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Modern networks no longer only require a good level of quality of service. Indeed, thanks to the powerful infrastructures of operators and the variety of bandwidth available to businesses, Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is now a reality. For this reason, security is currently a major challenge for businesses of all sizes, because all corporate data is exchanged via this public infrastructure. The problem of choosing the right security attributes for a given company for a specific flow always remains a challenge for the research community. Companies are currently opting for multi-site architectures for several reasons, including established business-to-business, business-to-consumer, or business-to-government partnerships. Our article involves measuring the impact of the security layer on the performance of multi-site infrastructures by varying a combination of 1) the number of sites, 2) the encryption algorithms, 3) the hashing algorithms, 4) the key extraction algorithms, and 5) the nature of the traffic (real-time, elastic, network). The results obtained will enable a company to choose the attributes that offer the best indicators of quality of service, taking these different variables into account. For the experimental study to be valid, we took measurements on a connected campus of several sites using solutions from different manufacturers, namely Cisco and Fortinet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims to analyze the effectiveness of compression mechanisms in optimising link efficiency in Wide Area Networks (WANs). Using an enterprise network as a case study, the researcher employed OPNET Modeler 14.5 for simulation. Three scenarios were simulated, with two using predefined compression mechanisms. Results suggest that a point-to-point network with a compressed layer 2 payload but uncompressed header, achieves higher throughput than one with header compression, or no compression applied. Additionally, layer 2 payload compression reduces both delay and packet loss. The researchers propose a novel Msiska-Lubobya Improved Payload (MLIP) Compression technique to optimize link efficiency for WAN.

In the current scenarios most of the business growth comes from the user experience, while using the business applications. Any enterprise network performance depends on the fundamental process of securely serving the user with applications. The network usage patterns have completely changed from just data transfer, voice, and video transmissions to serving entire applications over the networks. With all the modern applications served over the private and public clouds the network resources utilization must be optimized and take full advantage of them which is not possible with current network architectures. The enterprises are currently shifting towards software defined implementation due to many reasons like consistent policy application across the network, run time analytics for troubleshooting the problems and making the network cloud computing ready. Software defined approaches provide centralized security monitoring and control, user data and identity-based segmentation over the network, dynamic recovery from network infrastructure failure and finally virtualization of almost everything. This paper is an overview of the functioning of enterprises in the networking perspective along with current software defined approaches being used in enterprise networking which will soon take over the traditional networks by solving the challenges present in the software defined networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, while the Internet of Things (IoT) devices bring convenience to people, security issues have led to an increasing number of threats to IoT security. Since IoT devices have a Web application system for device managers to operate, the system can view device information, control and configure device status, and its security is of great significance. Among the various authentication methods provided by IoT devices, the password information authentication mechanism is still a critical method for Web login. If the IoT device has a weak Web password, once a hacker discovers the device, it is straightforward to be attacked and implanted with malicious code to control the device and attack other devices in the network. In response to this problem, this paper designs a set of automatic detection frameworks for weak passwords for web application systems of IoT devices. Based on this framework, an automated weak password detection system was developed to detect weak Web passwords on IoT devices on the wide-area networks of Beijing, Shandong Province, and Zhejiang Province. A total of 12,179 devices with weak Web passwords were found, accounting for all discovered IoT devices of 7.58%, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

The authors of this paper have previously proposed the global virtual data space system (GVDS) to aggregate the scattered and autonomous storage resources in China’s national supercomputer grid (National Supercomputing Center in Guangzhou, National Supercomputing Center in Jinan, National Supercomputing Center in Changsha, Shanghai Supercomputing Center, and Computer Network Information Center in Chinese Academy of Sciences) into a storage system that spans the wide area network (WAN), which realizes the unified management of global storage resources in China. At present, the GVDS has been successfully deployed in the China National Grid environment. However, when accessing and sharing remote data in the WAN, the GVDS will cause redundant transmission of data and waste a lot of network bandwidth resources. In this paper, we propose an edge cache system as a supplementary system of the GVDS to improve the performance of upper-level applications accessing and sharing remote data. Specifically, we first designs the architecture of the edge cache system, and then study the key technologies of this architecture: the edge cache index mechanism based on double-layer hashing, the edge cache replacement strategy based on the GDSF algorithm, the request routing based on consistent hashing method, and the cluster member maintenance method based on the SWIM protocol. The experimental results show that the edge cache system has successfully implemented the relevant operation functions (read, write, deletion, modification, etc.) and is compatible with the POSIX interface in terms of function. Further, it can greatly reduce the amount of data transmission and increase the data access bandwidth when the accessed file is located at the edge cache system in terms of performance, i.e., its performance is close to the performance of the network file system in the local area network (LAN). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this research was to propose the design of a Wide Area Network to manage the public transit bus fleet in the city of Cabimas. In the context of this network, it was contemplated the design of a smart system for bus stops which share communication with the Global Positioning System installed in the bus fleet and a monitoring-management center from where all the information is to be received from vehicles and bus stops in order for it to be centralized, allowing users to access data and positioning of public transport buses in real time, detailing the vehicle's estimated time of arrival, weather forecasts, among others requests. From a methodological standpoint, the methodology used was that of a descriptive, documentary and nonexperimental study, and theoretically supported by several authors such as Arias (2012), Yin (2012) and Barrera (2013) for its validation. The research was executed through five phases, starting by determining the system requirements, followed by the selection of main components, then the design of the intelligent systems to be interconnected through the WAN, the simulation of said network and finishing with a cost analysis. Therefore, the network topology to be used, the OSI layer model and the physical topology were all identified and simulated using Cisco's Packet Tracer software to observe its operation in a virtual environment. Lastly, from the results obtained, the WAN's logical and physical topologies were accomplished, evidencing its functionality through simulation and within the intelligent transport management system, making it possible to provide the end user with a quality urban transit service, optimizing transportation within the city and thus assisting the technological growth of the locality in accordance with the concept of smart cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electronic government (E-Gov) systems are currently getting recognized as an authentic strategically tool in delivering E-services. Considering the development of information system (IS) as well as the expanding of the internet-based applications in KSA, E-Gov has always been a significant aspect in delivering governmental services. This research has adopted the (IS) success model by both DeLone and McLean (D&M), moreover, it adopted technology acceptance model (TAM) with cybersecurity factors, both models were implemented to discover the status of the IS success then investigate cybersecurity aspects that impact the service efficiency and effectiveness in KSA. Consequently, this research aims to create a model to investigate the IS success model along with cybersecurity factors that influence E-Gov services effectiveness and usage. Therefore, a survey has been applied as the major data gathering approach; the survey has been distributed among 211 users of E-Gov services consistently. Moreover, all research findings were attained through a quantitative method using the structural equation modelling (SEM). Findings revealed that the constructs fundamental of the (IS) success model are strongly influencing users' satisfaction (US) of the E-Gov services; correspondingly, the fundamental constructs factors of cybersecurity with TAM appear to have a strong impacts on perceived risk (PR), in addition, both which affect the E-Gov services towards usage and effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph processing is an emerging computation model for a wide range of applications and graph partitioning is important for optimizing the cost and performance of graph processing jobs. Recently, many graph applications store their data on geo-distributed datacenters (DCs) to provide services worldwide with low latency. This raises new challenges to existing graph partitioning methods, due to the multi-level heterogeneities in network bandwidth and communication prices in geo-distributed DCs. In this article, we propose an efficient graph partitioning method named Geo-Cut, which takes both the cost and performance objectives into consideration for large graph processing in geo-distributed DCs. Geo-Cut adopts two optimization stages. First, we propose a cost-aware streaming heuristic and utilize the one-pass streaming graph partitioning method to quickly assign edges to different DCs while minimizing inter-DC data communication cost. Second, we propose two partition refinement heuristics which identify the performance bottlenecks of geo-distributed graph processing and refine the partitioning result obtained in the first stage to reduce the inter-DC data transfer time while satisfying the budget constraint. Geo-Cut can be also applied to partition dynamic graphs thanks to its lightweight runtime overhead. We evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of Geo-Cut using real-world graphs with both real geo-distributed DCs and simulations. Evaluation results show that Geo-Cut can reduce the inter-DC data transfer time by up to 79 percent (42 percent as the median) and reduce the monetary cost by up to 75 percent (26 percent as the median) compared to state-of-the-art graph partitioning methods with a low overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the problem of a large amount of network bandwidth wasted by data redundancy transmission when the edge client accesses and shares remote data in the GVDS, the caching technology in the wide-area virtual data space system was studied and an edge caching mechanism to optimize the data access path was proposed.The data is cached at a file granularity close to the edge client, thereby improving the performance of upper-level applications to access and share data.The experimental results show that the edge cache system proposed can improve the performance of wide-area data sharing as a supplement to the GVDS.

Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are being increasingly integrated in the distribution systems and resulting in complex power flow scenarios. In such cases, effective control, management and protection of distribution systems becomes highly challenging. Standardized and interoperable communication in distribution systems has the potential to deal with such challenges to achieve higher energy efficiency and reliability. Ed. 2 of IEC 61850 standards, for utility automation, standardizing the exchange of data among different substations, DERs, control centers, PMUs and PDCs. This paper demonstrates the modelling of information and services needed for control, management and protection of distribution systems with integrated DERs. This paper has used IP tunnels and/or mapping over IP layer for transferring IEC 61850 messages, such as sample values (SVs) and GOOSE (Generic Object Oriented Substation Event), over distribution system Wide Area Network (WAN). Finally performance of the proposed communication configurations for different applications is analyzed by calculating End-to-End (ETE) delay, throughput and jitter.

Abstract Cloud computing technology is used in traveling wave fault location, which establishes a new technology platform for multi-terminal traveling wave fault location in complicated power systems. In this paper, multi-terminal traveling wave fault location network is developed, and massive data storage, management, and algorithm realization are implemented in the cloud computing platform. Based on network topology structure, the section connecting points for any lines and corresponding detection placement in the loop are determined first. The loop is divided into different sections, in which the shortest transmission path for any of the fault points is directly and uniquely obtained. In order to minimize the number of traveling wave acquisition unit (TWU), multi-objective optimal configuration model for TWU is then set up based on network full observability. Finally, according to the TWU distribution, fault section can be located by using temporal correlation, and the final fault location point can be precisely calculated by fusing all the times recorded in TWU. PSCAD/EMTDC simulation results show that the proposed method can quickly, accurately, and reliably locate the fault point under limited TWU with optimal placement.

Abstract In this work we propose a secure communication concept for the protection of critical power supply and distribution infrastructure. Especially, we consider the line current differential protection method for modern smart grid implementations. This protection system operates on critical infrastructure, and it requires a precise time behavior on the communication between devices on both ends of a protected power line. Therefore, the communication has to fulfill deterministic constraints and low-delay requirements and additionally needs to be protected against cyber attacks. Existing systems are often either costly and based on deprecated technology or suffering from maloperations. In order to allow for both, economical and reliable operation, we present the first holistic communication concept capable of using state-of-the-art packet switched networks. Our solution consists of three parts: (i) we develop a list of design requirements for line current differential protection systems communication; (ii) we propose a communication concept obeying these design requirements by combining cryptographical and physical security approaches; and (iii) we evaluate our solution in a practical setup. Our evaluation shows a clock accuracy of 3 µs with a resilience to asymmetric delay attacks down to 8 ns/s. This demonstrates the secure and fault-free operation of a line current differential protection system communicating over a state-of-the-art network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]