Industrial networks are introducing Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in their manufacturing processes in order to enhance existing methods and obtain smarter, greener and more effective processes. Global predictions forecast a massive widespread of IoT technology in industrial sectors in the near future. However, these innovations face several challenges, such as achieving short response times in case of time-critical applications. Concepts like in-network computing or edge computing can provide adequate communication quality for these industrial environments, and data plane programming has been proved as a useful mechanism for their implementation. Specifically, P4 language is used for the definition of the behavior of programmable switches and network elements. This paper presents a solution for industrial IoT (IIoT) network communications to reduce response times using in-network computing through data plane programming and P4. Our solution processes Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) packets sent by a sensor in the data plane and generates an alarm in case of exceeding a threshold in the measured value. The implementation has been tested in an experimental facility, using a Netronome SmartNIC as a P4 programmable network device. Response times are reduced by 74% while processing, and delay introduced by the P4 network processing is insignificant. View Full-Text

Industry 4.0 heavily builds on massive deployment of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices to monitor every aspect of the manufacturing processes. Since the data gathered by these devices impact the output of critical processes, identity management and communications security are critical aspects, which commonly rely on the deployment of X.509 certificates. Nevertheless, the provisioning and management of individual certificates for a high number of IIoT devices involves important challenges. In this paper, we present a solution to improve the management of digital certificates in IIoT environments, which relies on partially delegating the certificate enrolment process to an edge server. However, in order to preserve end-to-end security, private keys are never delegated. Additionally, for the protection of the communications between the edge server and the IIoT devices, an approach based on Identity Based Cryptography is deployed. The proposed solution considers also the issuance of very short-lived certificates, which reduces the risk of using expired or compromised certificates, and avoids the necessity of implementing performance expensive protocols such as Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP). The proposed solution has been successfully tested as an efficient identity management solution for IIoT environments in a real industrial environment.

The market prediction for network deployments has positioned Software-Defined Networks (SDN) as the first of the options for changing local, transport, or cloud networks. Since the OpenFlow protocol gained traction and evolved in the last versions, the possibilities for expanding network capabilities to deploy custom services have risen considerably. With next-generation SDN (NG-SDN), flexibility has grown as data plane programming languages, such as P4, and Data-Control Plane Interface (DCPI) protocols like P4Runtime have appeared. Furthermore, the ability to program the data plane has opened the possibilities to develop new network telemetry approaches, such as In-band Network Telemetry (INT). A transition to partially incorporated SDN, also known as hybrid SDN, often involves considerable complexity, especially when legacy devices implement non-open standards and protocols. Therefore, incorporating programmable SDN devices and deploying network telemetry protocols on top of existing legacy devices is still challenging. This research focuses on deploying and integrating the INT protocol using programmable P4 switches over a hybrid SDN network. We describe and implement the required control plane applications and data plane configuration, and discuss the constraints that need to be managed so that P4 programmable switches can interact with the rest of the MPLS legacy devices. In this sense, we discuss P4 switch placement alternatives to maximize their performance and usability in a hybrid SDN network. Then, we validate the INT-based monitoring system by ensuring traffic forwarding using several INT header placements. In these tests, we demonstrate the feasibility of merging P4 switches running INT traffic and legacy devices, presenting the requirements to accomplish hybrid next-generation SDN (HNG-SDN) architectures. Besides, we provide new monitoring features, such as MPLS label verification, and we also use telemetry data to feed back traffic forwarding applications for traffic engineering purposes. We finally show the time that packets spend in the pipeline comparing different parsing and actions performed in different cases.

Electromagnetic (EM) disturbances and compatibility issues are the most common problems affecting communication and signaling systems. The duration of field testing to solve these railway EM interference (EMI) problems may vary between three and 12 months, with the cost of the complete process between €25,000 and €1.5 million [1]. Currently, the railway industry demands the building of strategies and tools to promote paths toward zero on-site testing [2] and reduce the duration of field tests; however, there is a lack of laboratory testing resources for these approaches.

The aim of this article is to present an architecture to support reconfigurable multimedia services for a practical emergency environment use case of rescue operations. Specifically, radio communication and video surveillance services are provided by means of a small device carried by a mobile vehicle. This solution is validated by implementing a digital mobile radio (DMR) standard radio hotspot and a video streaming server in an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that conveys a device with scarce resources in order to minimize power consumption. To achieve a fast and flexible deployment of the envisioned services, a virtualization-based approach is proposed. Namely, a Kubernetes orchestrator is used to manage the life-cycle of services deployed on a small resource device, endowing the architecture with scalability and management flexibility. This article describes the executed performance tests that measured key parameters such as deployment time and recovery time after disconnection. Highly promising results were obtained, showing that the proposed architecture can be deployed in less than 4 minutes and can recover from network disconnections in less than 10 seconds. Thus, the performance, reliability and flexibility of the overall solution are demonstrated.