UIVERSITY OF CAPE TOW

DEPARTMET OF ELECTRICAL EGIEERIG

BSc Thesis Topics

2015

Alexandru Murgu

Offered Topics

Code Title
AM01

Service Slicing in Federated Networks

AM02

Server Migration in Multi-Service Environments

AM03

Topology Control of Service Network Federation

AM04

Adaptive Service Provisioning in IP/MPLS Networks

AM05

Data Centre Virtualization

AM06

Overlay Multicasting as Virtualization Method

AM07

Pipeline Streams for Bandwidth Virtualization

AM08

Collaborative Proxy Caching for Video Streaming

AM09

Autonomous Retrieval in Contents Distribution Networks

AM10

Smart Mobility Management via RSVP Enhancement

ID:
Title:
Description:

AM01
Service Slicing in Federated Networks
The real challenge behind network federation is providing
complete management infrastructures or service slices which
brings some advantages in respect to legacy management
system architectures. The managed services can be exposed as
Web services, which can be exported or connected directly to
external SOA applications. SOA helps eliminate the network
management complications and allows network components
and services to be accessed horizontally, vertically, and
externally. A particularly important challenge is the capability
to federate different infrastructures.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate knowledge of service oriented
architecture (SOA) principles and interdomain management in
mobile network environments. The main task will be the
advancing of SOA designs to eliminate the network of layers
and allow the network components and services to be accessed
horizontally, vertically, and externally. A technical presentation
on the subject matters will be done and a CD-ROM containing
all the relevant literature, software and research results will be
written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Communication networks knowledge, MATLAB/OPNET.
Extra:
Experiments for practical demonstration.
Area:
Service Management in Communication Networks.

ID:
Title:
Description:

AM02
Server Migration in Multi-Service Environments
The generalized trend of all-service broadband networks
constrains the Internet to evolve towards supporting services
with accurately controlled quality of service (QoS). Network
intensive applications imply a degradation of the network QoS
and interference with the mandated service level agreements
(SLAs) of the other applications. To improve this situation, a
server migration approach of the input/output intensive
networking applications is to be designed.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate knowledge the following aspects:
a) hypervisor deployment in a virtual server management; b)
impact of virtual server migration on the application SLA.
Performance estimation/prediction is the hypervisor capability
which is based on the information from managed subsystems.
A technical presentation on the subject matters will be done
and a CD-ROM containing all the relevant literature, software
and research results will be written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Communication networks knowledge, MATLAB/OPNET.
Extra:
Experiments for practical demonstration.
Area:
Service Management in Communication Networks.

ID:
Title:
Description:

AM03
Topology Control of Service Network Federation
The problem of determining the maximum Hello interval
preserving the connectivity with high probability is an important
problem in packet switching networks. Since the execution of a
protocol is computationally a resource consuming task, the
solution to this problem is improving the performance of the
protocol in sense of power consumption and topology control
overhead.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate the acquisition of fundamental
knowledge about the packet switched networks, topology
aspects, and the traffic mapping over the controlled network
topologies. A technical presentation on the subject matters will
be done and a CD-ROM containing all the relevant literature,
software and research results will be written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Analytical/mathematical skills, MATLAB Optimization Toolbox.
Extra:
More than one student can choose this topic.
Area:
Telecommunication Management, Control and Signalling

ID:
Title:
Description:

AM04
Adaptive Service Provisioning in IP/MPLS Networks

Providing differentiated survivability services based on fault

tolerant networks has become an important issue in the
evolution of IP networks. High-priority traffic may require very
low recovery time, while other traffic may not need such a high
quality of fault tolerance. Adopting a multi-level bandwidth
provisioning approach is a solution for providing differentiated
services adaptation to different survivability classes.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate the acquisition of knowledge in fault
tolerant networks, service differentiation, service level
agreement and committed network availability grades. A JAVA
software agent for service protection planning will be
implemented. A technical presentation on the subject matters
will be done and a CD-ROM containing all the relevant
literature, software and research results will be written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Communication networks knowledge, JAVA programming.
Extra:
Graphical interface for practical case study demonstration
Area:
Service Oriented Architectures, BSS/OSS

ID:
Title:
Description:

AM05
Data Centre Virtualization
Cost efficiency is a key aspect in deploying distributed service in
networks within decentralized service delivery architectures.
The placement of service components to network sites is an
optimization problem which is called the k-Component Multi-site
Placement Problem describes the service distribution in
networking scenarios. Relevant research aspects include costs
represented by round-trip time (RTT) originating from real
networks to demonstrate the significance of the cost reduction
for a the random virtualization strategy of data centres.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate knowledge of network virtualization
principles and will involve the network simulators to implement
random placement of the data centers in an overlay network. A
technical presentation on the subject matters will be done and a
CD-ROM containing all the relevant literature, software and
research results will be written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Communication networks knowledge, VMware/Virtualbox.
Extra:
Experiments for practical demonstration.
Area:
Applications of Communication Networks.

ID:
Title:
Description:

AM06
Overlay Multicasting as Virtualization Method
The overlay networks are maintained by deploying a number of
specially-designed overlay nodes and connecting them by
purchasing logical links with certain bandwidth guarantee from
Internet Service Providers. The service overlay network can
support value-added services by implementing multicasting
functionalities at the overlay nodes. This overlay network can
be understood as a virtualization construct which enhance the
flexibility in the future Internet.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate knowledge of multi-rate multicast
flow control in service overlay networks. Simulations will
characterize the multi-rate multicast performance and solve
heuristically the intra-session unfairness problem by increasing
the complexity of branching nodes. A technical presentation on
the subject matters will be done and a CD-ROM containing all
the relevant literature, software and research results will be
written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Communication networks knowledge, OPNET.
Extra:
Experiments for practical demonstration
Area:
Service Management in Communication Networks

ID:
Title:
Description:

AM07
Pipeline Streams for Bandwidth Virtualization
In general networks, the traffic acceleration grows when the
capacity
availability
is
detected
via
the
throughput
measurements. Conversely, the traffic intensity slows down
when the increased throughput does not translate into
increased throughput. Traditional client/server based video on
demand service can be bandwidth intensive and expensive to
maintain, especially for high quality video content. Streaming
reduces this delay, ideally allowing users to start watching
immediately.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate the acquisition of knowledge about
bandwidth virtualization and video on demand services. The
central point is to research the effectiveness of combining the
cache virtualization and end-user stream reception capabilities
towards a reduction of load on servers and ISPs. A technical
presentation on the subject matters will be done and a CD-ROM
containing all the relevant literature, software and research
results will be written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Communication networks, OPNET.
Extra:
Video interface for practical demonstration
Area:
Network Processes and Operations

ID:
Title:
Description:

AM08
Collaborative Proxy Caching for Video Streaming
Recent years have witnessed the tremendous success of the
peer-to-peer (P2P) communication paradigm. With each
participating node contributing its own resources, the P2P
communication architecture scales well with user population.
To minimize the access latency, proxy caching has been widely
suggested for P2P applications. P2P live streaming traffic
exhibits strong localities that could be explored by caching.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate knowledge of P2P streaming and
proxy caching. Simulation experiments will provide a systematic
study on the proxy caching for P2P live streaming. Real data
request of the popular P2P live streaming application, PPLive
will identify its key characteristics (in particular, the request
time of the same data piece from different peers exhibiting a
generalized extreme value distribution). A technical presentation on the subject matters will be done and a CD-ROM
containing all the relevant literature, software and research
results will be written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Communication networks knowledge, OMNET.
Extra:
Experiments for practical demonstration.
Area:
Applications of Communication Networks.

ID:
Title:
Description:

AM09
Autonomous Retrieval in Contents Distribution Networks
A replication group is a set of nodes in a network that
cooperate in order to effectively retrieve information objects
from a remote server. Each node locally replicates a subset of
the contents objects and can access objects stored by other
nodes in the group at a smaller cost, compared to the cost of
accessing them from the server. Given that nodes are
autonomous and independently decide which objects to
replicate, the problem is to construct efficient distributed
algorithms for content replication that induce low average
access cost.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate knowledge of the principles of
content or data replication and the search optimization
methods. A technical presentation on the subject matters will
be done and a CD-ROM containing all the relevant literature,
software and research results will be written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Communication networks knowledge, MATLAB/OPNET.
Extra:
Experiments for practical demonstration.
Area:
Service Management in Communication Networks.

D:
Title:
Description:

AM10
Smart Mobility Management via RSVP Enhancement
As the demand for wireless connectivity increased, the
communications industry has invented new and innovative
systems including the Mobile Voice-over-IP (Mobile VoIP). The
user with a dual-mode (cellular and Wi-Fi) smartphone can
seamlessly access mobile and VoIP networks when entering into
a hot spot. The key issue in such systems is the control of
mobility-specific information (binding updates and their
associated acknowledgments) by using a new set of RSVP
objects embedded into the existing RSVP messages.
Deliverables: The thesis will demonstrate knowledge of the RSVP as a
signaling protocol and to be complemented with the routing
protocols such as Mobile IP (MIP) which is the current
standardized mobility protocol by IETF to facilitate mobility of
end nodes in a wireless environment. Simulation experiments
will be done to show the RSVP performance contribution to the
overall Mobile VoIP networks. A technical presentation on the
subject matters will be done and a CD-ROM containing all the
relevant literature, software and research results will be
written.
Prerequisites: EEE4087F-B.
Skills:
Communication networks knowledge, OPNET.
Extra:
Experiments for practical demonstration
Area:
Applications of Telecommunication Networks