WACREN Conference 2019

14 Mar 2019, 08:00 → 15 Mar 2019, 17:30 Africa/Accra

Nkrumah Ballroom (Accra Marriott Hotel)

Boubakar Barry (WACREN)

WACREN is organizing its 5th Annual Conference on 14-15 March 2019 in Accra, hosted by the Ghanaian Academic and Research Network (GARNET).

The theme of the conference is: "Beyond Networks: Applications and Services" with the following sub-themes.

• Applications and Services (Cloud Services and Collaboration Tools, Trust and Identity, Cybersecurity)
• User and Science Engagement
• Teaching and Learning
• NREN Business Models and Use Cases
• Advanced Network Technologies

The conference is organized in a special context: the first to be hosted in a country connected to the WACREN backbone amidst pilots of advanced services and collaborations aimed at maximum utilisation and growth of the infrastructures.

WACREN Paper Style Guide.pdf

Thursday, 14 March

08:00 → 09:30 Registration

09:30 → 11:00 Opening Ceremony

Convener: Dr Boubakar Barry (WACREN)

11:00 → 11:30 Group Photograph & Tea Break

11:30 → 13:00 PLENARY SESSION I – Paper Presentations

11:30 Time Check: Ten Years of IR at the University of Jos

The paper seeks to evaluate the creation and use of Open Access Institutional Repository (IR) at the University of Jos. The repository was launched in June 2019 and was the first Institutional Repository in Nigeria. Using a mix method of Interview, observation, and focus group meetings, the research aims at providing empirical evidence for the acceptability, use and development of IR in the institution. The back-end workflow, and success of advocacy will also be evaluated. The result will provide insight into the prospects and challenges of creating and operationalising Open Access Institutional Repositories in Nigerian universities.

Speakers: Mr Daniel Igoche (University of Jos), Dr Stephen Akintunde (University of Jos)

1 stephenpresentation.pdf

11:50 National Repository to bring Researchers’ Work into Spotlight: The Ethiopian Attempt as an example to Link Universities and Research Centers with the National Repository

Sub-Theme: Applications and Services (Cloud Services and Collaboration Tools, Trust and Identity, Cybersecurity)

Abstract:

National Repository to bring Researchers’ Work into Spotlight: The Ethiopian Attempt as an example to Link Universities and Research Centers with the National Repository

The Ethiopian Ministry of Education is introducing institutional repositories at all universities and is supporting the National Academic Digital Repository (NADRE) as an aggregated repository. New challenges are overwhelming universities’ IT experts on one side. On the other side NADRE will provide effective access to scientific data and information in Ethiopia at a standard as it is expected from any country in the Western world. Universities build on their close cooperation with the Ethiopian Research and Education Research Network (EthERNet) and working locally with teams of IT experts and librarians to master these challenges.

In a first step, there are five universities piloting the implementation of NADRE at the front line. Others will follow soon. Lessons from European countries have been learned. The Key is to establish effective mechanisms to reduce barriers, promote production, allow access, and use digital scientific information. Models such as open-source software, federated open data networks, open-access journals, and collaborative Web sites are becoming increasingly accepted in academia around the globe.
This paper is built on the hypotheses that a national repository the center has to offer its researchers, lecturers and students in order to bring them closest to the latest information and trends in academia-worldwide. In the common understanding repositories are considered as the platform to accommodate digital research center platforms as a distributed digital library consists of material on separate machines connected via a network.

The challenge of managing information is about the decision on how to store information and how users will get connected, how they will be allowed to search, and retrieve material. Methods such as the distributed library, which hides the actual server architecture by allowing the user to interact with whichever library node is nearest to them are discussed among the experts. The users have a different set of topics to discuss, such as access to data and information required for their research or how to store data that it will be available as long as it is needed or even forever. This paper highlights to enable people to access institutional repositories by exploring the architecture of the infrastructure, bringing research works to the repository, using stored data as well as the general requirements necessary for researchers, lecturers and students to take advantage of the data and information on the repository. It also will explore, how to bring the authors into position that they become active and independent users in all processes a repository offers- user, creator and curator of data.
This paper also will share lessons learnt in Ethiopia in the phase of setting up NADRE at university level and making NADRE available to researchers, lecturers and students.

Speaker: Mr Dagim Yoseph Mengesha (Institute of Geophysics, Space Science and Astronomy (IGSSA), Addis Ababa University)

Dagim WACREN_Presentation_DY_v1.pdf

12:10 The development and implementation of a Reading List Management system as a tool for facilitating educational resource discovery: A case study of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

Academic libraries are faced with the challenge of continually providing the knowledge resources needed to support teaching, learning, and research in the host institutions. These resources in whatever form they come must be organized, made discoverable and made easily accessible to the consumers in an effective manner while making it possible for the knowledge experts (librarians) and academics to manage the life cycle of these resources.

Reading List Management systems have been used by academic institutions to provide an organized and manageable way for academics and librarians to jointly publish knowledge resources and for students to find them. The Reading List Management system is essentially a technology platform that enables the creation of organized sets (or lists) of resources for academic programmes offered in an institution.
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of the Reading List Management system as an educational aid by examining its development and implementation at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

In the beginning, a survey of the state of the library and academic research environment is given, with emphasis on the mechanisms used by academics and librarians to publish knowledge resources associated with programmes of study. The impact of this mechanism is discussed and evidence is then given to support the need for an improved mechanism for knowledge discovery. Subsequently, the idea of a Reading List Management system is presented and the case is made for why it would address concerns raised with the current mechanism. The study proceeds then to discuss in detail the procedures and processes involved in its planning.

One of the expected outcomes of the Reading List Management system is that it will facilitate the discovery of educational resources. The case is made for why resource discovery is important, how resource discovery traditionally works for the learner and why a platform purposely built for such a purpose is necessary. The discussion also shows how different a Reading List Management system is different from other resource discovery systems.

One of the expected outcomes of the Reading List Management system is that it will help refine and scrutinize what periodic resource acquisitions are made. It undoubtedly, therefore, will have an impact on the financial organization of the library and the intuition. This idea is discussed with the current situation at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology used to show how the economics of the system works out.

A brief overview of the technological infrastructure at the university is given with an analysis on how issues such as internet speed, network quality, outages etc. affect the delivery of services to academic researchers, particularly in the case of the Reading List Management system. The paper then proceeds to detail the technological preparations made for the reading lists Management system and the details of implementation.
There is also a discussion of the arrangements made for the rollout of the system, clearly showing the roles and responsibilities of students, academics, librarians and university management in the day-to-day use of the system.

To promote and guide the use of the system a reading List Policy was developed. The purpose of the policy, it’s adoption processes, implementation and review mechanisms are also presented and discussed.

Finally, some initial challenges with the development and implementation of the Reading List Management system are discussed in detail. Recommendations are given on how overcoming these challenges.

It is finally concluded that the adoption of a Reading List system at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and technology would serve the purpose of refining and organizing the how knowledge resources are organized and made accessible in aid of teaching, learning and research.

Keywords: reading lists, knowledge resources, library, educational tools, academic tools, reading policy,

Speaker: Dr Samuel Kotei Nikoi (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology)

Nikoi_Presentation.pdf

12:30 Survey on Librarians' Capabilities for Open Access Repository Development in the Higher Education Sector: Results from the East and Southern African Regions

Results of the survey of the Ubuntunet Alliance countries as part of the three regional LIBSENSE workshops aimed at capturing a landscape view of librarians’ roles in managing/operating Open Access repositories in Africa.

The results of these surveys and the discussions emerging from the workshops will, together, form the basis for a framework of key policy and capacity building actions and agreements on principles and requirements for the federation of Open Access repositories across the African regions

Speaker: Dr Pamela Abbott (Information School | The University of Sheffield)

Pamela Abbott - WACREN 2019 Presentation.pdf

12:50 Sponsors Minute

Speaker: Nicholas Krul (NEC XON (Silver Sponsor))

13:00 → 14:30 Lunch

14:30 → 16:10 PLENARY SESSION II – Paper Presentations

14:30 A Pedagogical Approach for Developing a Firmware from Open Source Code: Case of WiAFirm, an OpenWRT-based Firmware for WiABox Appliance

The desire to know, to share and to contribute to the ever changing scientific and technological development, the enthusiasm of exploiting open materials for other unpredicted purposes have motivated and favored the idea of open source solutions as well as their evolution. The industry of open hardware has given to individuals, scientists and researchers, the possibilities to design and develop open source firmware (OSF). The personal computer (PC) and Linux are to date respectively the perfect well-known examples that revolutionized the world of open hardware and open source operating systems. OSF provides to end-users the freedom of customization, to engineers the freedom of improvement, and to developers the opportunity to contribute in the field by experimenting and optimizing existing (or creating new) features. Despite the flexibility of OSC-based project, its development process is very complex and is mostly reserved to a certain elite that is predominantly professional. It is difficult to replicate or teach the methodology that drove the design and the development of open source code (OSC)-based projects. Indeed, they lack documentation that formally describe their development lifecycles, methodologies or models. At the best of our knowledge, the development of an OSC project is most of time based on the volunteering and the experience of a [group of] developer[s] and, this cannot help or encourage students to contribute in the field. What rules govern an OSC development project in a sustainable way? How to pedagogically passion a learner to progressively manage such project? This paper aims at proposing a pedagogical approach for developing a firmware from OSC solutions. The proposed approach is an extension of the Y development lifecycle, adapted from the “five-easy-steps” firmware development process proposes by Michael Barr, to which we couple the Y project development lifecycle model proposed by Capretz, L.F & al, considering the concept of reusability in the field of component based software engineering (CBSE). It consists of splitting some steps into more specific sub-steps to ease the comprehension of the learner. The experimental case consists to prototype WiAFirm, an OpenWRT-based firmware in the framework of the WiABox tutored project. OpenWRT is today the almost de-facto base OSF for embedded devices. It is at the origin of many others among which are Freifunk-Gluon, OpenWISP, Chillifire, just to name a few. WiAFirm is hardly inspired from Freifunk-Gluon, a modular framework for creating firmware for wireless mesh nodes and providing a uniform configuration for the entire German Freifunk Wireless Communty Network. The main objective of WiAFirm is to operate multi-band IEEE 802.11x wireless access/mesh routers as the key components to build rural wireless community networks in developing countries. The main benefit of the proposed approach is the better quality control of the OSF development process and the knowledge sharing. Indeed, the learner is methodologically introduced and guided step-by-step in the OSF engineering paradigm.

Speaker: Prof. Thomas Djotio Ndie (University of Yaoundé 1)

14:50 Engagement, Advocacy, and Outreach: Strategies for Optimizing REN Impact on International Collaborations

Partners from the Networks for European, African, and American Research (NEAAR) project and the AfricaConnect2 project are working together to develop coordinated user engagement and outreach strategies in support of international research collaborations working in Africa. These strategies are designed to help identify research collaborations with data transfer requirements and to help improve researcher access to Research and Education Networking (REN) resources. Additionally, these efforts are coordinated to make users more aware of RENs, to make users more aware of peer communities available for collaboration, and to make funders more aware of REN value and impact. Together, NEAAR and AfricaConnect2 are enabling and enhancing international science and cultivating valuable partnerships around the world. This presentation will give a detailed look at these engagement strategies and provide an overview of the methods and tools available for promoting the use of global research and education networks. We will highlight real application use cases related to US, European, and African collaborations and data transfers and discuss specific communication strategies NRENs can use to increase engagement with relevant stakeholders.

Speakers: Ms Dimple Sokartara (GÉANT), Mr Edward Moynihan (Indiana University)

Compressed WACREN 19 EM final.pptx

15:10 POLITICS OF SCIENCE COMMUNICATION: COULD LIBRARIANS BE THE PERFECT INTERFACE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATION?

Science communication is one of the aspects of Science engagement. A debate on who should communicate science, why and how has been going on in the past few years. Scientists' fear of distortion of scientific facts by journalists and the journalists' fear of scientists' lack of enthusiasm in their writing end up bringing disharmony between the two and leaving the public without accurate information. Research information is a crucial tool for policy formulation and for sustainable development. It is observed that the roles of librarians’ mediation between documents and their contents as well as users have been distorted and nearly unrecognizable in science communication. Therefore, this paper argues that librarians who are custodians of research information documents as well as trained information managers are able to analyze repackage and disseminate science information to any target audience by any media without distorting it. The paper further argues that the Library and Information Science (LIS) profession covers the entire universe of knowledge and has professionals from all disciplines. For these reasons, librarians are best suited to partner with researchers from the beginning of their research to the end and to communicate science to the public. The paper uses various LIS curricula, LIS student entry requirements, the different career paths that the LIS graduates take to support the argument.

Key words: Science communication; Library and Information Science; Policy formulation; Sustainable Development

Speaker: Ms ESTHER OBACHI (UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI)

15:30 Tele-Learning Facilities - Optimizing NREN Connectivity and Room Design for Higher Education

Tele-Learning Facilities - Optimizing NREN Connectivity and Room Design for Higher Education

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), University of Science, etc., IDI, Makerere U.

Background: In Mali and Uganda the NIAID collaborative, African Centers of Excellence (ACE) in Bioinformatics includes a tele-learning program that provides a platform for new course offerings, and promotes the exchange of ideas, research and experience all despite the environmental challenges common in low and middle-income countries. Despite the desire of IT engineers to solve all problems with network and system design, the physical treatments of the facility have a dramatic impact on the quality of the experience. The compute and network technology can’t do it all. Therefore, when the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases built the first tele-learning facility at the University of Science, Technology, and Techniques in Bamako (USTTB) the objective was to maximize the network resources through detailed planning and intelligent room design. A successful design and implementation will make it possible for instructors from the rest of the world to deliver courses to students in low- and middle-income countries in a way that is enjoyable and interactive for both.

Methods: In order to optimize the network and minimize challenges in the learning environment, NIAID considered a number of factors: the hardware selection, the acoustics, the lighting, and the lack of stable power to name a few. The National and Regional REN backbones are a critical piece but fiber cuts and unexpected routing configurations can lead to higher latency and low bandwidth, which have a negative impact on both audio and visual clarity. We first measure the baseline for acoustics using smartphone apps that record the reverberation of sound waves in the rooms, then design treatments that reduce the reflection. Wall color paint, light temperature, display/projector, and camera selection all have an impact on the video signal and refresh to affect the learning experience over distances required for instructors on other continents. The rooms are also designed to conserve power, to allow use of solar batteries and minimal circuits to ensure pure sine-wave power delivery to all components.

Results: The benefits of designing tele-learning facilities for the specific power, construction, and network environments of Mali and Uganda ensure that remote delivery of classes from bioinformaticians around the world have higher reliability. The students and instructors experience a more reliable and consistent learning environment over high latency networks, lower bandwidth, with clearer audio signal, better video quality on both sides, and lower power consumption. Understanding the local environment and designing for it makes significant impacts on the efficiency of network and infrastructure.

Conclusion: When it comes to the design of a tele-learning facilities, adequate planning reduces strain on the bandwidth and functionality of research and education networks, and allows for easier collaboration between academics, researchers, and students.

Speakers: Mr Brian Moyer (NIAID), Ms Sara Rudolph (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID))

3 Tele-Learning Facilities - Optimizing NREN Connectivity and Room Design for Higher Education_RUDOLPH_WACREN 20191.pdf

15:50 Developing a Science Gateway for Physical Activity Lifelong Modelling & Simulation

There are major health concerns that relate to the lack of physical activity in a general population. In the UK, a major study has been carried out that brought together health assessment audits across a range of health conditions influenced by physical activity (cardiovascular diseases, musculoskeletal conditions, mental health, etc.) This was used to create PALMS (Physical Activity Lifelong Modelling & Simulation). PALMS is a micro-simulation that predicts the lifelong physical activity behaviour of a population taking into account individual characteristics and their effect on physical activity over time. The model produces individual and aggregated quantitative outputs for quality of life and health conditions related costs. Thus, PALMS can be used to assess the impact of physical activity on the aforementioned health conditions across the population.

A complementary study was also performed to capture evidence of the success of stratified physical activity interventions. This information was merged with PALMS micro-simulation to allow policy decision makers to investigate the cost-effectiveness of new physical activity interventions on targeted groups in a population. In terms of relevance for Africa, the transition of African societies into sedentary working patterns has now made the study of physical activity intervention strategies of increasing importance. In 2018, non-communicable diseases, mostly caused by physical inactivity, were responsible for 41 million (71%) of the world's 58 million deaths, with 15 million dying prematurely (between the ages of 30 and 69 years). Low- and middle-income countries, including African countries, bear over 85% of the burden of these premature deaths, resulting in cumulative economic losses of US$7 trillion over the next 15 years and millions of people trapped in poverty. In addition to the economic and health benefits, increased levels of physical activity offer social benefits and is recognised as a strategic pathway to achieving UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. There is therefore significant interest in using the PALMS model as a basis for evidence-based policy making in African countries. The challenge we address in this work is how PALMS can be deployed as a scientific tool to support research in Africa.

To this end, we adopt the use of digital infrastructures, practice that is established in numerous scientific communities. Many scientists worldwide use research data infrastructures (e-Infrastructures) to support their work and reinforce knowledge transfer within the community. The H2020 Sci-GaIA project (Energising Scientific Endeavour through Science Gateways and e-Infrastructures in Africa – www.sci-gaia.eu) created the Sci-GaIA Open Science Platform. The Platform consists of a range of technologies that facilitates the development of a range of scientific application services from Open Access Data Repositories to Scientific Gateways. Aspects of the Platform have been adopted in the WACREN NREN Services Roadmap. This paper will discuss how the Open Science Platform is being used to create a Science Gateway for PALMS to enable Ghanaian academics and policy makers to use the micro-simulation in their research. This will form potentially the basis of guideline building not only in physical activity but other lifestyle behaviours (e.g. nutrition) as well as facilitating capacity building in developing areas in Africa. By creating this demonstration of how PALMS and the Sci-GaIA Open Science Platform can be used to support research and policy making in Ghana, we will show how our research can be applied in an African context and subsequently can impact policies in other African countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

Speaker: Dr Anastasia Anagnostou (Modelling & Simulation Group, Department of Computer Science, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, Middx, UK, UB8 3PH)

4 AccraWACREN2019-AA.pdf

16:10 → 16:30 Tea Break

16:30 → 18:15 PLENARY SESSION III – Paper Presentations

16:30 United States International University - Africa Web-Scale Discovery Platform: Offering Users Limitless Search Capabilities

USIU-Africa Library like many other libraries holds vast amounts of information resources from print to electronic collections which are all hosted in different platforms and databases. As the volume and variety of information resources continue to multiply, the library search environment becomes increasingly fragmented and therefore overwhelming and frustrating for users (Deodato 2015). USIU-Africa adopted the discovery platform technology that offers users their desired Google-like simple search functionality with the aim of improving and increasing access of the library’s vast scholarly print collections and electronic resources from a single, easy-to-use search interface.

The implemented EDS-Enterprise API discovery platform is an integration by EBSCO Discovery Service and SirsiDynix. The federated search platform offers users a single search interface that allows the simultaneous search of multiple searchable resources and discovers results from the library’s catalog records, subscribed eResources, open access resources, and the institutional repository.

The platform has among other features: Search suggestion functionality, Correction of input errors, Interfiling results, Search Limiters, Filter function, Search results display by relevance ranking and availability, Search display widget: ‘text & image alignment’ and ‘item format label’, Password request off when on-campus or using VPN, Exploratory search, Placard journal, Support for five languages for titles, Content providers indexing, Publication finder, and Digital Repository harvesting.

Statistics on usage of the library resources have extremely increased with over 100% increase in search and access of resources registered during the implementation period even prior to the official launch. This paper details the steps in identifying the ideal platform through a carefully planned evaluation process to forms filling and sharing lists of subscribed as well as open access resources. Best practices learnt and challenges encountered are discussed.

Speaker: Ms Mary Ngure (United States International University - Africa)

WACREN 2019_Mary Ngure Presentation.pdf

16:48 Crypto-Ransomeware Identification via Behavioural Analysis

Ransomware is a type of malware attack that uses encryption to make data unavailable for the main purpose of collecting a certain amount of payment. Many victims of this attack who were unable to recover their data from backups have been forced to choose between either losing the data or pay a certain amount demanded by the attacker. This study analyzes ransomware variants based on attack phases and the possibility of identifying ransomware using the network traffic generated prior and after infection. This study, in Windows Operating System environment, considered seven samples of crypto-ransomware for research purposes: Revenge, Crypto-Shield, Crypto-Mix, Cyber, Sage Spora and Locker. Observations from the study reveal five of the ransomwares generated noticeable traffic and analogous file encrypted renaming patterns with time, while Windows Bit defender outrightly choked Spora and Locker. Consequently, understanding this threat and its pattern is an integral part of ensuring a robust secured network in enterprise networks. Hence, the ideas presented in this project can provide insight for additional layers of defense against this deadly attack by ransomware.

KEYWORDS: Malware, Ransomware, Crypto-ransomware, Simulation, Network traffic, Revenge, Crypto-Shield, Crypto-Mix, Cyber, Sage, Server message Block (SMB2).

Speaker: Mr Olumide Orija (Computer Science Department, The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria.)

17:03 A discussion on Africa’s multilateral response to personal data security breaches

Since the beginning of the 21st Century, Africa has witnessed phenomenal growth in Internet penetration and the use of Information Communications Technologies (ICTs). The continent has especially made significant progress in adapting to smart technology, with a continuously increasing use of mobile and web application services especially in the domain of urban transport and agriculture. Alongside the computer network security concerns wrought by the spread of ICTs and Internet penetration and raised at regional and sub-regional governance forums in the continent, there have also been worries regarding online privacy and protection of individuals of these services in relation to the personal information which they progressively submit to the providers of these ICT and smart services for processing purposes. Among such worries, and quite crucial, are personal data security breaches, the risk of which only keeps increasing as the African and global economy keeps getting increasingly data-driven, which in turn leads to higher risks of identity theft and significant economic loses for potential victims. In a general response to these developments, African intergovernmental organizations have develop legal frameworks focused or touching on personal data protection. At the sub-regional level, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has adopted a Data Protection Act, while the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have adopted model laws which, though principally focused on computer network security, could serve as significant foundations towards the development of data protection policies. At the regional level, the African Union (AU) has adopted a Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection, a three-pronged instrument regulating electronic commerce, data protection and cybersecurity within the continent. However, while other aspects of data protection law are more or less dealt with in these instruments, very little stress is put on the security of personal data or safeguards against and management of breaches of personal data security.

This paper, in an attempt to present a critique of the state of affairs as regards personal data breach regulation in Africa, will argue that the ECOWAS Data Protection Act as well as the the AU Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection do not provide a satisfactory framework for regulating breaches in personal data security in African states. This situation does not help in harmonizing personal data security legislation or data protection law as a whole across the continent, which already presents some level of fragmentation with some African countries having adopted national personal data protection legislations but with uneven standards of data breach regulation. Both the AU Convention and ECOWAS Data Protection Act are significantly lacking in pre-breach and post-breach regulation, including breach prevention, preparedness, reporting and available remedies for affected data subjects. Moreover, both instruments do not define or lay down a clear notion of what constitutes or should constitute a data security breach in Africa, leaving grey this subject matter of African data protection law, with no compliance test available to data controllers or processors to determine or limit their responsibility in the event of a breach. The paper will recommend the adoption of an amendment or protocol to both supranational instruments which clearly defines the notion of a data breach, and shall also make a case for the adoption, within the framework of the above instruments, of pre and post regulatory mechanisms to guide African data controllers and processors in preventing and managing personal data security breaches.

Speaker: Mr Alunge Rogers (Joint PhD in Law, Science and Technology)

WACREN Presentation_Alunge.pdf

17:21 An inference mechanism to predict wrong combinations when assigning permissions and roles in cloud computing data warehouses

In this article, we propose an approach to ensure the confidentiality of data from data warehouses in a cloud computing context.

Speaker: Mrs Grâce Yénin Edwige JOHNSON (INPHB/EDP)

UN MECANISME DE DETECTION D'INFERENCES PARTIELLES DES DONNEES.pdf

17:39 Proposition d’un Modèle de Routage Efficace dans un Réseau Maillé Sans Fil Programmable.

Les réseaux maillés sans fil sont des réseaux sans fil dans lesquelles chaque nœud communique directement avec les autres nœuds en utilisant les ondes radios. Ce type de réseau est différent des réseaux sans fil traditionnels qui ont besoin d’un point d’accès sans fil pour relayer les informations dans le réseau. Les nœuds sont équipés de plusieurs cartes sans fil configurées en mode ad hoc. Les réseaux définis par logiciel (SDN) est un nouveau paradigme réseau émergent qui consiste à séparer le plan de contrôle du plan de données. Le plan de contrôle définit les règles d’achèvement des paquets, il est placé au niveau du contrôleur. Le plan de données qui réside sur le commutateur, est chargé d’acheminer les paquets. Ainsi, SDN permet un contrôle flexible et une configuration dynamique et optimale des ressources. L’intégration du concept de SDN dans un réseau maillé sans fil permet d’obtenir un réseau programmable facile à administrer et à superviser. Le protocole OpenFlow de l’architecture SDN est utilisé pour la communication entre les deux plans et assure les échanges entre le contrôleur et les commutateurs compatibles OpenFlow. Un nœud central appelé contrôleur définie les règles d’acheminement et les place dans les tables de flux des nœuds compatibles OpenFlow. Les auteurs proposent dans la littérature une architecture de réseau maillé sans fil programmable basé sur le protocole de routage OLSR. Le problème lié au protocole OLSR est qu’il ne tient pas compte dans le choix du meilleur prochain saut, la possibilité de la perte des paquets. Dans cet article, nous proposons une architecture de réseaux maillés sans fil programmable basée sur le protocole de routage BATMAN. En effet, l’approche proposée par Batman consiste à choisir le next-hop situé sur la route la plus fiable. Le prochain nœud est celui qui a le moins de risque de perte de paquets, calculé sur la base de qualité de transmission (QT). Pour ce faire, chaque nœud garde un historique contenant tous les numéros de séquence de tous les messages (OGM) reçus des voisins qui reçoivent plus de OGM venant du nœud destinataire. Par conséquent, une architecture de réseau maillé sans fil programmable basé sur Batman permettra de limiter les pertes de paquets dans le réseau. Nous développons un module « Batman to OpenFlow » (B2O) pour traduire les routes découvertes par Batman en des règles OpenFlow. Le protocole de routage Batman est configuré en mode « démon », c’est-à-dire que les tables de routage Batman ne sont pas utilisées par le système d’exploitation (OpenWrt) pour relayer les messages. Pour transmettre un message, les nœuds consultent plutôt leur table de flux. Un contrôleur ou plusieurs contrôleurs (OpenDaylight) sont déployés dans le réseau pour la gestion des règles spécifiques telles que les règles de contrôle d’accès. Nous effectuerons les tests de performances de notre module dans un environnement réel avec des routeurs TP-LINK AC1750 V4. Nous évaluerons et comparerons les résultats (taux de perte des paquets, la consommation d’énergie des nœuds) dans le réseau maillé mise en œuvre avec le protocole de routage Batman-adv et un réseau maillé sans fil programmable utilisant le module B2O que nous proposons.

Speaker: Mrs NOUHO NOUTAT Soulamite Judith (Faculty of Sciences, University of Yaoundé 1)

20:00 → 22:30 Gala Dinner

Friday, 15 March

08:00 → 09:00 Registration

09:00 → 10:30 PLENARY SESSION IV – Paper Presentations

10:30 → 11:00 Tea Break

11:00 → 12:30 PLENARY SESSION V – Paper Presentations

12:30 → 12:45 Conference Closing

12:45 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 16:00 WACREN ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING