Authors: R. Les Cottrell SLAC; Sadia Rehman, Amber Zeb NUST; Zafar Gilani SLAC & NUST; Umar Kalim Virginia Tech
Deployment
Monitoring Hosts
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As the map below shows, Pakistan’s backbone is laid out from North to South and West to East. Peshawar region connects directly to Islamabad; Islamabad connects directly only to Lahore apart from Peshawar; Lahore accesses Karachi via Faisalabad and Quetta can only access rest of the country via Karachi.
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Map of the PERN backbone. Source: the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan. |
The difficulty of the installations has varied host to host. The technical installation of the software etc. has been simple and not resulted in delays. The delays between deciding to install a monitoring host and gathering measurements from the host have mostly been due to: machine availability; getting administrative approval within university;getting access to the concerned local people, and delays in making the DNS record entry. The table below shows the history of the installations:Note we still do not have a DNS entry for the Lahore School of Economics, and had to enhance our software tools to accommodate this. Problems once it starts taking data are poor power availability, lack of backup power and access to the site when there are problems that needs physical access. The table below shows the history of the installation and remarks concerning the difficulty of installation and the reliability of the host:
Table of Pakistani PingER Monitoring sites, the URLs of the monitoring host,s the date of installation and first data, the location and remarks on installation and reliability.
Monitoring Site | URLs | Installed (Month/year) | 1st Data Gathered (Month/year) | City | State | Remarks |
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, NUST | monitor.niit | |||||
Monitoring Site | URLs | Installed (Month/year) | Ist Data Gathered (Month/year) | City | State | |
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, NUST | monitor.niit.edu.pk | 1/2005 | 2/2005 | Islamabad | Punjab | Reliable |
COMSATS University | pinger.comsats.edu.pk | 2/2007 | 3/2007 | Islamabad | Punjab | Temporary power problems |
Pakistan Education Research Network PERN, Islamabad | pinger.pern.edu.pk | 4/2007 | 5/2007 | Islamabad | Punjab | Reliable |
NCP, Quaid-e-Azam University | pinger-ncp.ncp.edu.pk | 4/2007 | 5/2007 | Islamabad | Punjab | Reliable |
UET at Lahore | pinger.uet.edu.pk | 7/2009 | 8/2009 | Lahore | Punjab | Reliable |
International Islamic University at Islamabad | vle.iiu.edu.pk | 4/2010 | 4/2010 | Islamabad | Punjab | Reliable |
Lahore School of Economics | 111.68.102.40 (we still do not have a DNS registration) | 4/2010 | 8/2010 | Lahore | Punjab | Reliable, but unable to get DNS |
University of Balochistan | pinger.uob.edu.pk | 4/2010 | 4/2010 | Quetta | Balochistan | Power problems |
University of Arid Agriculture at Rawalpindi | pinger.uaar.edu.pk | 6/2010 | 9/2010 | Islamabad | Punjab Punjab | Lack of will |
UET at Taxila | pinger.uettaxila.edu.pk | 6/2010 | 6/2010 | Islamabad | Punjab | Power, interest & expertise problems |
Agriculture University of Peshawar | pinger.aup.edu.pk | 6/2010 | 6/2010 | Peshawar | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | ? |
UET at Peshawar | pinger.nwfpuet.edu.pk | 6/2010 | 6/2010 | Peshawar | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | Power & Backup problems |
NED University of Engineering & Technology | npm.neduet.edu.pk | 8/2010 | 8/2010 | Karachi | Sindh | Reliable |
Allama Iqbal Open University | pinger.aiou.edu.pk | 10/2010 | 11/2010 | Islamabad | Punjab | Expertise and sub-netting problems |
Punjab University, ITC, Department | pinger-itc.pu.edu.pk | 10/2010 | 11/2010 | Lahore | Punjab | Reliable |
National College of Arts | pinger.nca.edu.pk | 10/2010 | 12/2010 | Lahore | Punjab | Reliable |
Hazara University at Mansehra | pinger.hu.edu.pk | 10/2010 | Peshawar | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | ? | |
KUST at Kohat | pinger.kohat.edu.pk | 10/2010 | 12/2010 | Peshawar | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | Power, Backup & Expertise problems |
FAST at Peshawar | pinger.pwr.nu.edu.pk | 10/2010 | 12/2010 | Peshawar | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | Power, interest, experience |
University of Science & Technology at Bannu | pinger.ustb.edu.pk | 10/2010 | Peshawar | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | Power, interest & expertise | |
FAST at Lahore | pinger.lhr.nu.edu.pk | 11/2010 | 12/2010 | Lahore | Punjab | Power |
University of Sindh at jamshoro | pinger.usindh.edu.pk | 12/2010 | 12/2010 | Karachi | Sindh | Reliable |
Isra University at Hyderabad | pinger.isra.edu.pk | 12/2010 | 12/2010 | Karachi | Sindh | Reliable |
Lahore College for Women University | pinger.lcwu.edu.pk | 12/2010 | 12/2010 | Lahore | Punjab | Reliable Punjab |
Pakistan Education Research Network PERN, Quetta | pingerqta.pern.edu.pk | 12/2010 | 12/2010 | Quetta | Balochistan | ? |
In addition work is in progress to install: BUITMS in Quetta, Bolochistan; Sind Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam in Karachi, SindSindh; NCEMB University in Punjab, Lahore; Virtual University Lahore, Ounjab; Air University in Islamabad, Punjab, Kinnaired College for Women in Lahore, Punjab.
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The locations of the Pakistani monitoring (red) and remote(red and blue) hosts are seen in the PingER maps below.
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Pakistani PingER sites with lines showing the minimum RTT in msec. seen from NUST | Details of PingER sites in Islamabad, the lines show the average RTT seen from NUST | Details of PingER sites in Islamabad, the lines show the minimum RTT from PERN |
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Also interesting to see (middle map above) is that the connection from NUST to the DSL site (blue line) is much less than that to the physically closer NUST host. This host (lo-0-gw.dsl.net.pk(203.82.63.254)) is connected via a Micronet broadband connection rather than most of the other hosts which are connected via Nayatel to the PERN backbone. Nayatel in turn owns Micronet. The route from SEECS to the DSL host goes via Nayatel as far as we can trace it. Thus the link from SEECS to PERN which goes via Nayatael may go to a Nayatel Point of Presence at the same location as the DSL host and then to the PERN metroplitan ring. This may be the cause for the lower minimum RTT to the DSL host.
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Table of unreachability seen from SLAC to Pakistani hosts in 2010. Higher values (bad) are colored redder. The data is sorted by increasing unreachability in Jan 2011. Spreadsheet | Chart of the unreachability of Pakistani hosts seen from SLAC Dec 2010 and Jan 2011 | Smokeping examples of unreachabillty seen from SLAC for 120 days Oct 2010 - Jan 2011. |
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It is seen that the links between Karachi and Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, and Karachi and Peshawar are very direct (values of alpha close to one) and are also very consistent (low values of the standard deviations). Islamabad and Quetta apparently are connected very indirectly (low value of alpha). Looking at the map at the top this makes sense since the route goes via Karachi in the South and then back northwards to Quetta. The links between Islamabad and Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar and Lahore and Peshawar all have lower vales of alpha and thus appear to be more indirect and have higher variability. A common element in the links between these three regions is that they all pass through Islamabad (see PERN backbone map at top). value of alpha). Looking at the map at the top this makes sense since the route goes via Karachi in the South and then back northwards to Quetta. The links between Islamabad and Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar and Lahore and Peshawar all have lower vales of alpha and thus appear to be more indirect and have higher variability. A common element in the links between these three regions is that they all pass through Islamabad (see PERN backbone map at top).
Acknowledge
We acknowledge the patient and persistent efforts by Kashif and Fahad Gilani of NUST to spearhead the installations of PingER at the various sites. The PingER map tool was developed by Faisal Zahid while at SLAC and turned out to be extremely effective in drilling down and understanding the connections. The Smokeping tool was developed by Fahad Satti while at SLAC. We also acknowledge the continued encouragement and support from Arshad Ali of NUST.