UNIFIED NETWORKING SYSTEM AND DEVICE FOR HETEROGENEOUS MOBILE ENVIRONMENTS

• US 20150156122A1
• Filed: 12/02/2014
• Published: 06/04/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 06/06/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Trustees Of Columbia University In The City Of New York (Columbia University)
• Original Assignee: Trustees Of Columbia University In The City Of New York (Columbia University)
• Inventors: ORMAZABAL, Gaston S., SCHULZRINNE, Henning G., SINGH, Amandeep
• Granted Patent: US 10,541,926 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0894 Policy-based network configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0895 Configuration of virtualised networks or elements, e.g. virtualised network function or OpenFlow elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/08 Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/193 at the transport layer, e.g. TCP related
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/20 Traffic policing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/103 across network layers, e.g. resolution of network layer into physical layer addresses or address resolution protocol [ARP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/4511 using domain name system [DNS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/5084 Providing for device mobility network addressing or numbering for mobility support in wireless networks H04W8/26; mobile IP H04W80/04
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/321 Interlayer communication protocols or service data unit [SDU] definitions; Interfaces between layers
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/0226 based on location or mobility handoff or reselection H04W36/00; mobile application services making use of the location of users or terminals H04W4/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/0011 for data sessions of end-to-end connection
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/12 Reselecting a serving backbone network switching or routing node
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/165 for reducing network power consumption H04W36/18 - H04W36/22 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 80/00 Wireless network protocols or protocol adaptations to wireless operation

Abstract

Method for unified networking for a device in heterogeneous mobile environments includes maintaining and monitoring active network interfaces, managing the location of the device, managing network access security, enabling disruption tolerance support for applications, enabling service sharing and session mobility, managing system parameters for one or more active application sessions, managing storage functionality in one or more memory devices, and maintaining a mapping for one or more flows corresponding to the one or more active application sessions, maintaining one or more policies, and performing flow control decisions based upon the policies using a policy engine. The method can also include monitoring for network events, evaluating whether to perform a handover based upon policies, and providing seamless secure handovers in a heterogeneous mobile environment. A device, non-transitory computer-readable medium, and a system for unified networking are also provided.

Claims

1. A device for providing unified networking in a heterogeneous mobile environment comprising:

network hardware including a physical layer;

one or more memory devices having stored therein;

a link layer stacked on top of the physical layer;

a network layer stacked on top of the link layer;

a transport layer stacked on top of the network layer;

an application layer stacked on top of the transport layer;

a physical control function (PCF) between the physical layer and the link layer for managing spectrum channel configuration;

a link control function (LCF) between the link layer and the network layer for providing one or more of mac-address and lookup table control, link status, control, and performance information, network packet lookup, network to device discovery and authentication, handover delay optimizations, and control for virtual interface configuration;

a network control function (NCF) between the network layer and the transport layer for providing one or more of routing table control, multi-homing, mobility, multipath, and on-demand end-to-end security functionalities; and

a control middleware between the application layer and the transport layer for maintaining a mapping for one or more flows, maintaining one or more policies, and performing flow control decisions based on the one or more policies.

2. The device of claim 1, wherein the control middleware is adapted to manage the physical, link, and network control functions.

3. The device of claim 1, wherein the control middleware is adapted to provide one or more of multi-homing, mobility, multipath, service sharing, disruption tolerance, managing discovery of networks, devices, and available physical spectrum channels and combinations thereof.

4. The device of claim 1, wherein the control middleware is configured for communication with a service access manager for controlling network access.

5. The device of claim 1, wherein the NCF is adapted to provide a flow identifier to the transport layer which does not change during the lifetime of the flow even in the event of a mobility event.

6. The device of claim 1, wherein NCF is configured for communication with a mobility manager for handling mobility events.

7. The device of claim 1, wherein LCF is configured for communication with a network information manager that provides information about available networks.

8. The device of claim 1, wherein PCF is configured for communication with a spectrum database manager for transceiver spectrum configuration.

9. The device of claim 1, wherein the control middleware comprises network manager, location manager, security manager, queue manager, service sharing manager, and system manager modules, a data store, and a policy engine for determining when to execute handovers.

10. A method for unified networking for a device in heterogeneous mobile environments comprising:

maintaining and monitoring active network interfaces;

managing the location of the device;

managing network access security;

enabling disruption tolerance support for applications;

enabling service sharing and session mobility;

managing system parameters for one or more active application sessions;

managing storage functionality in one or more memory devices; and

maintaining a mapping for one or more flows corresponding to the one or more active application sessions, maintaining one or more policies, and performing flow control decisions based upon the policies using a policy engine.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein each of the one or more flows comprises a data pipe between the device and a second communication node, each of the one or more flows being identified by a flow identifier that remains constant even in the event of a mobility event.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising one or more sub-flows identified by at least one IP address that is interrupted and reconfigured in the event of a mobility event.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising using the policy engine to perform flow control decisions in real-time to determine whether to complement an existing flow.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein a first flow provided by a first network interface is moved to a second network interface.

15. The method of claim 10, further comprising using the policy engine to perform flow control decisions in real-time to determine whether to supplement an existing flow with a parallel auxiliary connection.

16. The method of claim 10, wherein a first flow comprises a first sub-flow provided by a first network interface and a second sub-flow provided by a second network interface simultaneously.

17. The method of claim 10, wherein a plurality of flows is maintained, each of the plurality of flows having a corresponding network interface.

18. The method of claim 10, wherein the disruption tolerance support is provided when there is no network connectivity or if a policy enforces no network usage.

19. The method of claim 10, wherein the performing flow decisions using the policy engine comprises evaluating current attributes selected from the group consisting of location, time, network cost, network bandwidth, network latency, network presence, network security, device sensor data, application resource usage or combinations thereof.

20. The method of claim 10, further comprising offloading execution of one or more applications to a cloud in the event one or more of the system parameters exceeds a threshold value for the application.

21. The method of claim 10, further comprising offloading execution of one or more applications to a cloud in the event the application requires additional resources.

22. The method of claim 10, further comprising maintaining and updating a knowledge base comprising past network information including one or more of interface, time, location, resource, and bandwidth information.

23. The method of claim 22, using the knowledge base to create a geographic network access map, and using the geographic network access map to perform flow decisions to reduce handover latency.

24. The method of claim 10, further comprising monitoring network performance attributes selected from the group consisting of signal strength, latency, available bandwidth, network presence, security parameter and combinations thereof and creating a network event if one or more of the network performance attributes exceeds a predetermined threshold value.

25. The method of claim 24, further comprising signaling the policy engine about the network event and evaluating policies for each active application session to determine whether to perform a handover from a first network interface to a second network interface.

26. The method of claim 10, wherein enabling service sharing comprises providing service registration for maintaining registered services on the device, evaluating service requests, and performing flow migration to perform session mobility for the device to another device.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein providing service registration comprises:

receiving a service registration request for a service at the policy engine;

passing the service registration request to a service sharing manger;

registering the service in a service registration table in the service sharing manger; and

broadcasting the service to connected devices in parallel.

28. The method of claim 26, wherein evaluating service requests comprises:

receiving a service request for a service from an application at the policy engine;

passing the service request to a service sharing manger;

checking a service registration table in the service sharing manager for the service;

if the service is found in the service registration table, evaluating the service to determine if a service score is above a threshold value; and

notifying the application about the service if the service score is above the threshold value.

29. The method of claim 26, wherein performing flow migration comprises:

receiving a service migration request from an application at the policy engine;

passing the service migration request to a service sharing manger;

checking the service migration request and fetching device details from a service registration table in the service sharing manger;

initiating the flow migration to a second device with the service sharing manager;

synchronizing the flow at the device and the second device;

notifying the application of a migration result.

30. The method of claim 10, wherein the device is a network element selected from the group consisting of a server or a router.

31. The method of claim 30, further comprising receiving a service request at the network element, checking a service table for a service match, returning a service response if a match is found, and forwarding the service request if no match is found.

32. The method of claim 30, further comprising maintaining and updating a knowledge base comprising past network access data for a plurality of devices.

33. The method of claim 32, using the knowledge base to proactively offer services to devices based upon the past network access data.

34. The method of claim 33, wherein the services comprise one or more of security measures that detect Distributed Denial of Service attacks, forensics for understanding security events, providing detailed behavior of UE in the network, location-based services, and forensics.

35. A non-transitory computer-readable medium for operating a device in heterogeneous mobile environments containing computer-executable instructions that when executed cause one or more devices to perform a method for unified networking, the method comprising:

maintaining and monitoring active network interfaces;

managing the location of the device;

managing network access security;

enabling disruption tolerance support for applications;

enabling service sharing and session mobility;

managing system parameters for one or more active application sessions;

managing storage functionality in one or more memory devices; and

maintaining a mapping for one or more flows corresponding to the one or more active application sessions, maintaining one or more policies, and performing flow control decisions based upon the policies using a policy engine.

36. A system for managing network connections in heterogeneous mobile environments for a device, comprising:

one or more storage devices having stored therein a set of rules for maintaining a mapping of one or more flows corresponding to one or more active application sessions and performing flow control decisions, the set of rules being policy based;

one or more transceivers communicatively coupled to at least one network; and

one or more processors operatively coupled to the one or more storage devices and the one or more transceivers, the one or more processors configured to;

receive information about a location of the device and active network interfaces including one or more of bandwidth, cost, and latency parameters;

perform flow control decisions based on the set of rules, the information received about the location of the device and active network interfaces, and one or more of application system resource usage, time, and device type; and

update the mapping of one or more flows corresponding to one or more active application sessions based on results of the flow control decisions.