Department of Computer Science

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https://hdl.handle.net/10566/51
The Bridging Application and Network Gaps (BANG) group examines the intersection of human computer interfaces, computer networks and software engineering within the context of ICT interventions in disadvantaged communities.

The South African Sign Language (SASL) group looks at the integration of signed and verbal communication building on the South African Sign Language Translation System.

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Browsing by Author "Abdalla, Taha"

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    Clustered Multi-layer Multi-protocol Wireless Mesh Networks
    (Telkom, 2015) Abdalla, Taha; Rey-Moreno, Carlos; Tucker, William David; Bagula, Antoine
    Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have emerged as an alternative option to the wired networks in areas where wired deployment is unfeasible and/or costly. They have been widely adopted in community networks as these networks are mostly built within “not for profit” projects and do not require enterprise class investment which can lead to inefficient network architectures and routing protocol designs. B.A.T.M.A.N-ADV has been designed as a simple routing protocol that adheres to lightweight equipment requirements of wireless mesh deployment in the rural areas of the developing countries. However, it is built around a flat WMN topology which is challenged with scalability, security and implementation issues; which can limit WMN growth and services expansion. This paper proposes and evaluates the performance of a new multi-layer, multi-protocol WMN architecture that addresses B.A.T.M.A.N-ADV scalability issues by borrowing from wired networks their clustering model and building around the B.A.T.M.A.N Experimental (BMX6) protocol to introduce layer2 tunnelling through a cloud of layer3 routers.
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    Scalable Wireless Mesh Networks
    (University of the Western Cape, 2016) Abdalla, Taha; Bagula, Antoine
    Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are wireless multi-hop networks built on wireless nodes that operate in an Independent Basic Set Identifier (IBSS) mode of the IEEE 208.11 wireless standard. IBSS is well known as an ad hoc mode which is found to build ad hoc wireless networks with the aid of routing protocols crafted to work in this mode. Ad hoc wireless mesh networks are always described as self-healing, self-configuring, easy to build, etc. However, these features do come at a cost because a WMN suffers performance degradation and scalability issues, which mainly come from the underlying IBSS mode that is used to form the physical network. Furthermore this is exacerbated by routing protocols in the upper layers which are intended to form a flat network architecture. Partitioning or clustering the flat network into smaller units has been proven to be a viable mechanism to counter the scalability problem in the communication network. The wired network for instance, presents a segmented, hierarchical architecture, where end user devices are organized in virtual local area networks (VLANs) using Ethernet switches and then Routers aggregate multiple VLANs. This thesis develops and evaluates a heterogeneous, clustering architecture to enhance WMN scalability and management. In the proposed architecture, the clustering is separated from the routing, where the clustering is done at the physical layer. At the routing level, each cluster is configured as a WMN using layer 2 routing for intra-cluster routing, and layer 3 routing for inter-domain routing between clusters. Prototypes for the proposed architecture have been built in a laboratory testbed. The proposed architecture reported better scalability and performance results compared to the traditional flat architecture.