non Microsoft plateforms, using C# language close to Java).
• Various UPnP stack libraries

Professional Methodology:

• This work can be the opportunity to go after simple proof of concepts (that means some demonstrators that works in the different cases). It can also provide a testbed platform for the Cloud of Objects and Device in order to measure various performances in remote communications using Web Service for Devices protocols.
• Such a study should be an opportunity to write a research paper with our partners and then, in this case, to justify an international internship after this training period.

References:

• [1]Running UPnP under the IPv6 protocol, Seepold, R. ; Univ. Carlos III, Madrid ; Madrid, N.M. ; Romero, J. ; Fernandez, J.M., International Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems, 2008
• [2]Web of Things Workshop, in UbiComp international conference in Zurich, 2013.
• [3]intelligents nos environnements : l'Informatique Ambiante et ses défis logiciels, Christophe Vergoni, Yann Hervouët, Jean-Yves Tigli, in "GFI New challenges, New Ideas", le 4 avril 2013.
• [4]libupnp.org - Developer resources for the portable UPnP library

Autres informations

• Nombre d'étudiants: 3 ou 4
• Encadrants: Jean-Yves Tigli, Stéphane Lavirotte
• Organisme: Equipe Rainbow - Laboratoire I3S
• Lieu du projet: Polytech'Nice Sophia