RAFALE: Rethinking the provisioning of virtuAl network services using a Fast and scAlable machine LEarning approach

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has been identified to revamp the provisioning of next-generation network services. This new paradigm allows cloud and network/service providers to compose their network services, also known as service function chains (SFCs), in an agile way since the software of the network function is decoupled from the legacy hardware. To reap the benefits of this new technology, there is a need for novel mechanisms that help cloud and network/service providers deploy the increasingly complex virtual network services seamlessly, efficiently, and in a time-efficient way. Existing state-of-the-art techniques often rely on the Integer Linear Programming framework, heuristics/metaheuristics, and greedy methods to deploy the services function chains. However, these techniques although reasonable and acceptable, still suffer from several key limitations: convergence time and scalability. To this end, we propose RAFALE, a suite of solution techniques, to tame this complexity by leveraging the concept of similarity from machine learning and skip-gram modeling framework. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to tackle these key limitations and propose a suite of solutions to them. RAFALE, a novel approach proposed to find the similarity between the new incoming virtual network service request and all the already-deployed services to learn from the previous experience of deploying techniques and use the same or close similar provisioning techniques. RAFALE is the first and the only method that develops the idea of detecting the similarity between virtual network services. Experimental results show that RAFALE reduces greatly the convergence time needed for provisioning virtual network services and can scale to 100 virtual network functions per virtual network service compared to the state-of-the-art. The Experimental results prove that RAFALE accomplished the NFV promises; decreasing the time and complexity of managing and deploying the virtual services, and providing a solution that is agile, faster, and scalable to deploy the new service requests by skipping one or more service provisioning steps (i.e., detecting and resolving the conflicts among policies, placement, and chaining) while satisfying the validated NFV policies.

     

The holistic impact assessment of shopping centres: the case of Bab Ezzouar,Algeria

This paper proposes a new tool for assessing the impacts of shopping centres on the urban ecosystem. This decision-making tool is innovative because it is holistic: a holistic impact assessment (HIA). It can take into account all the impacts of shopping centres, viz. economic, social, environmental (natural and built environment) ones and their impact on urban governance. The assessment approaches adopted so far tend to focus on the socio-economic impact or on the transport infrastructure one, and to a lesser extent, the environmental impact. Yet, the whole urban ecosystem is affected at several spatial scales. The paper reports the use of the HIA tool applied to a case study, Bab Ezzouar regional shopping centre in Algiers, showing its operational ability when integrated in the urban and commercial sustainable planning process.     

Mobility Management Approaches for Mobile IP Networks: Performance Comparison and Use Recommendations

In wireless networks, efficient management of mobility is a crucial issue to support mobile users. The Mobile Internet Protocol (MIP) has been proposed to support global mobility in IP networks. Several mobility management strategies have been proposed which aim reducing the signaling traffic related to the Mobile Terminals (MTs) registration with the Home Agents (HAs) whenever their Care-of-Addresses (CoAs) change. They use different Foreign Agents (FAs) and Gateway FAs (GFAs) hierarchies to concentrate the registration processes. For high-mobility MTs, the Hierarchical MIP (HMIP) and Dynamic HMIP (DHMIP) strategies localize the registration in FAs and GFAs, yielding to high-mobility signaling. The Multicast HMIP strategy limits the registration processes in the GFAs. For high-mobility MTs, it provides lowest mobility signaling delay compared to the HMIP and DHMIP approaches. However, it is resource consuming strategy unless for frequent MT mobility. Hence, we propose an analytic model to evaluate the mean signaling delay and the mean bandwidth per call according to the type of MT mobility. In our analysis, the MHMIP outperforms the DHMIP and MIP strategies in almost all the studied cases. The main contribution of this paper is the analytic model that allows the mobility management approaches performance evaluation.     

CeO2 nanoscale particles: Synthesis,characterization and photocatalytic activity under UVA light irradiation

CeO_2 nanoparticles(NPs) were synthesized in alkaline medium via the homogeneous precipitation method and were subsequently calcined at 80 ℃/24 h(assigned as CeO_2-80) and 500 ℃/2 h(assigned as CeO_2-500). The as-prepared materials and the commercial ceria(assigned as CeO_2-com) were characterized using TGA-MS, XRD, SEM-EDX, UV-vis DRS and IEP techniques. The photocatalytic performances of all obtained photocatalysts were assessed by the degradation of Congo red azo-dye(CR) under UVAlight irradiation at various environmental key factors(e.g., reaction time and calcination temperature).Results reveal that CeO_2 compounds crystalize with cubic phase, CeO_2-500 exhibits smaller crystallite size(9 nm vs 117 nm) than that of bare CeO_2-com. SEM analysis shows that the materials are sphericallike in shape NPs with strong assembly of CeO_2 NPs observed in the CeO_2-500 NPs. EDX analysis confirms the stoichiometry of CeO_2 NPs. UV-vis DRS measurement reveals that, CeO_2-500 NPs exhibits a red-shift of absorption band and a more narrow bandgap(2.6 eV vs 3.20 eV) than that of bare CeO_2-com. On the contrary, Urbach energy of Eu is found to be increased from 0.12 eV(CeO_2-com) to 0.17 eV(CeO_2-500),highlighting an increase of crystalline size and internal microstrain in the CeO_2-500 NPs sample. Zeta potential(IEP) of CeO_2-500 NPs is found to be 7.2. UVA-light-responsive photocatalytic activity is observed with CeO_2-500 NPs at a rate constant of 10×10~(-3) min~(-1), which is four times higher than that of CeO_2-com(K_(app)=2.4×10~(-3) min~(-1)) for the degradation of CR. Pseudo-first-order kinetic model gives the best fit. On the basis of the energy band diagram positions, the enhanced photocatalytic performance of CeO_2-500 nano-catalyst can be ascribed to O_2~-, 'OH and R'~+ as the primary oxidative species involved in the degradation of RC under UVA-light irradiation.