Department of
Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics

Networking and Distributed Systems

The lab's research activity mainly concerns the study of models, algorithms and software for distributed systems and telecommunication networks. The main goal is to improve the quality of service of distributed systems, understood as the level of security, performance, scalability and reliability. Application areas include the study of wireless networks, distributed cloud and ledger systems (blockchain), IoT systems, and highly distributed software architectures. The methodologies used range from the use of analytical models (process algebra, network queues, stochastic processes) to event-driven simulation and include experimentation and measurements on real systems.

Research group

Collaborators

  • Ivan Malakhov
  • Daria Smuseva
  • Gabriele Gemmi
  • Muhammad Waqas Swati
  • Diletta Olliaro

Collaborations

Publications

  • Leonardo Maccari, Renato Lo Cigno:
    Improving Routing Convergence With Centrality: Theory and Implementation of Pop-Routing. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 26(5): 2216-2229 (2018)
  • Simonetta Balsamo, Andrea Marin, Isi Mitrani, Nicola Rebagliati:
    Prediction of the Consolidation Delay in Blockchain-based Applications. ICPE 2021: 81-92
  • Andrea Marin, Sabina Rossi, Matteo Sottana:
    Dynamic Resource Allocation in Fork-Join Queues. ACM Trans. Model. Perform. Evaluation Comput. Syst. 5(1): 3:1-3:28 (2020)
  • Miralem Mehic, Peppino Fazio, Stefan Rass, Oliver Maurhart, Momtchil Peev, Andreas Poppe, Jan Rozhon, Marcin Niemiec, Miroslav Voznák:
    A Novel Approach to Quality-of-Service Provisioning in Trusted Relay Quantum Key Distribution Networks. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 28(1): 168-181 (2020)
  • Leonardo Maccari, Lorenzo Ghiro, Alessio Guerrieri, Alberto Montresor, Renato Lo Cigno:
    Exact Distributed Load Centrality Computation: Algorithms, Convergence, and Applications to Distance Vector Routing. IEEE Trans. Parallel Distributed Syst. 31(7): 1693-1706 (2020)

Case studies

  • Security and performance analysis of wireless networks with a focus on 5G and 6G;
  • Digital contact tracing;
  • Applications and analysis of protocols on blockchains;
  • Network security with quantum key distribution;
  • Network routing

Research projects

NiRvAna - Noninterference and Reversibility Analysis in Private Blockchains

PRIN 2020

Distributed computing has by now become a pervasive technology due to the widespread adoption of electronic devices connected by the Internet infrastructure, which are used by individuals, companies, and institutions to perform an increasing number of activities in a digital mode. One of the most prominent examples over the last decade is blockchain technology. This is a distributed ledger that permanently records transactions taking place among untrusted parties in a decentralized and disintermediated environment, which was devised to avoid the double spending problem in virtual currency platforms. A number of shortcomings affect public, permissionless blockchains, including the excessive energy consumption required by the consensus protocol and conflicts between data immutability and regulations. In the specific case of innovative payment methods, there are also risks of losing monetary sovereignty and undermining financial stability, as witnessed by the fact that many central banks are exploring the issuance of what is called central bank digital currency (CBDC). For these reasons private, permissioned blockchains are getting momentum, as they could ultimately give businesses a greater degree of control. Developing complex distributed systems like private blockchains is extremely challenging in terms of guaranteeing high levels of proper functioning, data protection, and quality of service. It even becomes a critical issue in CBDC platforms, where errors, data breaches, and poor performance may have economical and social consequences hard to estimate. This calls for a model-based approach in the early design stages so as to enable system property prediction. The NiRvAna project is about the use of formal methods for the compositional modeling of functional and non-functional aspects of the behavior and the structure of private blockchains. On the analysis side, we will focus on relevant properties such as noninterference and reversibility. The former is concerned with the absence of information leakage, due to qualitative or quantitative covert channels, from the private blockchain governance to permissioned users. The latter deals with undoing transactions, because of regulation compliance, in a way that timely brings the system in a previous consistent state. This will be accomplished by developing or extending modeling languages, analysis techniques, and software tools according to an integrated view of correctness, security, and performance objectives.

Last update: 06/11/2024