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Countering Mobile Signaling Storms with Counters

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Internet of Things. IoT Infrastructures (IoT360 2015)

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Abstract

Mobile Networks are subject to signaling storms launched by misbehaving applications or malware, which result in bandwidth overload at the cell level and excessive signaling within the mobile operator, and may also deplete the battery power of mobile devices. This paper reviews the causes of signaling storms and proposes a novel technique for storm detection and mitigation. The approach is based on counting the number of successive signaling transitions that do not utilize allocated bandwidth, and temporarily blocking mobile devices that exceed a certain threshold to avoid overloading the network. Through a mathematical analysis, we derive the optimum value of the counter’s threshold, which minimizes both the number of misbehaving mobiles and the signaling overload in the network. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Mihajlo Pavloski and Gokce Gorbil for the simulation results, and the EU FP7 project NEMESYS (Enhanced Network Security for Seamless Service Provisioning in the Smart Mobile Ecosystem), grant agreement no. 317888, for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College, London, SW7 2BT, UK

    Erol Gelenbe & Omer H. Abdelrahman

Authors
  1. Erol Gelenbe
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  2. Omer H. Abdelrahman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erol Gelenbe .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Research, Haifa, Israel

    Benny Mandler

  2. CONNECT Centre, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Johann Marquez-Barja

  3. GTA/PEE-COPPE/DEL-Poli, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Miguel Elias Mitre Campista

  4. Faculty of Materials Science and Technology in Trnava, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Trnava, Slovakia

    Dagmar Cagáňová

  5. Institut Télécom SudParis, Evry, France

    Hakima Chaouchi

  6. College of Communication and Information, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Sherali Zeadally

  7. College of Technological Innovation, Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Mohamad Badra

  8. University of Pisa, Pisa, Holy See (Vatican City State)

    Stefano Giordano

  9. DICIEAMA Department, University of Messina, Messina, Italy

    Maria Fazio

  10. CREATE-NET, Trento, Italy

    Andrey Somov

  11. University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Radu-Laurentiu Vieriu

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© 2016 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Gelenbe, E., Abdelrahman, O.H. (2016). Countering Mobile Signaling Storms with Counters. In: Mandler, B., et al. Internet of Things. IoT Infrastructures. IoT360 2015. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 169. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47063-4_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47063-4_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47062-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47063-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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