Argumentation-based fault diagnosis for home networks

A key ingredient of computational argumentation in AI is the generation of arguments in favor of or against claims under scrutiny. In this paper we look at the complexity of argument construction and reasoning in the prominent structured formalism of assumption-based argumentation (ABA). We point out that reasoning in ABA by means of constructing an abstract argumentation framework (AF) gives rise to two main sources of complexity: (i) constructing the AF and (ii) reasoning within the constructed graph. Since both steps are intractable in general, it is no surprise that the best performing state-of-the-art ABA reasoners skip the instantiation procedure entirely and perform tasks directly on the input knowledge base. Driven by this observation, we identify and study atomic and symmetric ABA, two ABA fragments that preserve the expressive power of general ABA, and that can be utilized to have milder complexity in the first or second step. We show that using atomic ABA allows for an instantiation procedure for general ABA leading to polynomially-bounded AFs and that symmetric ABA can be used to create AFs that have mild complexity to reason on. By an experimental evaluation, we show that using the former approach with modern AF solvers can be competitive with state-of-the-art ABA solvers, improving on previous AF instantiation approaches that are hindered by intractable argument construction.

The rapid growth of broadband connections and home networks has created new application opportunities such as video streaming and remote health care. However, managing and securing the increasingly complicated home networks has remained a serious challenge for most home users who have little technical expertise to manage their home networks and connected devices. Towards this end, we will demonstrate HomeTPS, a traffic profiling system for home networks that collects, analyzes and makes sense of home network traffic. The demonstration will show automatic traffic collection from programmable home routers, informative traffic summary reports and behavior profiles for Internet-capable home devices, and real-time discovery of anomalous traffic from Internet attackers or from compromised devices in home networks.

Many organizations and many home users have deployed WiFi networks permitting external users to connect to the Internet through their networks. Such WiFi sharing poses many security risks for the visited network as well as for the visiting user.In this paper, we focus on the recently introduced concept for tunneled WiFi roaming in which the infrastructure of the visited network is considered as part of the security architecture. A secure layer-2 tunneling between the user's device and his home network is performed by the visited network only after the successful authentication of all three parties. The authentication protocol provides the mobile device and its home network with a secret key that protects their end-to-end communication. Additionally, it provides another tunnel key, shared with the visited network, that protects the actual traffic exchanged between the visited and home networks and prevents diverse resource consumption attacks against the latter. This concept encourages users to provide roaming service in a more secure and privacy-friendly way. We show how to implement this concept using the IEEE802.11i/EAP framework, based on existing infrastructures and standard tunneling protocols.

Computational argumentation is primed to strengthen the current hot research field of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), e.g., by dialectical approaches. In this paper, we extend and discuss a recently proposed approach of so-called strong acceptance on abstract argumentation that aims to support explaining argumentative acceptance. Our goal is to push these results into the realm of structured argumentation. In this setting, a knowledge base induces an abstract argumentation framework (AF) via instantiation. We investigate how and under which conditions it is possible to transfer results regarding strong acceptance between the given knowledge base and the induced AF. To this end we consider generic functions formalizing the interaction of the AF and the knowledge base. This approach helps us to infer rather general results making basic assumptions rather than dealing with the technical details of several structured argumentation formalisms. Along the way, we apply our techniques to the concrete approach of assumption-based argumentation (ABA) which constitutes one of the primal structured argumentation formalisms.

In this paper, we present a novel cell outage management (COM) framework for heterogeneous networks with split control and data planes—a candidate architecture for meeting future capacity, quality-of-service, and energy efficiency demands. In such an architecture, the control and data functionalities are not necessarily handled by the same node. The control base stations (BSs) manage the transmission of control information and user equipment (UE) mobility, whereas the data BSs handle UE data. An implication of this split architecture is that an outage to a BS in one plane has to be compensated by other BSs in the same plane. Our COM framework addresses this challenge by incorporating two distinct cell outage detection (COD) algorithms to cope with the idiosyncrasies of both data and control planes. The COD algorithm for control cells leverages the relatively larger number of UEs in the control cell to gather large-scale minimization-of-drive-test report data and detects an outage by applying machine learning and anomaly detection techniques. To improve outage detection accuracy, we also investigate and compare the performance of two anomaly-detecting algorithms, i.e., $k$ -nearest-neighbor- and local-outlier-factor-based anomaly detectors, within the control COD. On the other hand, for data cell COD, we propose a heuristic Grey-prediction-based approach, which can work with the small number of UE in the data cell, by exploiting the fact that the control BS manages UE-data BS connectivity and by receiving a periodic update of the received signal reference power statistic between the UEs and data BSs in its coverage. The detection accuracy of the heuristic data COD algorithm is further improved by exploiting the Fourier series of the residual error that is inherent to a Grey prediction model. Our COM framework integrates these two COD algorithms with a cell outage compensation (COC) algorithm that can be applied to both planes. Our COC solution utilizes an actor-critic-based reinforcement learning algorithm, which optimizes the capacity and coverage of the identified outage zone in a plane, by adjusting the antenna gain and transmission power of the surrounding BSs in that plane. The simulation results show that the proposed framework can detect both data and control cell outage and compensate for the detected outage in a reliable manner.

The WWAN/WLAN two-hop-relay system integrates two types of wireless technologies to improve wireless access throughput and coverage. However, it is unreasonable to assume that all nodes are selfless and willing to relay for other users without an incentive. In this paper, a reputation management framework for Hybrid Wireless Relay Networks is presented. Based on this framework, we show how to collect and query reputation in an accurate, secure and efficient manner. The new reputation function is designed. The simulation results show that our model performs well in terms of convergence overload, communication overload, and performance.

Conventional network management framework can’t keep up pace with network development. A domain partitioned network management framework based-on mobile agent technology is proposed after analyzing the limitation of existing conventional centralized and distributed network fault management model in this paper. Then as an application example of the proposed network management framework, a hierarchical network event correlation system is introduced and network event correlation specific process including local vertical correlation and global horizontal correlation is described. Mobile agent deployment policy and itinerary policy in event correlation system we plan to realize are also listed out. At last the experiments on the fault management model and future works are addressed.

CORBA-based distributed and replicated resource repository architecture for hierarchically configurable home network

This paper presents the design and analysis of general packet radio service (GPRS)-wireless local area network (WLAN) mobility gateway (GWMG) for the integration of GPRS and WLANs. The interworking between GPRS and WLANs is achieved by the GWMG that resides on the border of GPRS and WLAN systems. The design goal is to minimize the modifications in GPRS and WLANs as both systems are already widely available. By deploying the GWMG, users can seamlessly roam among the two systems. Unlike other related work, the proposed GWMG could be used when either the GPRS or WLAN is a user's home network. Both mathematical analysis and simulation are developed to analyze the performance. The proposed GWMG has also been implemented in a testbed comprising a commercial GPRS system. The results show that the GWMG could achieve a design goal that will effectively integrate GPRS and WLANs.

Radio interface and wireless service accesses are two areas, in which wireless networks do not provide the same level of protection as wired networks. It may result in the wireless networks being vulnerable to various attacks. For example, the first generation cellular mobile communication systems, such as advanced mobile phone service (AMPS), and the second generation cellular mobile communication systems, such as global system for mobile (GSM), do not take account of security issues comprehensively. It brings about an intruder to be able to eavesdrop user traffic or even change the identities of mobile phones to gain fraudulent services. Therefore, the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), which is known as the third generation (3G) cellular mobile communication system, is proposed. UMTS adopts the security feature of GSM in order to interwork with GSM smoothly. Furthermore, the UMTS adds new security features to design an authentication and key agreement protocol, which is called UMTS AKA protocol. However, it is found that the UMTS AKA has some problems, including bandwidth consumption between a serving network and a user's home network, space overhead of the serving network and sequence number synchronization. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an extension of UMTS AKA protocol, called UMTS X-AKA to overcome the aforementioned problems of UMTS AKA.

Personal mobility (PM) is one of the key issues in realizing a personal communications service (PCS) in emerging third-generation mobile communication networks such as IMT-2000. It can be realized through the universal personal telecommunication (UPT) service. Two PM management schemes are proposed to manage PM information related to UPT users for incoming call (incall) registration/deregistration, incall registration reset by a mobile terminal (MT) owner, and incall delivery to UPT users in mobile communication networks based on the location information managed by the user's home network. The relative cost, i.e., the ratio of cost per unit time for supporting both terminal mobility (TM) and PM management to that of TM management, is derived, and the effect of PM management is analyzed from the aspects of update or query cost, signaling delivery cost, and processing cost. These results can be utilized in the implementation of PM management in IMT-2000.

The virtual home environment is the concept for personalized services to be portable across network boundaries and between terminals. It enables the ability of a visited network to appear with the same look and feel as the user's home network, software radio extends this concept by the usage of a sole terminal by means of its ability to reconfigure to any technology deployed in the access network. This main feature makes the user unaware of the changes in the radio access technology used for the wireless link. Hence, seamless roaming becomes a worldwide facility whilst maintaining user's conception of remaining in the home environment. Thus, this paper envisages a future trend of making access to mobile communications as user friendly as possible and addresses the specific issues introduced by reconfigurable software terminals accessing a range of global access interface protocols.

In this paper, the author describes the design and implementation of a LDNA (Digtal Living Network Alliance) Framework for Handheld devices. DLNA has developed guidelines for interoperability among home devices enabling a multitude of usage scenarios for sharing digital content such as A V (Audio Visual), Photo, and Audio. The proposed DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) Client Framework handles multiple services like Video and multimedia services in Smart Home networks simultaneously. With this new DLNA framework, the home users can choose various services dynamically and use them with out any complicated pre-configuration with the Home IMS gateway (HIGA). The framework provides smooth data transfer switching in home network between Cellular and Wi-fi/Bluetooth networks to enhance mobility based on user/application preferences. The DLNA Framework also provides QoS measurement and monitoring functionality for multimedia services, which enables users to benefit from high throughput and maintains session continuity during selection of different access networks. Apart from these features, the DLNA Framework provides access to device access protocols like UPnP to facilitate the management of home devices.

Purpose As home users are increasingly responsible for securing their computing devices and home networks, there is a growing need to develop interventions to assist them in protecting their home networking devices, which are vulnerable to attack. To this end, this paper aims to examine the motivating factors that drive South African fibre users to protect their home networking devices. Design/methodology/approach Using the protection motivation theory as the primary framework, a measurement instrument comprising 53 questionnaire items was developed to measure 13 constructs. The study collected empirical data from a sample of 392 South African home fibre users and evaluated the research model using structural equation modelling. Findings The evaluation showed a good fit, with 12 out of 15 predicted hypotheses being accepted for the final research model, contributing to the understanding of the factors that motivate home users to protect their home networking devices. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to model the factors that drive South African home fibre users to protect their home networking devices. Knowing these factors could help home internet service providers and security software vendors of home products to develop security interventions that could assist home fibre users to secure their home networking devices.

In this work, we propose the concept of digital device manual and describe how it can be used for performing certain management tasks. In the context of home networks, we identify. two management tasks that we consider critical: (a) fault management; and (b) maintenance management. Fault management involves the task of detecting, isolating and rectifying faults in the network. These faults could either occur in the communicating medium such as an IEEE 1394b cable or in any of the devices or their components. Maintenance management involves tasks such as the collection,. monitoring and analysis of performance and other data pertaining to the devices and other network elements. In this work, a network that provides the ability to perform these tasks is referred to as a manageable network.