The 7th edition of RNDM (International Workshop on Reliable Networks Design and Modeling) was held in Munich, Germany in Novotel Munich City on 5–7 October, 2015. The event was technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society and endorsed by its Technical Committees on Computer Communications (TCCC), Communications Systems Integration and Modeling (CSIM), and Communications Quality and Reliability (CQR). Other technical co-sponsors of RNDM 2015 included the IEEE Germany Section, IFIP TC6, and the V.A. Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences of RAS. RNDM 2015 was organized by Gdansk University of Technology, PL, Technical University of Munich, DE, and the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, JP, in conjunction with two other meetings: WMNC 2015 (8th IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference) and Nets- 4Cars 2015 Fall (9th International Workshop on Communication Technologies for Vehicles).
RNDM 2015 also offered two co-located half-day workshops, the 2nd International Workshop on Survivable Content-Oriented and Cloud- Ready Networking (S2CN), and the 3rd International Workshop on Understanding the Inter-play between Sustainability, Resilience, and Robustness in Networks (USRR).
The aim of the S2CN workshop was to bring together researchers and to provide an international forum for sharing, exchange, presentation, and discussion of original research results related to survivability aspects of content-oriented networks and cloud computing services. S2CN 2015 was supported by ENGINE, the European research center of Network intelliGence for INnovation Enhancement, the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme, Coordination and Support Action, Grant Agreement Number 316097 (http://engine.pwr. edu.pl/).
The main purpose of the third edition of the USRR workshop (Understanding the Inter-play between Sustainability, Resilience, and Robustness in Networks) was to introduce rigorous methods for science-based communication networks and systems design which capture all sources of uncertainty and its propagation (including probabilistic approaches) to determine probable outputs when specific factors are unknown, e.g. input parameters and model (structural, behavioral). In this respect, the main topics covered the identification and characterization of all sources of uncertainties in the design model and its parameters together with the related methods, e.g. parametric/non-parametric statistical inference methods from observable data, Bayesian inference, estimation methods (Kernel Density Estimation), and regression analysis.
With the increasing level of uncertainty resulting from unpredictable disturbance/perturbations, unexpected changes/variations, (un) voluntary disruptions, malfunctions, and changes in usage patterns due to socio-economic or technological evolution, current network design, as well as verification and validation methods, are confronted to the fundamental challenge of meeting inter-dependent properties involving resilience, robustness, and sustainability.
On the other hand, this event also aimed at exploiting operational data to develop data-driven techniques for the design of uncertainty sets using statistical hypothesis tests which significantly outperform traditional robust optimization techniques that rely on “a priori” reasoning and domain-knowledge. Indeed the formulation of robust counterparts of optimization problems is intrinsically related to the specification of the uncertainty set by means of data-driven statistical or distributional methods.
RNDM, the annual single-track event established in 2009, has quickly become one of the leading workshops on network resilience and dependability. Despite being located near the European research community, every year it gathers world-class academic and industrial researchers from non-European countries, including, for example, the USA, Canada, Japan, China, or Uruguay.
A total of 55 regular submissions submitted to RNDM 2015 authored by researchers from more than 30 countries were reviewed by 67 TPC members and 57 external reviewers. Each submitted paper received at least four reviews. The 32 accepted manuscripts were finally organized as full and short papers into the following technical sessions:
- Network Resilience Evaluation
- Survivability of Content-oriented and Cloud-ready Networking
- Design of Resilient Optical Networks
- Theory of Network Resilience
- Resilience of Wireless Networks
- Fault Management and Monitoring •Fault Localization and Control •Inter-play between Sustainability, Resilience, and Robustness in Networks–Parts I-II. The technical program of RNDM 2015 was extended by two keynote talks by Prof. Bjarne Helvik (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO) entitled “Dependability of Non-Engineered and Unmanaged System of Systems,” and by Dr. Roland Wessäly (atesio GmbH, DE), entitled “DISCUS: Towards Nation-wide, Scalable, Highly Survivable Fiber Networks.” The technical program also included eight invited talks.
The last part of RNDM 2015 was a panel discussion session entitled “Reliability in Information-Centric Networks: Research Challenges and Perspectives,” with four panelists: Dr. Achim Autenrieth (ADVA Optical Networking, DE), Prof. Tibor Cinkler (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, HU), Dr. Heiko Niedermayer (Technical University of Munich, DE), and Dr. Dimitri Papadimitriou (Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs, BE).
Considering the Best Paper Award, four papers were nominated (all receiving equal highest overall reviewers’ score). The final decision was thus based on presentation quality (scored by chairs of RNDM 2015 technical sessions). This year, the award was given to Roza Goscien and Prof. Krzysztof Walkowiak for their paper entitled “Comparison of Different Data Center Location Policies in Survivable Elastic Optical Networks.”
Similar to previous editions of RNDM, in addition to IEEE Xplore publication, participants were provided with printed as well as electronic proceedings. Authors of the top RNDM 2015 papers were invited to submit the extended versions of their contributions to the special issue of Optical Switching and Networking journal (Elsevier).
RNDM 2016 will be held in Halmstad, Sweden, on 12–15 September, 2016. More information can be found at http://www.rndm.pl.
