...
Concerning the Android PingER app, the July 11 2020 email said:
We have successfully implemented the Ping through our mobile application, and the data is saved in the default PingER format, with 2 fields in addition, the latitude and longitude of the place.
An android application was implemented before, but this time we made a Flutter app, which makes it possible to distribute the app to both Android and iOS platforms via a single source code.
Regarding the format of data stored, we can only store it in JSON format, because it is the most convenient and best way to store. However, we made a python script which can parse the JSON data to Plain Text format and give the output.
In addition to functionality of the previous app, we are also storing the data locally on the user's phone, which is plain text format in a file, under the folder //Internal Storage/SLAC_Pinger/<date> <time>.txt
Concerning the Android App, Umar pointed out that we need to understand/specify the end goal of the project. The project can support mobility since it records GPS coordinates. One needs to decide how to utilize the data gathered. It can be useful for evaluating Telco service providers. Unlike today's PingER which has continuous data between monitoring stations and targets, we would expect the mobile data to be much more sparse both in terms of time and monitors (cell-phones). Further, it is community-driven rather than centrally. It would appear to be similar to Thousand Eyes or Speedtest app that enables cell phone users to make on-demand measurements of throughput from their phones to targets around the world. The measurements would be archived and can then be summarized and reports presented, e.g. comparing connectivity from area to area on maps and or by a carrier. Telcos are also making such connectivity measurements for their network. An advantage of the current proposal is that it would be across service providers, and also have less network impact than say Speedtest.
...
SLAC Overview
PingER is still actively monitoring from 15 sites in 10 countries (US, Canada, Pakistan, Malaysia, Germany, Switzerland, China, Taiwan, Brazil, South Africa). Apart from SLAC, the monitoring sites each monitor 171 Beacons. SLAC monitors over 700 monitored hosts in 171 countries including all continents except Antarctica. See https://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/sites-per-country.html. Also, see the state of various problem monitoring hosts below.
State of MAs.
Host | State | last seen | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| daffodilvarsity.edu.bd | No data since Feb 19, 2020. No response to ping. Disabled by Cottrell 10/19/2020. | ||
| pingeramity.in | No data since Jan 6, 2020. Cannot ping gives unknown host. Email from Amity Sep 4, 2020: Also, for our Amity SLAC server, physical access is not possible and therefore we are unable to configure the scripts manually there and hence it is running offline. It will be set as soon as the college reopens. Disabled by Cottrell 10/19/2020 | ||
| pinger.rmutsv.ac.th | Unable to gather data since November 13, 2019. Host is pingable. Sent email to chaisit.c@rmutsv.ac.th 3/26/2020. No response by 4/13/2020. Disabled 10/19/2020 | Nov 13, 2019 | |
| pinger.gcwuf.edu.pk | Unable to gather data since 3/31/2020, host is not pingable. Email sent to Saqib 4/13/2020, 10/19/20. Saqib will contact the admins again. | 3/31/2020 | Await saqib |
| monitor.seecs.edu.pk | No data since 10/29/2019, host is pingable email to Wajahat 11/7/2019. Reminder to Kiran and Wajahat 2/16/2020. Host not pingable sent email to Kiran and Wajahat 3/3/2020. Email sent to Kiran and Wajahat 4/13/2020. Unknown Host. Kiran's post was to terminate Sep 20. She was working on monitor, maggie2, nwfpuet. No response. Disabled. | 10/27/2019 | |
| maggie2.seecs.edu.pk | No data since 11/4/2019, host is pingable email to Wajahat 11/2/2019, 11/20/2019. Reminder to Kiran and Wajahat 2/16/2020. Host no longer pingable, sent email to Kiran and Wajahat 3/3/2020. Email sent to Kiran and Wajahat 4/13/2020. iran's post was to terminate Sep 20. She was working on monitor, maggie2, nwfpuet. No progress 10/19/2020. It is disabled. | ||
| pinger.nwfpuet.edu.pk | Something amiss since April 2019 when it dropped from monitoring over 150 targets down to 4. There is nothing in <BeaconsList>, all the hosts it attempts to monitor are in the locally manually maintained <NodeList>. Does not ping by name. Email sent 11/7/2019, and again 11/20/2019. Reminder to Kiran and Wajahat 2/16/2020. Email sent to Kiran and Wajahat 4/13/2020. Kiran's post was to terminate Sep 20. She was working on monitor, maggie2, nwfpuetDisabled 3/17/2020, we still ping it as a target, |
NUST
4/14/2020 Kiran reports: "due to the coronavirus we are not going to the university. But I have requested the university admin to cooperate with me and install a teamviewer so that I can remotely access the PC and the monitor and maggie2. If the university does so then I will call you on skype so that we can resolve the issue." Kiran has no time estimate as to when this may happen. Kiran's previous post terminated in Sept 2020.
Kiran's contract has been extended as a lab engineer for one year. She was working on monitor, maggie2, nwfpuet. Les has disabled trying to gather data from them all, and on 10/28/2020 given Kiran details of when they last worked, whether the resolve by name, whether they ping etc.
pinger.vu.edu.pk was fixed July 19th 2020
UAF (University of Agriculture, Faisalabad)/GHZU
...