Since the appearance of OpenFlow, the Software Defined Networking has become a hot topic inside the networking industry and academia. One of the topics currently under study, is the adaptation of SDNs to the multi-domain environment, as current OpenFlow lacks of mechanisms by itself to accomplish that. In this scenario, the GN3plus JRA2T1 task group is investigating how to integrate SDN/OpenFlow with the Network Services Framework, which has been proven useful for its application in multi-domain environments. The research is focused on two different areas. The first one tackles with the establishment of end-to-end connections across different domains where at least one of the domains is SDN/OpenFlow-enabled. The second one aims to provide isolated slices to experimenters where the resources belong to different domains.

With the development of solutions like 6LoWPAN, the implementation of IP technology in sensor devices is already a reality. Therefore, sensors can be natively integrated in the Internet, becoming globally addressable by any other Internet-connected party. Despite the huge potential of this approach, it also gives place to new threats, being one of the most critical ones the effective protection of the information gathered by sensors from unauthorised remote access attempts. A suitable solution to address this issue is the Ladon security protocol, which provides resource-deprived devices with end-to-end authentication, authorisation and key establishment mechanisms. Once the critical security issue has been solved, additional concerns arise. Specially remarkable is the protection of user privacy in order to prevent potential eavesdroppers from tracking users’ access trends and obtaining behavioural patterns. In this regard, authentication and authorisation processes deserve an special consideration, since they imply conveying user identity-related information to the targeted services. In this paper, we present a privacy-enhanced Ladon protocol by integrating the original protocol with the PrivaKERB user privacy framework for Kerberos. Due to the severe resource limitations that characterise the targeted environments, a performance evaluation of the proposed solution is carried out in order to prove that it meets the performance requirements of the considered environments in terms of energy cost and additional delay for each secure session establishment. The obtained results show that privacy-enhanced Ladon is a secure and efficient solution to implement privacy-supporting authentication and authorisation processes in resource-deprived environments.

The upcoming development of the Internet of Things (IoT) envisions IP-enabled pacemakers and ICDs, giving place to a completely new scenario in the field of remote monitoring of patients implanted with these devices. Apart from the costs saved thanks to the reduction of in-clinic visits, this new approach will help improving the quality of life of chronic patients that depend on such devices. However, this scenario cannot be conceived without an effective mechanism to protect the privacy of the health information collected by implanted sensors, understanding privacy as the capacity to determine when, how and to what extent information is communicated to others. In this paper, we show how the Ladon authentication, authorization and key establishment protocol can be successfully applied to achieve this purpose. The Ladon protocol is based on Kerberos, but appropriately modified and extended to support independence of clock synchronization and authorization functionalities. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of introducing Ladon in the targeted scenarios, a prototype implementation based on general purpose sensors has been developed. The obtained results show that the performance penalty introduced by the protocol in terms of energy and time consumption is negligible.

The migration of railway signaling systems based on circuit switching toward Internet protocol (IP) is on the way. Consequently, new strategies to promote reliability in packet-?switching networks must be studied. In this article, we propose the use of multipath technology to enhance the availability and reliability of these communications. To our knowledge, this is the first time that multipath strategies are customized for the railway train-control domain. We present the basic requirements that a multipath protocol must fulfill to increase the reliability and evaluate different related multipath proposals and provide our own customized protocol, the reliable multipath transmission control protocol (RMPTCP). Finally, we demonstrate the availability improvement that our proposed multipath strategy introduces.

With the development of the 6LoWPAN standard, sensors can be natively integrated into the IP world, becoming tiny information providers that are directly addressable by any Internet-connected party. To protect the information gathered by sensors from any potential attacker on the Internet, it is essential to have trustworthy real-time information about the legitimacy of every attempt to interact with a sensor. Our approach to address this issue is Ladon, a new security protocol specifically tailored to the characteristics of low capacity devices. In this paper, we study the performance of Ladon, showing that it successfully meets the requirements of the targeted environments. To that end, we evaluate the delay and energy consumption of the execution of Ladon. The obtained results show that the cost of Ladon is bounded, even in situations of high packet loss rates (20–80%) and comparable to that of other protocols that implement fewer security features.