Last touched: 03.11.2004

RESACO is a project of GET aiming to promote an opening and adaptability of the modern networks and to study the resulting inter-network cooperation possibilities.

Practically, topics treated in RESACO include three main study cases:

• dynamic router configuration,
• GRPS/WLAN interworking
• secure network access and service discovery.

Though different at the first glance, RESACO proposes solutions to all these problems by following its doctrine of adaptive reconfiguration. The first part of the project has been carried out at the INT Evry, using MIT's CLICK language for dynamic router configuration. The second part has been analyzed at the ENST Bretagne proposing a loosely coupled GPRS/WLAN cooperation based on an IPv6 tunneling techniques. The third part has been treated at the ENST Paris, based on its former experience in the Authentis project and using the UPnP protocol.

The theoretical and practical results of the common work of the three participants have been presented at the regular GET Meeting in Brest/France. The team of the ENST Bretagne prepared a video of the proposed solution for GPRS/WLAN cooperation. The teams of INT Evry and ENST Paris could show a demonstrator: an open platform integrating a network access control element, network access point, edge router and service discovery mechanisms  [>>> Photos]. A paper on RESACO entitled "RESACO: An Open and Programmable Multi-Domain Platform for Cooperative and Auto-Configurable Networks” was  presented at the International Conference on Wireless Networks (ICWN'2004) which took place in Las Vegas/USA in June 2004 [1].

All integrated elements consequently apply the user profile restrictions stored in a profile data base. The policy enforcement is carried out at the first met network element, thus enabling the maximum possible control. Controlling access to the network at the 2nd layer (802.1X over 802.11), the access point applies the QoS restrictions according to the user profile. Further, at the 3rd layer (IP) DiffServ based router establishes restrictive routing rules with packet tagging and weighted queuing according to the user profile, assigned traffic classes and current load. Additionally, strict filtering opens higher level access (layer 7) to the enabled services only. Consistently, the only network services the user can discover using a standard UPnP control point on the terminal are the services allowed by the user profile. A UPnP device included in the edge device adapts to the user profile, the available resources and the available services. The device gathers information on available network resources and services via COPS (integrated LPDP and a PEP), manual configuration or/and some other service discovery techniques. Profiles are stored in LDAP/SQL data bases and are accessed via RADIUS. Web-based management console gives the network administrator the current network situation in terms of connected users, used resources, etc. at any moment.

The demonstrator implementation was based on Linux platforms with a modified hostAP implementation, the freeradius server, MySQL and OpenLDAP data bases, Apache Web-server, PHP interpreter, Intel's UPnP SDK and a house-made COPS PDP/PEP implementations. VideoLAN software was used to show the differentiation of traffic classes dependent on the user profile.

v Resources

MIT's CLICK

HostAP Project

FreeRADIUS

MySQL

OpenLDAP

Apache httpd

PHP

Intel's UPnP SDK

UPnP Forum

VideoLAN

v Publication

ICWN 2004