Author: Andreas Dittrich Ph.D. Thesis, submitted to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, December 9, 2014. Oral defense March 20, 2015. Grade: magna cum laudae. Reviewers: Prof. Dr. Miroslaw Malek, Lugano, Switzerland Prof. Dr. Alexander Reinefeld, Berlin, Germany Prof. Dr. Jörg Kaiser, Magdeburg, Germany Download: published version, meta information

Dependability of service provision is one of the primary goals in modern networks. Since providers and clients are part of a connecting Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure, service dependability varies with the position of actors as the ICT devices needed for service provision change. We present two approaches to quantify user-perceived service dependability. The first is a model-driven approach to calculate instantaneous service availability. Using input models of the service, the infrastructure and a mapping between the two to describe actors of service communication, availability models are automatically created by a series of model to model transformations. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated using exemplary services in the network of University of Lugano, Switzerland. The second approach aims at the responsiveness of the service discovery layer, the probability to find service instances within a deadline even in the presence of faults, and is the main part of this thesis. We present a hierarchy of stochastic models to calculate user-perceived responsiveness based on monitoring data from the routing layer. Extensive series of experiments have been run on the Distributed Embedded Systems (DES) wireless testbed at Freie Universität Berlin. They serve both to demonstrate the shortcomings of current discovery protocols in modern dynamic networks and to validate the presented stochastic models. Both approaches demonstrate that the dependability of service provision indeed differs considerably depending on the position of service clients and providers, even in highly reliable wired networks. The two approaches enable optimization of service networks with respect to known or predicted usage patterns. Furthermore, they anticipate novel service dependability models which combine service discovery, timeliness, placement and usage, areas that until now have been treated to a large extent separately.

	Authors: Andreas Dittrich Daniel Solis Herrera Pablo Coto Miroslaw Malek 20th IEEE Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing, PRDC 2014, Singapore, November 18-21, 2014 Download: accepted version, final published version

Service Discovery (SD) is an integral part of service networks. Before a service can be used, it needs to be discovered successfully. Thus, a comprehensive service dependability analysis needs to consider the dependability of the SD process. As a time-critical operation, an important property of SD is responsiveness: the probability of successful discovery within a deadline, even in the presence of faults. This is especially true for dynamic networks with complex fault behavior such as wireless networks. We present results of a comprehensive responsiveness evaluation of decentralized SD, specifically active SD using the Zeroconf protocol. The ExCovery experiment framework has been employed in the Distributed Embedded System (DES) wireless testbed at Freie Universität Berlin. We present and discuss the experiment results and show how SD responsiveness is affected by the position and number of requesters and providers as well as the load in the network. Results clearly demonstrate that in all but the most favorable conditions, the configurations of current SD protocols struggle to achieve a high responsiveness. We further discuss results reflecting the long-term behavior of the testbed and how its varying reliability impacts SD responsiveness.

	Authors: Andreas Dittrich Stefan Wanja Miroslaw Malek 28th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel Distributed Processing, Workshops and PhD Forum, IPDPSW 2014, Phoenix, AZ, USA, May 19-23, 2014 Download: accepted version, final published version GitHub Project Page and Source Repository

Experiments are a fundamental part of science. They are needed when the system under evaluation is too complex to be analytically described and they serve to empirically validate hypotheses. This work presents the experimentation framework ExCovery for dependability analysis of distributed processes. It provides concepts that cover the description, execution, measurement and storage of experiments. These concepts foster transparency and repeatability of experiments for further sharing and comparison. ExCovery has been tried and refined in a manifold of dependability related experiments during the last two years. A case study is provided to describe service discovery as experiment process. A working prototype for IP networks runs on the Distributed Embedded System (DES) wireless testbed at the Freie Universität Berlin.

	Authors: Andreas Dittrich Rafael Rezende 14th European Workshop on Dependable Computing (EWDC), Coimbra, Portugal, May 15-16, 2013 Download: accepted version, the final publication is available at link.springer.com

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has emerged as an approach to master growing system complexity by proposing services as basic building elements of system design. However, it remains difficult to evaluate dependability of such distributed and heterogeneous functionality as it depends highly on the properties of the enabling information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure. Moreover, every specific pair service client and provider can utilize different ICT components, constituting for the user-perceived view of a service. We provide a model-driven methodology to automatically create reliability block diagrams of such views. Given a service description, a network topology model and a pair service client and provider, it identifies relevant ICT components and generates a user-perceived service availability model (UPSAM). We then use this UPSAM to calculate the steady-state availability of different views on an exemplary mail service deployed in the network infrastructure of University of Lugano, Switzerland.

	Authors: Andreas Dittrich Igor Kaitovic Cristina Murillo Rafael Rezende 27th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel Distributed Processing, Workshops and PhD Forum, IPDPSW 2013, Boston, MA, USA, May 20-24, 2013 Download: accepted version, final published version

An ever-increasing number of both functional and non-functional requirements has resulted in growing system complexity which demands new solutions in system modeling and evaluation. As a remedy, service-oriented architecture (SOA) offers services as basic building elements of system design. Service dependability is highly dependent on the properties of the underlying information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure. This is especially true for the user-perceived dependability of a specific pair service client and provider as every pair may utilize different ICT components. We provide a model for the description of ICT components and their non-functional properties based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Given a service description, a network topology model and a pair service client and provider, we propose a methodology to automatically identify relevant ICT components and generate a user-perceived service infrastructure model (UPSIM). We demonstrate the feasibility of the methodology by applying it to parts of the service network infrastructure at University of Lugano (USI), Switzerland. We then show how this methodology can be used to facilitate user-perceived service dependability analysis.