Covid-19 has radically changed our lives, with many governments and businesses mandating work-from-home (WFH) and remote education. However, work-from-home policy is not always known globally, and even when enacted, compliance can vary. These uncertainties suggest a need to measure WFH and confirm actual policy implementation. We show new algorithms that detect WFH from changes in network use during the day. We show that change-sensitive networks reflect mobile computer use, detecting WFH from changes in network intensity, the diurnal and weekly patterns of IP address response. Our algorithm provides new analysis of existing, continuous, global scans of most of the responsive IPv4 Internet (about 5.1M /24 blocks). Reuse of existing data allows us to study the emergence of Covid-19, revealing global reactions. We demonstrate the algorithm in networks with known ground truth, evaluate the data reconstruction and algorithm design choices with studies of real-world data, and validate our approach by testing random samples against news reports. In addition to Covid-related WFH, we also find other government-mandated lockdowns. Our results show the first use of network intensity to infer-real world behavior and policies.
The Internet of Things (IoT) enables numerous business opportunities in fields as diverse as e-health, smart cities, smart homes, among many others. The IoT incorporates multiple long-range, short-range, and personal area wireless networks and technologies into the designs of IoT applications. Localisation in indoor positioning systems plays an important role in the IoT. Location Based IoT applications range from tracking objects and people in real-time, assets management, agriculture, assisted monitoring technologies for healthcare, and smart homes, to name a few. Radio Frequency based system…
Since the end of 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus known as COVID-19 has spread rapidly around the world, forcing many governments to impose restrictive blocking or lockdown to combat the pandemic. With locomotion restriction of people in almost of countries of the world, workers and students needed to keep their activities at home. As a result, people's behavior, habits, and the way they started using the Internet changed significantly. Like professionals of offices, the younger played an important role in this behavior, especially in the type of resources used by them. As result, the characterizati…
We are experiencing an unprecedented healthcare crisis caused by newly-discovered corona-virus disease (COVID-19). The outbreaks of COVID-19 reveal the frailties of existing healthcare systems. Therefore, the digital transformation of healthcare systems becomes an inevitable trend. During this process, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) plays a crucial role while intrinsic vulnerabilities of security and privacy deter the wide adoption of IoMT. In this article, we present a blockchain-enabled IoMT to address the security and privacy concerns of IoMT systems. We also discuss the solutions br…
The rapid deployment of new Internet protocols over the last few years and the COVID-19 pandemic more recently (2020) has resulted in a change in the Internet traffic composition. Consequently, an updated microscopic view of traffic shares is needed to understand how the Internet is evolving to capture both such shorter- and longer-term events. Toward this end, we observe traffic composition at a research network in Japan and a Tier-1 ISP in the USA. We analyze the traffic traces passively captured at two inter-domain links: MAWI (Japan) and CAIDA (New York-Sao Paulo), which cover 100GB of dat…
During the 2020 pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus, many countries implemented stay-at-home measures, which led to many businesses and schools moving from in-person to online mode of operation. We analyze sampled Netflow records at a medium-sized US Regional Optical Network to quantify the changes in the network traffic due to stay-at-home measures in that region. We find that human-driven traffic in the network decreases to around 70%, and mostly shifts to local ISPs, while VPN and online meeting traffic increases up to 5 times. We also find that networks adopt a variety of online meeting …
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in dramatic changes to the daily habits of billions of people. Users increasingly have to rely on home broadband Internet access for work, education, and other activities. These changes have resulted in corresponding changes to Internet traffic patterns. This paper aims to characterize the effects of these changes with respect to Internet service providers in the United States. We study three questions: (1)How did traffic demands change in the United States as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?; (2)What effects have these changes had on Internet performance?;…
The rapid spread of the novel corona virus, SARS-CoV-2, has prompted an unprecedented response from governments across the world. A third of the world population have been placed in varying degrees of lockdown, and the Internet has become the primary medium for conducting most businesses and schooling activities. This paper aims to provide a multi-prospective account of Internet performance during the first wave of the pandemic. We investigate the performance of the Internet control plane and data plane from a number of globally spread vantage points. We also look closer at two case studies. F…
The reason why smart home remains not popularized lies in bad product user experience, purchasing cost, and compatibility, and a lack of industry standard[1]. Echoing problems above, and having relentless devoted to software and hardware innovation and practice, we have independently developed a set of solution which is based on innovation and integration of router technology, mobile Internet technology,Internet of things technology,communication technology, digital-to-analog conversion and codec technology, and P2P technology among others. We have also established relevant protocols (without …
More and more home appliances are now connected to the Internet, thus enabling various smart home applications. However, a critical problem that may impede the further development of smart home is overlooked: Small appliances account for the majority of home appliances, but they receive little attention and most of them are cut off from the Internet. To fill this gap, we propose MotorBeat, an acoustic communication approach that connects small appliances to a smart speaker. Our key idea is to exploit direct current (DC) motors, which are common components of small appliances, to transmit acous…
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments imposed lock downs that forced hundreds of millions of citizens to stay at home. The implementation of confinement measures increased Internet traffic demands of residential users, in particular, for remote working, entertainment, commerce, and education, which, as a result, caused traffic shifts in the Internet core. In this paper, using data from a diverse set of vantage points (one ISP, three IXPs, and one metropolitan educational network), we examine the effect of these lockdowns on traffic shifts. We find that the traffic volume increased by …
University of Sindh（信德大学）；Institute of Business Administration, University of Sindh（信德大学工商管理学院）；Nimbus Research Centre（尼姆布斯研究中心）；Munster Technological University（芒斯特理工大学）
After affecting the world in unexpected ways, COVID-19 has started mutating which is evident with the insurgence of its new variants. The governments, hospitals, schools, industries, and humans, in general, are looking for a potential solution in the vaccine which will eventually be available but its timeline for eradicating the virus is yet unknown. Several researchers have encouraged and recommended the use of good practices such as physical healthcare monitoring, immunity-boosting, personal hygiene, mental healthcare, and contact tracing for slowing down the spread of the virus. In this art…
Smart homes have attracted much attention due to the expanding of Internet-of-Things (IoT) and smart devices. In this paper, we propose a smart gateway platform for data collection and awareness in smart home networks. A smart gateway will replace the traditional network gateway to connect the home network and the Internet. A smart home network supports different types of smart devices, such as in home IoT devices, smart phones, smart electric appliances, etc. A traditional network gateway is not capable of providing quality-of-service measurement, user behavioral analytics, or network optimiz…
The last several years has seen a renewed interest in smart queue management to curb excessive network queueing delay, as people have realised the prevalence of bufferbloat in real networks. However, for an effective deployment at today's last mile connections, an improved queueing algorithm is not enough in itself, as often the bottleneck queue is situated in legacy systems that cannot be upgraded. In addition, features such as per-user fairness and the ability to de-prioritise background traffic are often desirable in a home gateway. In this paper we present Common Applications Kept Enhanced…
Due to the global pandemic of COVID-19, there is an urgent need to utilize existing technologies to their full potential. Internet of Things (IoT) is regarded as one of the most trending technologies with a great potential in fighting against the coronavirus outbreak. The IoT comprises of a scarce network in which the IoT devices sense the environment and send useful data on the Internet. In this paper, we examine the current status of IoT applications related to COVID-19, identify their deployment and operational challenges, and suggest possible opportunities to further contain the pandemic. …
The use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in homes and the immediate proximity of an individual communicates to create Personal IoT (PIoT) networks. The exploratory study of PIoT is in its infancy, which will explore the expansion of new use cases, service requirements, and the proliferation of PIoT devices. This article provides a big picture of PIoT architecture, vision, and future research scope.
In this study, we investigate the adaptation and robustness of a packet switching network (PSN), the fundamental architecture of the Internet. We claim that the adaptation introduced by a transmission control protocol (TCP) congestion control mechanism is interpretable as the self-organization of multiple attractors and stability to switch from one attractor to another. To discuss this argument quantitatively, we study the adaptation of the Internet by simulating a PSN using ns-2. Our hypothesis is that the robustness and fragility of the Internet can be attributed to the inherent dynamics of …
With the advancement of technology, devices, which are considered non-traditional in terms of internet capabilities, are now being embedded in microprocessors to communicate and these devices are known as IoT devices. This technology has enabled household devices to have the ability to communicate with the internet and a network comprising of such device can create a home IoT network. Such IoT devices are resource constrained and lack high-level security protocols. Thus, security becomes a major issue for such network systems. One way to secure the networks is through reliable authentication p…
Internet-of-Things (IoTs) envisions to integrate, coordinate, communicate, and collaborate real-world objects in order to perform daily tasks in a more intelligent and efficient manner. To comprehend this vision, this paper studies the design of a large scale IoT system for smart grid application, which constitutes a large number of home users and has the requirement of fast response time. In particular, we focus on the messaging protocol of a universal IoT home gateway, where our cloud enabled system consists of a backend server, unified home gateway (UHG) at the end users, and user interface…
This study discloses the development of a solution for realizing a smart home in the post COVID-19 era using the Internet of Things domain knowledge. COVID-19 outbreak has been catastrophic and impacted everyone's lives due to its rapid transmission from one body to another. This study aims to reduce virus transmission by eliminating the need to touch any common-point surface in a home, such as switches, doorknobs, and remotes. We provide a generic solution by coupling things with the internet to control them remotely. The project aims to showcase a working solution to controlling devices like…
Government organizations, regulators, consumers, Internet service providers, and application providers alike all have an interest in measuring user Internet "speed". Access speeds have increased by an order of magnitude in past years, with gigabit speeds available to tens of millions of homes. Approaches must evolve to accurately reflect the changing user experience and network speeds. This paper offers historical and technical background on current speed testing methods, highlights their limitations as access network speeds continue to increase, and offers recommendations for the next generat…
The COVID-19 pandemic led to the adoption of severe measures to counteract the spread of the infection. Social distancing and lockdown measures modifies people's habits, while the Internet gains a major role to support remote working, e-teaching, online collaboration, gaming, video streaming, etc. All these sudden changes put unprecedented stress on the network. In this paper we analyze the impact of the lockdown enforcement on the Politecnico di Torino campus network. Right after the school shutdown on the 25th of February, PoliTO deployed its own in-house solution for virtual teaching. Ever …
Smart homes are a special use-case of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. Security and privacy are two prime concern in smart home networks. A threat-prone smart home can reveal lifestyle and behavior of the occupants, which may be a significant concern. This article shows security requirements and threats to a smart home and focuses on a privacy-preserving security model. We classify smart home services based on the spatial and temporal properties of the underlying device-to-device and owner-to-cloud interaction. We present ways to adapt existing security solutions such as distance-boundin…
