Agenda for SEECS/SLAC meeting November 3rd 2010.

Bold face, topics for coming meeting that we need to address

Italics action items

Pakistani case study – Zafar, Anjum

We need to make some progress on the Pakistani case study soon.

  1. nwfpuet, uettaxila, uob are down for many days: see http://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/monitoring/checkdata/).
    1. We will not give up on them. Only one person is installing nodes. It will take a visit to them. The server needs replacing at sites. UOB will be fixed in 1 months, they will go there on the 27th. Anjum will check the status of the other two with Imran.
  2. There has never been any data from  pinger-itc.pu, aiou, hu (Hazara), kohat, nca,  pwr.mu, ustb, since though the hosts are in the NODEDETAILS database there is no dataserver entry for each of then in the database. Should there be? They are identified as monitors. -  Even if I guess at the URL for a dataserver, e.g.  http://pinger.hu.edu.pk/cgi-bin/ping_data.pl there is no such web page. Maybe the permissions have not been ste. Zafar looked at fixed pinger-itc, and aiou. But for Hazar, kohat, nca pwr, ustb, pinger-rcp cannot find web page, they need to be worked on. Zafar will politely remind Imran about checkdata. 
  3. UPesh problem:  See http://pinger.seecs.edu.pk/checkdata/ and "try to get data" for UPesh. UPesh is gathering data but there is "0" at the end of each entry which means that it didn't receive anything back. It can only ping itself. It was installed very differently, they have a private subnet/IP address, this may be not be cost effective to make it work.
  4. Dr. Anjum is verifying that table.pl at SEECS has all the known Pakistani monitors..
    1. UET, UOB, LSE, COMSATS do not have the full set of Pakistani beacons. See matrix. The Pakistani monitoring nodes are supposed to get the beacon list from SEECS. – Anjum said he has a student who can fix but need password so they can fix the nodes so they get the list from the SEECS server. They are fetching their beacons from SLAC. Anjum is requesting admins to fix. Working on it, but response from admins is not good. 
  5. There appears to be an anomaly in the RTTs to vle.iiu.edu.pk (AKA PK.IIU.EDU.N2) from the Pakistani monitors it is over 200ms while from SLAC as displayed in pingtable.pl it is 67ms. Yet if I do it from the command line it is ~ 310ms from pinger. The traceroute shows it as going via London and Singapore which suggests it is on its way to Pakistan. This needs investigating. Pingtable.pl is current as of yesterday so maybe something happened between then and when I pinged a few minutes ago. Also www.iiu.edu.pk has an RTT from SLAC of 177ms. TULIP shows it as in Europe.  Thus I have removed this host from the NODEDETAILS database since it is probably a proxy and not in Pakistan. We may be confused as to the name of the host (e.g. vle & www). Les will study further and email what he finds out.

Progress on ICFA Report 2011 - Zafar

Integrate into the report. Need to save all the spreadsheets in http://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/icfa/icfa-net-paper-jan11/slaconly (AKA /afs/slac/www/xorg/icfa/icfa-net-paper-jan11/slaconly/) - Zafar please make it so.

  1. 2010 Updates on Africa (done)
  2. Inland African fibre optics (done)
  3. African NREN (done)
  4. Mean Opinion Score
  5. Regions of the World graphs
  6. Throughput graphs (will be handled in December/January)
  7. PingER metrics (done)
  8. Loss (done)

Zafar has explained to Sadia and Amber the nature of work. They are currently working on HEC reports. Deadline for Sep-Oct (bi-monthly) report is November 20th. That report will be helpful for writing down Pakistani case study. Meanwhile I will resume work on ICFA report.

PerfSONAR

Zafar met with Arshad, he is pleased but wants to have more information presented to students so can encourage them to come to SLAC. Also any new ideas to bring this to nation-wide attention will also be appreciated.

Zafar met with networking groups at SEECS to tell them what is needed (hardware, bandwidth & software) to install perfSONAR. Need to understand how not to choke the network. Can they use QoS, separate link, only run bwctl when everyone is in bed, or turn off bwctl. They have a separate link so this should be OK.

Zafar is involved with BIT-7 convocation. So will not start on ICFA report until Monday. 

  1. Faisal is working with Yee. Progress - Faisal
    1. Looking at how to display multiple nodes at a single lat/long or close lat/longs, a grouping problem. Looking at how to handle identical lat/longs. Looked at MonALISA, and other implementations.
  2. Zafar - deploy PerfSONAR nodes at SEECS. Second step is to find whether the same can be done at HEC on PERN's network.

Possible projects

See https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Future+Projects. Zafar will be working on this

  1. Extend the NODEDETAILS data base to allow entry support for whether the host is currenty pingable.
  2. Extend the PingER map (also use for Pakistani to Pakistani subset map for the case study)
    1. This adds ping, traceroute, access to database etc.
    2. The advantage compared to other traceroute maps is that the laundering keeps only good servers.
    3. Faisal will work on this
  3. Dashboard for PingER management. Faisal will start correspondence with Amber.
  4. Get the MatLab licsense at SEECS and put up a CGB server using it. Zafar can you provide progress at next meeting?## I shall ask Dr. Ali Khayam and Dr. Anjum regarding this.
    1. The other option is to get one or two of Ghulam Nabi, Naseer and Maqsood to work and re-implement this in Java.

Future

Need to get commitment for Zafar's contribution from NUST end. Need to get invitation to Zafar

Umar has talked at length with Anjum/Arshad. They are working on it. They need the numbers from Les.

Les visit to Pakistan, is there anything he would like to do, e.g. Salt mines.

Paper - Umar, Fida, Zafar

  1. SVN for paper, Umar has set it up and it is working. Umar will send out the accounts. Not critical at the moment.
  2. Umar will take as the main/first author of the paper. Ali Khayam has put together an introduction
    identifying the main points. Umar will send in the first draft and put together with feedback from Ali. Umar hopes to be done by Mid December. Umar is currently overwhelmed.

AOB

  1. Feeling we put together the minutes but do we follow them up, are we making sure things are done. Zafar will go through old minutes and check we are following up.

Future meeting time - Les

This time (8pm Wednesday 10th November, 7am Pak time) works for Les and Zafar and Anjum.  Anjum will bring in Dr Adnan.

  • No labels