Business Data Communications and Networking: A Research Perspective

403 Pages·2006·6.402 MB·English

by  Jairo Gutiérrez, Jairo Gutiérrez


Business Data
Communications
and Networking:
A Research Perspective
Jaro Gutérrez, Unversty of Auckland, New Zealand
IDeA GRouP PuBlIshING
Hershey • London • Melbourne • Singapore

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Business data communications and networking : a research perspective / Jairo Gutierrez, editor.
p. cm.
Summary: "This book addresses key issues for businesses utilizing data communications and the increasing
importance of networking technologies in business; it covers a series of technical advances in the field while
highlighting their respective contributions to business or organizational goals, and centers on the issues of net-
work-based applications, mobility, wireless networks and network security"--Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59904-274-6 (hardcover) -- ISBN 1-59904-275-4 (softcover) -- ISBN 1-59904-276-2 (ebook)
1. Computer networks. 2. Wireless communication systems. 3. Data transmission systems. 4. Business com-
munication--Data processing. I. Gutierrez, Jairo, 1960-
TK5105.5.B878 2007
004.6--dc22
2006031360
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are
those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher.

Business Data
Communications
and Networking:
A Research Perspective
Table of Contents
Preface............................................................................................................................vi
Section.I:.Network.Design.and.Application.Issues
Chapter.I
Design.of.High.Capacity.Survivable.Networks...........................................................1
Varadharajan Sridhar, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India
June Park, Samsung SDS Company Ltd., Seoul, South Korea
Chapter.II
A Data Mining Driven Approach for Web Classification and Filtering
Based.on.Multimodal.Content.Analysis.....................................................................20
Mohamed Hammami, Faculté des Sciences de Sfax, Tunisia
Youssef Chahir, Université de Caen, France
Liming Chen, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, France
Chapter.III
Prevalent Factors Involved in Delays Associated with Page Downloads................55
Kevin Curran, University of Ulster at Magee, UK
Noel Broderick, University of Ulster at Magee, UK
v
Chapter.IV
Network.Quality.of.Service.for.Enterprise.Resource.Planning.Systems:.
A.Case.Study.Approach...............................................................................................68
Ted Chia-Han Lo, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Jairo Gutiérrez, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Chapter.V
Cost-Based.Congestion.Pricing.in.Network.Priority.Models.
Using.Axiomatic.Cost.Allocation.Methods..............................................................104
César García-Díaz, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Fernando Beltrán, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Section.II:.Mobility
Chapter.VI
Mobile.Multimedia:.Communication.Technologies,.Business.Drivers,.
Service.and.Applications...........................................................................................128
Ismail Khalil Ibrahim, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Ashraf Ahmad, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
David Taniar, Monash University, Australia
Chapter.VII
Mobile.Information.Systems.in.a.Hospital.Organization.Setting.........................151
Agustinus Borgy Waluyo, Monash University, Australia
David Taniar, Monash University, Australia
Bala Srinivasan, Monash University, Australia
Chapter.VIII
Data.Caching.in.a.Mobile.Database.Environment.................................................187
Say Ying Lim, Monash University, Australia
David Taniar, Monash University, Australia
Bala Srinivasan, Monash University, Australia
Chapter.IX
Mining.Walking.Pattern.from.Mobile.Users...........................................................211
John Goh, Monash University, Australia
David Taniar, Monash University, Australia
v
Section.III:.Wireless.Deployment.and.Applications
Chapter.X
Wi-Fi Deployment in Large New Zealand Organizations: A Survey ...................244
Bryan Houliston, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Nurul Sarkar, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Chapter.XI
Applications and Future Trends in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks..............................272
Subhankar Dhar, San Jose University, USA
Section.IV:.Network.Security
Chapter.XII
Addressing WiFi Security Concerns........................................................................302
Kevin Curran, University of Ulster at Magee, UK
Elaine Smyth, University of Ulster at Magee, UK
Chapter.XIII
A SEEP Protocol Design Using 3BC, ECC(Fm).and.HECC.Algorithm................328
2
Byung Kwan Lee, Kwandong University, Korea
Seung Hae Yang, Kwandong University, Korea
Tai-Chi Lee, Saginaw Valley State University, USA
Chapter.XIV
Fighting the Problem of Unsolicited E-Mail Using a Hashcash
Proof-of-Work.Approach..........................................................................................346
Kevin Curran, University of Ulster at Magee, UK
John Honan, University at Ulster at Magee, UK
About.the.Authors......................................................................................................375
Index............................................................................................................................381
v
Preface
Research in the area of data communications and networking is well and alive as this col-
lection of contributions show. The book has received enhanced contributions from the au-
thors that published in the inaugural volume of the International Journal of Business Data
Communications and Networking (http://www.idea-group.com/ijbdcn). The chapters are
divided in four themes: (1) network design and application issues, (2) mobility, (3) wireless
deployment and applications, and (4) network security. The first two sections gathering the
larger number of chapters, which is not surprising given the popularity of the issues presented
on those sections. Within each section the chapters have been roughly organized following
the Physical layer to Application layer sequence with lower-level issues discussed first.
This is not an exact sequence since some chapters deal with cross-layer aspects; however,
it facilitates the reading of the book in a more-or-less logical manner. The resulting volume
is a valuable snapshot of some of the most interesting research activities taking place in the
field of business data communications and networking.
The first section, Network Design and Application Issues, starts with Chapter I, “Design of
High Capacity Survivable Networks,” written by Varadharajan Sridhar and June Park. In it the
authors define Survivability as the capability of keeping at least “one path between specified
network nodes so that some or all of traffic between nodes is routed through”. Based on that
definition the chapter goes on to discuss the issues associated with the design of a surviv-
able telecommunications network architecture that uses high-capacity transport facilities.
Their model considers the selection of capacitated links and the routing of multicommodity
traffic flows with the goal of minimizing the overall network cost. Two node disjoint paths
are selected for each commodity. In case of failure of the primary path, a portion of the
traffic for each commodity will be rerouted through the secondary path. The methodology
presented in the chapter can be used by the network designer to construct cost-effective high
capacity survivable ring networks of low to medium capacity.
v
In Chapter II, “A Data Mining Driven Approach for Web Classification and Filtering Based
on Multimodal Content Analysis,” Mohamed Hammami, Youssef Chahir, and Liming Chen
introduce WebGuard an automatic machine-learning based system that can be used to ef-
fectively classify and filter objectionable Web material, in particular pornographic content.
The system focuses on analyzing visual skin-color content along with textual and structural
content based analysis for improving pornographic Web site filtering. While most of the
commercial filtering products on the marketplace are mainly based on textual content-based
analysis such as indicative keywords detection or manually collected black list checking,
the originality of the authors’ work resides on the addition of structural and visual content-
based analysis along with several data mining techniques for learning about and classifying
content. The system was tested on the MYL test dataset which consists of 400 Websites
including 200 adult sites and 200 non-pornographic ones. The Web filtering engine scored
a high classification accuracy rate when only textual and structural content based analysis
are used, and a slightly higher classification accuracy rate when skin color-related visual
content-based analysis is added to the system. The basic framework of WebGuard can apply
to other categorization problems of Web sites which combine, as most of them do today,
textual and visual content.
Chapter III, “Prevalent Factors involved in Delays Associated with Page Downloads,” tackles
an issue that concerns most Internet users: response times associated with Web page laten-
cies. Kevin Curran and Noel Broderick studied the usage of images and the effect they have
on page retrieval times. A representative sample of academic institutions’ Websites which
were image-intensive was selected and used in the research. Their findings showed that the
prevalent factor that affects how quickly a Web site performs is the type of Web hosting
environment that the site is deployed in. They also found that Web users are faced with a
sliding scale of delays, with no one Web page taking the same time to load on two separate
occasions. It is the number of application packets, not bytes, and the number of simultane-
ous users of the part of the Internet involved in the connection that determines the Web page
latency and satisfaction levels. Finally, the authors discuss the fact that improvements on the
coding of images can reduce latencies but some of the most efficient encoding techniques,
such as PNG, only start to report benefits with larger (more than 900 bytes) images. A large
number of images found during the testing fell in the sub-900 group.
The research reported in Chapter IV, “Network Quality of Service for Enterprise Resource
Planning Systems: A Case Study Approach” by Ted Chia-Han Lo and Jairo Gutiérrez, studied
the relevance of the application of network quality of service (QoS) technologies for modern
enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, explored the state-of-art for QoS technologies
and implementations and, more importantly, provided a framework for the provision of QoS
for ERP systems that utilise Internet protocol (IP) networks. The authors were motivated to
conduct this research after discovering that very little had been investigated on that particular
aspect of ERP systems, even though there was an increasing realisation about the impor-
tance of these types of applications within the overall mix of information systems deployed
in medium and large organisations. Based upon the research problem and the context of
research, a case study research method was selected. Four individual cases—including both
leading ERP vendors and network technology vendors—were conducted. The primary data
collection was done using semi-structured interviews and this data was supplemented by
an extensive array of secondary material. Cross-case analysis confirmed that the traditional
approaches for ensuring the performance of ERP systems on IP networks do not address
network congestion and latency effectively, nor do they offer guaranteed network service
v
quality for ERP systems. Moreover, a cross-case comparative data analysis was used to review
the pattern of existing QoS implementations and it concluded that while QoS is increasingly
being acknowledged by enterprises as an important issue, its deployment remains limited.
The findings from the cross-case analysis ultimately became the basis of the proposed
framework for the provision of network QoS for ERP systems. The proposed framework
focuses on providing a structured, yet practical approach to implement end-to-end IP QoS
that accommodate both ERP systems and their Web-enabled versions based on state-of-art
traffic classification mechanisms. The value of the research is envisioned to be most visible
for two major audiences: enterprises that currently utilised best-effort IP networks for their
ERP deployments and ERP vendors.
The last chapter on this section, Chapter V, “Cost-Based Congestion Pricing in Network
Priority Models Using Axiomatic Cost Allocation Methods,” was written by Fernando Beltrán
and César García-Díaz. The chapter deals with the efficient distribution of congestion costs
among network users. The authors start with a discussion about congestion effects and their
impact on shared network resources. They also review the different approaches found in
the literature, ranging from methods that advocate for congestion-based pricing to methods
that, after being critical about considering congestion, advocate for price definition based
on the investors’ need for return on their investment. Beltrán and García then proceed to
introduce an axiomatic approach to congestion pricing that takes into account some of the
prescriptions and conclusions found in the literature. The method presented in the chapter is
defined on the grounds of axioms that represent a set of fundamental principles that a good
allocation mechanism should have.
The second theme of this book is addressed in the second section, Mobility. The chapters
in this section share that common denominator: the challenges addressed are introduced
by that defining characteristic. The first contribution in this section, Chapter VI, “Mobile
Multimedia: Communication Technologies, Business Drivers, Service and Applications,”
is written by Ismail Khalil Ibrahim, Ashraf Ahmad, and David Taniar. It serves as a great
introduction to the topic of mobility and in particular the field of mobile multimedia which
the authors define as “multimedia information exchange over wireless networks or wireless
Internet.” This chapter discusses the state-of-the-art of the different communication tech-
nologies used to support mobile multimedia, describes the key enabling factor of mobile
multimedia: the popularity and evolution of mobile computing devices, coupled with fast
and affordable mobile networks. Additionally, the authors argue that the range and com-
plexity of applications and services provided to end-users also play an important part in the
success of mobile multimedia.
Chapter VII, “Mobile Information Systems in a Hospital Organization Setting,” written by
Agustinus Borgy Waluyo, David Taniar, and Bala Srinivasan, deals with the issue of provid-
ing mobility in the challenging environment of a hospital. The chapter discusses a practical
realisation of an application using push and pull based mechanisms in a wireless ad-hoc
environment. The pull mechanism is initiated by doctors as mobile clients retrieving and
updating patient records in a central database server. The push mechanism is initiated from
the server without a specific request from the doctors. The application of the push mecha-
nism includes sending a message from a central server to a specific doctor or multicasting a
message to a selected group of doctors connected to the server application. The authors also
discuss their future plans for the system which include the addition of a sensor positioning
device, such as a global positioning system (GPS), used to detect the location of the mobile
users and to facilitate the pushing of information based on that location.
x
Chapter VIII also tackles the issue of mobility but based on a study of the available types
of data caching in a mobile database environment. Say Ying Lim, David Taniar, and Bala
Srinivasan explore the different types of possible cache management strategies in their
chapter, “Data Caching in a Mobile Database Environment.” The authors firstly discuss the
need for caching in a mobile environment and proceed to present a number of issues that
arise from the adoption of different cache management strategies and from the use of strate-
gies involving location-dependent data. The authors then concentrate on semantic caching,
where only the required data is transmitted over the wireless channel, and on cooperative
caching. They also discuss cache invalidation strategies, for both location and non location
dependent queries. The chapter serves as a valuable starting point for those who wish to gain
some introductory knowledge about the usefulness of the different types of cache manage-
ment strategies that can be use in a typical mobile database environment.
In the last chapter of this section, Chapter IX, “Mining Walking Pattern from Mobile Us-
ers,” John Goh and David Taniar deal with the issue of extracting patterns and knowledge
from a given dataset, in this case a user movement database. The chapter reports research
on the innovative examination, using data mining techniques, of how mobile users walks
from one location of interest to another location of interest in the mobile environment.
Walking pattern is the proposed method whereby the source data is examined in order to
find out the 2-step, 3-step and 4-step walking patterns that are performed by mobile users.
A performance evaluation shows the tendency for a number of candidate walking patterns
with the increase in frequency of certain location of interests and steps. The walking pattern
technique has proven itself to be a suitable method for extracting useful knowledge from
the datasets generated by the activities of mobile users. These identified walking patterns
can help decision makers in terms of better understanding the movement patterns of mobile
users, and can also be helpful for geographical planning purposes.
The third section, Wireless Deployment and Applications, has two contributions. Chapter X,
“Wi-Fi Deployment in Large New Zealand Organizations: A Survey,” co-written by Bryan
Houliston and Nurul Sarkar, reports on research conducted on New Zealand where 80 large
organizations were asked about their level of Wi-Fi networks (IEEE 802.11b) deployment,
reasons for non-deployment, the scope of deployment, investment in deployment, problems
encountered, and future plans. The authors’ findings show that most organizations have at
least considered the technology, though a much smaller proportion has deployed it on any
significant scale. A follow up review, included in the chapter, of the latest published case
studies and surveys suggests that while Wi-Fi networks deployment is slowing, interest is
growing on the issue of wider area wireless networks.
The second chapter in the section, by Subhankar Dhar, is “Applications and Future Trends in
Mobile Ad Hoc Networks,” and covers, in a survey style, the current state of the art of mobile
ad hoc networks and some important problems and challenges related to routing, power
management, location management, security as well as multimedia over ad hoc networks.
The author explains that a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a temporary, self-organizing
network of wireless mobile nodes without the support of any existing infrastructure that
may be readily available on the conventional networks and discusses how, since there is
no fixed infrastructure available for MANET with nodes being mobile, routing becomes a
very important issue. In addition, the author also explains the various emerging applications
and future trends of MANET.