| Objective: |
In this project, the PI explores an innovative idea of applying key
concepts and mechanisms from the biological world onto network application
designs to enable construction of large scale network applications. The
Bio-Networking Architecture that the PI proposes is inspired by the
observation that the biological world has already developed the mechanisms
necessary to achieve the key requirements for the Next Generation Internet
(NGI), such as scalability, adaptability to heterogeneous and dynamic
conditions, security, survivability, and simplicity. In the biological
world, each individual entity (e.g., a bee in a bee colony) follows a
simple set of behavior rules (e.g., migration, reproduction, energy
exchange, mutation, and death), yet a group of entities (e.g. a bee
colony) exhibits complex, emergent behavior (e.g., adaptation, evolution,
security, survivability/availability). Therefore, if services and
applications adopt biological concepts and mechanisms, they too may be
able to achieve the key requirements of NGI.
The PI has shown the feasibility of the Bio-Networking Architecture
through simulation and is currently conducting empirical
design/implementation of the Bio-Networking Architecture. |
| Approach: |
The goal of the project is to apply key concepts and mechanisms from
the biological world to design and empirically evaluate the new network
architecture called the Bio-Networking Architecture. The innovative claims
of the proposed project include:
- The proposed Bio-Networking Architecture is the first attempt to
apply the biological concepts of emergent behavior, autonomous control,
and adaptation and evolution to a broad and general class of network
services and applications.
- The Bio-Networking Architecture enables the construction of services
and applications that meet the key requirements of NGI. Scalability is
achieved because cyber-entities act autonomously, and on a local basis
using only local information. Construction of the service or application
is simplified because only relatively simple behaviors at the
cyber-entity level need to be designed. The other requirements of
adaptation, security, and survivability/availability are simply the
emergent behavior of the cyber-entities acting collectively.
- Services and applications designed using the Bio-Networking
Architecture adapt to heterogeneous and dynamically changing network
conditions through the autonomous actions of their cyber-entities, each
exhibiting simple behaviors. They also evolve to more desirable
behaviors through the mutation and natural selection mechanisms of the
Bio-Networking Architecture.
The PI's approaches to the Bio-Networking Architecture are to
investigate the feasibility through simulations and to empirically
evaluate the Bio-Networking Architecture through prototype design and
implementation. Both approaches are briefly summarized below.
The PI has developed a simulator for the Bio-Networking Architecture in
Java. The simulator can simulate a wide variety of network topologies and
user demand workloads. It can also simulate cyber-entities with different
behavior policies. Simulator source code is available at
netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/resources/.
Design for the Bio-Networking Architecture is described in the
technical report submitted in December 1999, and it is summarized below.
In the Bio-Networking Architecture, services and applications are
implemented by super-entity, i.e., a collection of multiple entities
called cyber-entities (as a bee colony consists of multiple bees). (See
Fig.1 at
http://netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/darpa-report/Tech/figure1.gif).
These cyber-entities have functionality related to their service or
application and follow simple behavior rules (e.g., migration,
reproduction, energy exchange, mutation, death) similar to biological
entities. (See Fig.2 at
http://netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/darpa-report/Tech/figure2.gif) The
Bio-Networking platform software on each node in the Bio-Networking
Architecture provides an execution environment and supporting facilities
for cyber-entities. (See Fig.3
http://netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/darpa-report/Tech/figure3.gif.) A
specialized cyber-entity, the resource cyber-entity, manages and allocates
resources to the other cyber-entities on the network node. In the
Bio-Networking Architecture, useful emergent behaviors (e.g., adaptation,
evolution, security, and survivability) result when individual
cyber-entities interact. |
| Recent
Accomplishments: |
With the funding from DARPA, the PI has conducted feasibility study of
the proposed Bio-Networking Architecture through simulations and
implementations of a small scale web application using the Bio-Networking
Architecture. Simulation results are described in the technical report
submitted in July of 2000 and are also published in a paper
[netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/publications/mwang-saint2001.doc].
The PI has also initiated investigation of various techniques to
provide secure communication on the Bio-Networking Architecture. P.I.’s
findings are described in the technical report submitted in July of 2000
and are also published in a paper
[netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/publications/icact2001.doc].
In addition, the PI has obtained various other key research results. In
the following sections, the research results obtained to date since the
last technical report submitted to DARPA in July 2000, as well as various
PI's activities to gain research community's support, are summarized. As
for the implementation activities, please refer to the technical report
submitted in December, 1999. Results show that the proposed architecture
exhibits such key features as adaptability, survivability and
availability.
Recent Accomplishment: Design of the Bio-Networking Platform
The Bio-Networking platform is runtime environment for deploying and
executing cyber-entities. It consists of Bio-net services and a Bio-net
container. Bio-net services provide a set of general-purpose runtime
services that are frequently used by cyber-entities. These services
abstract low level operations such as cyber-entity life cycle management,
resource allocation to cyber-entities and migration of cyber-entities.
Bio-net services alleviate cyber-entities from low-level operations and
also allow cyber-entities to be lightweight by separating them from
routine work.
Bio-net Services in the current design include the following
services
[netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/publications/suzuki_jwaits01.ppt]:
- Life Cycle Service
This service manages life cycle of
cyber-entities. It provides the operations to initialize, activate,
deactivate, destroy, replicate and reproduce cyber-entities.
- Registry Service
This service runs on per-host basis and keeps
the information regarding the cyber-entities that exist on a local host.
- Migration Service
This service is responsible for sending and
receiving a cyber-entity to and from another host.
- Energy Management Service
This service allows a cyber-entity to
pay energy for a service provided by another cyber-entity and for the
resources that the cyber-entity uses. It manages the energy level of
cyber-entities on the platform. This service also manages the energy
level of a cyber-entity when it migrates, replicates and reproduces.
- Relationship Management Service
This service allows
cyber-entities to establish, examine, update and destroy relationships
with one or more cyber-entities.
- Discovery Service
This service allows a cyber-entity to discover
another cyber-entity on a remote platform. Discovery in the
Bio-Networking Architecture is through relationships between
cyber-entities.
- Pheromone Emission Service
This service transmits a pheromone
packet to help discovering a cyber-entity on a remote platform.
- Resource Sensing Service
This service senses the type, amount and
cost of resources available on both a local platform and neighboring
platforms. Types of resource that may be sensed include physical
resources (i.e. CPU time and memory space) and logical resources (i.e.
thread and transport connection).
- Resource Allocation Service
This service assigns physical and
logical resources to a cyber-entity.
Bio-net services run on a Bio-net container. A Bio-net container
provides the functionality that is required to provide Bio-net services.
The Bio-net container functionality provided in the current design
includes such functions as registering a newly created cyber-entity in a
local registration table, and maintaining a cyber-entity reference ID,
communication primitives for cyber-entities
Recent Accomplishment: Stability Analysis of the Bio-Networking
Architecture
In the Bio-Networking Architecture, it is important to examine
whether the Bio-Networking Architecture operates at an equilibrium point.
A mathematical model is created, and conditions for the Bio-Networking
Architecture to be stable are obtained
[netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/publications/miyamoto.pdf].
In the model, a cyber-entity provides a service to users in exchange
for energy. It pays energy to a Bio-net platform for using the resource
(e.g., CPU and memory) that the platform manages. A utility function is
associated with a Bio-net platform, and the platform determines the prices
of resources based on the utility function. Similarly, a utility function
is also associated with a cyber-entity, and a cyber-entity determines the
amount of resources it consumes based on its utility function. A utility
for a cyber-entity, and thus, the amount of resource that a cyber-entity
consumes, depends on various system variables such as the amount of
resource consumed by other cyber-entities within N hops from the
cyber-entity, and the prices of resources and the number of users that are
within N hops. Similarly, a utility of a Bio-net platform also depends on
various system variables such as resource prices on other platforms and
the amount of resources that cyber-entities consume.
A mathematical model is created based on the assumptions described
in the above paragraph and is analyzed to obtain conditions for the model
to be stable [netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/publications/miyamoto.pdf]. A
series of simulations demonstrated the accuracy of the analytical results
[netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/publications/miyamoto.pdf]
Recent Accomplishment: Application Design
The PI has started designing an application of automated ticket
sales using Bio-Networking Architecture. In this application, a group of
cyber-entities interact and dynamically create a relationship to provide a
ticket sales service. As relationships are dynamically created, a web of
cyber-entities emerge, and ticket sales service dynamically adjust to user
preference.
Recent Accomplishment: Increasing Community Awareness
The PI has taken steps to gain support from the research community
for the Bio-Networking Architecture. Since the proposed Bio-Networking
Architecture is innovative and new, it is important that the research
community recognizes the advantages of the proposed architecture. In order
to gain support from the research community on the new Bio-Networking
Architecture, the PI has taken the following steps.
- The PI has contacted one of the NTT research laboratories. It has
allocated a small group of researchers (5 full time researchers) to
investigate the Bio-Networking Architecture with the PI. The PI is
contacting other NTT laboratories and a number of university professors
(including those at Tokyo Univ. and Osaka Univ.) to join a team to
investigate the Bio-Networking Architecture.
- The PI is working with the super distributed object (SDO) working
group of OMG to seek for the possibility of using the Bio-Networking
Architecture as one of the OMG reference architectures. The architecture
model that the SDO working group considers now reflects the
Bio-Networking Architecture.
- The PI organized a workshop on "scalable and evoluvable distributed
systems" at the IEEE SAINT conference held in January, 2001. The
workshop topic was closely related to the Bio-Networking Architecture,
and the Bio-Networking Architecture was one of the topics discussed at
this workshop.
- The PI has published a number of papers on the Bio-Networking
Architecture. They are available at
netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/publications/. The PI has also given a
keynote speech for the IEICEJ (Japanese equivalent to IEEE) meeting in
December, 2000, regarding the future direction of networking research,
and one of the emphasis of the talk is the Bio-Networking Architecture.
- The PI has agreed to give a presentation and participate in a panel
in conferences and professional meetings (e.g., the IEICEJ (Japanese
equivalent to IEEE) meeting in July 2001 and in September 2001),
regarding the future direction of networking research, and one of the
emphasis of the talk is the Bio-Networking Architecture.
|
| Current
Plan: |
As described in Research Accomplishment section, the PI has conducted
feasibility study of the proposed Bio-Networking Architecture through
simulation and design/implementation of an example application. Initial
results show that the proposed architecture exhibits such key features as
adaptability, survivability and availability. The proposed research will
follow the following major phases described below.
Phase 1: Extensive Simulation and Analysis
Large-scale simulation of
the Bio-Networking Architecture will be conducted. Various biological
concepts and mechanisms will be simulated, and their benefits and
overheads empirically evaluated. Major tasks in this phase include design
and implementation of a simulation environment for the Bio-Networking
Architecture, and empirical evaluation of the benefits and overheads of
various biological mechanisms in the simulation environment.
Phase 2: Design, Implementation and Empirical Evaluation
Components
of the Bio-Networking Architecture will be designed and implemented. The
major tasks in this phase include design of both the Bio-Networking
platform software and cyber-entities and development of prototype
implementation of various components. Through the prototype deployment,
the Bio-Networking Architecture will be empirically evaluated.
Phase 3: Wide Deployment of the Bio-Networking Architecture
When the
prototype deployment successfully shows the advantages of the
Bio-Networking Architecture, it will be widely deployed over the Internet.
Major tasks in this phase include identifying academic and industrial
partners, as well as gaining support from the standard community for the
Bio-Networking Architecture. |