Muhammad Shahid Iqbal, Muthuraman Elangovan, Chien Chen, Jyh-Cheng Chen
{"title":"P4-QUPF: A P4-Based QoS Framework for 5G-UPF","authors":"Muhammad Shahid Iqbal, Muthuraman Elangovan, Chien Chen, Jyh-Cheng Chen","doi":"10.1002/nem.70028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70028","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The demands of today's 5G mobile network, especially low latency and high bandwidth, are a big challenge for the 5G Core (5GC) provider. The most critical user data packet handler in the 5GC network function (NF) is the user plane function (UPF), which is responsible for moving data from the user equipment to the destination data network, and vice versa. Existing work mainly focuses on implementing UPF using the key technologies of high-speed data processing. In this paper, with a mobile core provider called free5GC for a stand-alone (SA) 5G network, we share our experience with the implementation of UPF by using a programmable hardware appliance, which can offer more Tbps compared with the implementation of software UPF that can offer only a few hundred Gbps. For that, we demonstrate how to build up a more flexible architecture of UPF by using the software-defined networking (SDN) concept due to the opacity of protocol specification. We split the UPF control signal implementation into a software application and user data packet processing into a programmable hardware appliance. We also show how to integrate a number of current UPF data plane free5GC implementations, such as Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), Linux kernel module, and SmartNIC. Furthermore, we analyze and make use of microservices to support the specific features of the UPF data plane that cannot be implemented in a programmable hardware appliance. We tested our free5GC mobile network and the new UPF design architecture that can run on a real programmable hardware appliance from Accton CSP-7551. The evaluation results show that our programmable user plane can reach the line rate.</p>","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/nem.70028","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145146348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jana Gómez Tabladillo, Miguel Ángel Sicilia Urbán, María Elena García Barriocanal
{"title":"Effects of Fractionalizing NFTS in the Art Market: An Empirical Study of Fractional Art","authors":"Jana Gómez Tabladillo, Miguel Ángel Sicilia Urbán, María Elena García Barriocanal","doi":"10.1002/nem.70027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70027","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In 2014, the art world began using NFTs. Since then, the exponential increase in the price of some of these digital artworks has made them inaccessible to many small investors and private collectors. For this reason, various protocols such as Fractional.art have emerged to democratize the process, allowing users to fractionalize NFTs to make trading more fluid. The objective of this article is to analyze the NFTs fractionated into ERC-20 tokens using the Fractional.art protocol, with the aim of determining the contribution of fractionation to the liquidity of the assets, among others. The research method employed is an empirical analysis based on quantitative research to identify key characteristics and trends to support the initial hypothesis. This is combined with a qualitative approach to provide a deeper understanding. The results show that fragmentation has a positive effect on the liquidity of the NFT when the user decides to trade it. This means that fractionated NFTs can benefit from certain liquidity advantages of centralized investment markets, thereby facilitating trading. While NFTs have received increasing scholarly attention, most research on fractionalized NFTs has focused on the theoretical and technical design of fractionation protocols. Although recent studies have begun to empirically examine NFT market dynamics more broadly, there remains limited evidence on whether fractionalization effectively enhances liquidity. This article seeks to contribute to that emerging area by offering a focused, data-driven analysis of F-NFT liquidity and user behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/nem.70027","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145146556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kun Wen, Luya Ju, Tao Chen, Jun Li, Hengji Qi, An Zhao
{"title":"A Survey of IPv6 Active Address Discovery","authors":"Kun Wen, Luya Ju, Tao Chen, Jun Li, Hengji Qi, An Zhao","doi":"10.1002/nem.70026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70026","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The core of IPv6 active address discovery lies in identifying operational network devices, which serve as the foundation for various network applications. However, the vast address space of IPv6 presents significant challenges to network discovery, including inefficiencies of traditional scanning tools (such as ZMap and Masscan), uncertainties arising from dynamic address allocation, sparsity in address distribution, and limitations of current discovery techniques in regions lacking seed addresses. To address these challenges, researchers have developed various address discovery methods aimed at maximizing the identification of active IPv6 addresses within constrained resource budgets. This paper summarizes and analyzes existing active address discovery methods and evaluates their performance in real-world environments. Our work includes classifying detection techniques and outlining the current research landscape for address discovery in regions without seed addresses. Through experiments conducted in real network environments, we evaluate and contrast different probing algorithms using four performance metrics: hit rate, hierarchical prefix coverage, aliased addresses, and address discovery rate. Furthermore, we discuss the challenges faced by current IPv6 active address discovery methods in practical applications. Despite numerous advancements, the field of IPv6 active address discovery still requires further research and exploration.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145101497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A2C Reinforcement Learning for Cryptocurrency Trading: Analyzing the Impact of Price Prediction Accuracy and Data Granularity","authors":"Changhoon Kang, Jongsoo Woo, James Won-Ki Hong","doi":"10.1002/nem.70024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70024","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper investigates the application of the Advantage Actor–Critic (A2C) reinforcement learning model in cryptocurrency trading and portfolio management, focusing on the impact of price prediction accuracy and data granularity on model performance. The highly volatile and 24/7 operating cryptocurrency market presents unique challenges that require sophisticated trading strategies. Our study examines how varying levels of noise in price predictions affect the A2C model's ability to manage a diversified portfolio and generate returns, revealing that higher prediction accuracy leads to improved performance. Additionally, we explore the role of data granularity, finding that overly fine-grained data introduce excessive noise that impairs the model's performance, whereas data processed at 6- and 12-h intervals optimize trading efficiency and profitability. These findings show the importance of maintaining sufficient prediction accuracy and selecting appropriate data granularity to enhance the effectiveness of reinforcement learning models in cryptocurrency trading, providing valuable insights for developing robust artificial intelligence (AI)-driven trading strategies in volatile markets.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144869737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Comprehensive Survey of Lightning Network Technology and Research","authors":"Changhoon Kang, Jongsoo Woo, James Won-Ki Hong","doi":"10.1002/nem.70023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70023","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Bitcoin is the first decentralized digital currency built upon blockchain technology and has facilitated financial innovation and technological advancement. However, the growth in its popularity has uncovered the limitations of the blockchain technology, leading to issues such as transaction congestion, high transaction fees, and delayed confirmations. This has motivated the exploration of the Lightning Network, a payment channel network designed to enhance Bitcoin's scalability and transaction efficiency. Serving as a layer-2 protocol, the Lightning Network supports off-chain transactions, significantly reducing fees and enabling swift and cost-effective micro payments. This paper comprehensively examines the technology, open source implementations, and relevant research of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, covering key categories such as “network analysis,” “network security,” “payment routing,” “rebalancing,” and “network design and applications.” With the Lightning Network's increasing importance in the blockchain and financial domains, this survey provides a valuable resource for researchers seeking to explore this technology in greater depth.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144811187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Baskar K, Peter Soosai Anandaraj A, Ramesh P. S., Swedhaa Mathivanan
{"title":"QoS-Aware Load Balancing in Cloud Computing Based on Chronological Kookaburra Optimization Algorithm","authors":"Baskar K, Peter Soosai Anandaraj A, Ramesh P. S., Swedhaa Mathivanan","doi":"10.1002/nem.70020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70020","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In cloud computing environments, user requests often lead to varying load conditions across the system, resulting in underloaded, overloaded, or balanced states. Both underloading and overloading can cause system inefficiencies, including increased power consumption, prolonged execution times, and higher machine failure rates. Therefore, effective load balancing (LB) becomes a critical aspect of task scheduling in cloud systems, whether at the level of virtual machines (VMs) or independently. To address these challenges, this paper proposes the Chronological Kookaburra Optimization Algorithm (ChKOA) for efficient LB in cloud computing (CC). The proposed ChKOA is the combination of chronological concept with the Kookaburra Optimization Algorithm (KOA). Initially, tasks are assigned to VMs in a round-robin manner. Based on specific VM parameters, the VMs are classified into overloaded and underloaded categories using deep embedded clustering (DEC). Tasks in overloaded VMs are prioritized and redistributed to underloaded VMs, considering factors such as supply, demand, capacity, predicted load, and key Quality of Service (QoS) metrics, including resource availability and reliability. Load prediction is performed using a Deep Residual Network (DRN). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ChKOA achieves a balanced load of 0.535, capacity utilization of 0.954, resource availability of 0.954, reliability of 0.936, and a computational cost of 0.327 s.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144725705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lizhuang Tan, Xin Dong, Xiaochuan Gao, Peiying Zhang, Wei Su, James Won-Ki Hong
{"title":"Enhancing QUIC Performance in Heterogeneous Networks: A Proactive Connection Migration Approach","authors":"Lizhuang Tan, Xin Dong, Xiaochuan Gao, Peiying Zhang, Wei Su, James Won-Ki Hong","doi":"10.1002/nem.70022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70022","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC) protocol provides a secure, reliable, and low-latency communication foundation for HTTP/3. Connection migration is a key technology of QUIC. When the IP/Port of a connection changes, the connection ID is used to maintain a secure and uninterrupted connection. However, current connection migration is passive, designed to support mobile handover and weak network environments. In this paper, we propose proactive connection migration for QUIC (PCM-QUIC), which combines connection migration and online path selection, enabling QUIC to select the best quality transmission path while maintaining the connection. First, PCM-QUIC integrates the exploration of network quality across different paths into multiple user request actions. Then, considering response completion time and jitter, PCM-QUIC identifies the optimal access path for the current Internet service through online learning. In addition, we propose an upper confidence bound-based path selection algorithm with the goal of minimizing the confidence upper limit of the path reward. Experimental results show that, compared with the original QUIC, PCM-QUIC reduces the average response completion time by up to 59.43%.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144681053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial for the Special Issue on Research Trends in Network Operations and Management With Selected Papers From the 42nd Brazilian Symposium on Computer Networks and Distributed Systems","authors":"Célio Albuquerque, Magnos Martinello","doi":"10.1002/nem.70021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70021","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Brazilian Symposium on Computer Network and Distributed Systems (SBRC) is an annual event held by the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC) and the Computer Network Laboratory (LARC). Over the course of more than four decades, SBRC has established itself as the most important Brazilian scientific event in computer networks and distributed systems, reaching international coverage with the presence of researchers, technicians and scientists from Latin America and the world. The 42nd edition of the symposium was held from May 20–24, 2024 in the city of Niterói, at the Fluminense Federal University.</p><p>In the first contribution, entitled “MTS-PolKA: Weighted Multipath Traffic Splitting With Source Routing for Elephant and Mice Flows,” dos Santos et al. present MTS-PolKA, a novel traffic engineering mechanism for datacenter networks that enhances packet-level traffic splitting across multiple paths. Unlike traditional methods like ECMP and WCMP, MTS-PolKA dynamically adjusts traffic division using source-routing labels embedded in packet headers—without requiring reconfiguration of network switches. Implemented in P4 and leveraging the Residue Number System (RNS), MTS-PolKA demonstrates improved flow stability, agility, and efficient multipath utilization through experiments in Mininet.</p><p>In the second paper, entitled “Performance and Resilience Impact of Microservice Granularity: An Empirical Evaluation using Service Weaver and Amazon EKS,” Medeiros Rêgo et al. study how service granularity affects performance and resilience in cloud-based microservice applications. Using the Service Weaver framework and deploying the Online Boutique app on Amazon EKS, the study reveals that finer granularity improves scalability but increases communication overhead, while cloud-native resilience features mitigate failures at the cost of performance, especially in tightly coupled configurations. Our findings emphasize the need to strike a careful balance between service granularity, performance, and resilience to build robust and efficient cloud-based microservice applications.</p><p>In the third contribution, entitled “Beyond Size: Investigating the Impact of Scaled-Down Network Telescopes on Threat Detection,” Camargo et al. examine how reducing IPv4 address space affects the effectiveness of network telescopes used in cyber threat intelligence. As IPv4 becomes scarcer, organizations face pressure to repurpose addresses, potentially weakening threat detection. By analyzing two telescopes, the research shows that even with a 50% reduction in space, it is still possible to detect around 80% of unique attack sources, and that address allocation patterns have minimal impact on detection accuracy.</p><p>In the fourth contribution, entitled “An Adaptive Routing Architecture for IoT Multipath Video Transmission,” Bhering et al. present a dynamic wireless multipath routing architecture designed to improve video application performance in multihop IoT networks. By ","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/nem.70021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144582178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Camila Medeiros Rêgo, Ricardo César Mendonça Filho, Nabor C. Mendonça
{"title":"Performance and Resilience Impact of Microservice Granularity: An Empirical Evaluation Using Service Weaver and Amazon EKS","authors":"Camila Medeiros Rêgo, Ricardo César Mendonça Filho, Nabor C. Mendonça","doi":"10.1002/nem.70019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70019","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Determining the optimal granularity level for microservices applications is a critical challenge in modern software architecture. This study leverages the Service Weaver framework to investigate the performance and resilience implications of different service granularity configurations in a public cloud environment. We deployed multiple configurations of the Online Boutique microservice demo application on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and conducted a series of experiments to evaluate their behavior under varying workloads and failure conditions. Our results indicate that distributing services across multiple EKS nodes can significantly enhance scalability, particularly under high workloads, but at the cost of increased communication overhead. We also found that while cloud-native resilience mechanisms, such as automatic re-starts and retries, effectively mitigate frequent random failures, they tend to impose a notable performance overhead, especially in configurations with tightly coupled services. Our findings highlight the importance of carefully balancing service granularity with both performance and resilience considerations when designing robust cloud-based microservice applications.</p>","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/nem.70019","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144473050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Diego Abreu, David Moura, Christian Esteve Rothenberg, Antônio Abelém
{"title":"QuantumNetSec: Quantum Machine Learning for Network Security","authors":"Diego Abreu, David Moura, Christian Esteve Rothenberg, Antônio Abelém","doi":"10.1002/nem.70018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.70018","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As the digital landscape becomes increasingly complex, traditional cybersecurity measures are struggling to keep pace with the growing sophistication of cyber threats. This escalating challenge calls for new, more robust solutions. In this context, quantum computing emerges as a powerful tool that can change our approach to network security. Our research addresses this by introducing QuantumNetSec, a novel intrusion detection system (IDS) that combines quantum and classical computing techniques. QuantumNetSec employs quantum machine learning (QML) personalized methodologies to analyze network patterns and detect malicious activities. Through detailed experimentation with publicly shared datasets, QuantumNetSec demonstrated superior performance in both binary and multiclass classification tasks. Our findings highlight the significant potential of quantum-enhanced cybersecurity solutions, showcasing QuantumNetSec's ability to accurately detect a wide range of cyber threats, paving the way for more resilient and effective IDSs in the age of quantum utility.</p>","PeriodicalId":14154,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Network Management","volume":"35 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/nem.70018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144190844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}