Language: English
10:45 - 11:45 PRESENTATIONS: RESILIENCE OF COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
Unable to communicatie: how resilient is the internet?
Communication networks form the backbone of our society. They control all our financial transactions, our interactions, and are even expected to facilitate remote surgeries in a not-so-far future. However, this increasing dependency also raises risks. How resilient is this critical infrastructure against the failures of its base stations or cyberattacks? And how can we make these critical networks more resilient? This session will address these questions with three experts in the field. Furthermore, you can check the quality and the resilience of your own wireless signal in our interactive demo!
Who messed with the internet?
Abstract: The Internet is of vital importance to society and even more so in times of crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused both Internet traffic and cybercrime to rise. Even before the pandemic, there were already concerns that stem from the Internet not being designed for its current use and growth. Network engineers have to (1) grapple dozens of protocols and algorithms, (2) face rapidly expanding networks, and (3) preconfigure for unknown future network usage. In this talk I will discuss a variety of aspects and the corresponding research that is needed to safeguard our digital infrastructure, economy, and well-being.
Internet routing paths: a resilience perspective
Abstract: The resilience of a system describes how to can plan and prepare for, absorb, respond to, and recover from disasters and adapt to new conditions. I will discuss Internet resilience in the context of its main function -- information routing. I will show that the interdomain Internet routing paths are not random but are latent-geometrically localized along the geodesic curves connecting their endpoints. This finding can be either a curse or a blessing, depending on the circumstances. You could exploit the geometric localization of routing paths to disrupt or eavesdrop on communication. On the other hand, the knowledge of geodesic loci of routing paths may help you identify alternative paths and rule out inefficient or fraudulent paths.
The state of the Dutch cellular networks
Many services depend increasingly on wireless connectivity. But how resilient is our existing cellular network infrastructures against potential risks, ranging from natural disasters to security attacks? We focus on the Dutch cellular network and assess its resilience and identify potential weak points that need improvement. This makes it possible to proactively improve the system to absorb crises when they occur or to recover quickly from the effects of these disruptive events. Our data-driven analysis shows that the Dutch cellular network is performing well, although there are some weak points and large regional differences. Moreover, we show that a national roaming approach would increase the performance and resilience of the network.
You can check our results by yourself in an interactive manner using a custom-made interface.