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Johari has set up a web landing site for the Malaysian collaboration. It is at http://pinger.unimas.my/pinger. I was uable to access it earlier on this evening. It contains
- brief history, description of the project and the objectives
- link to main SLAC page and also NUST
- list of names, contact details (email, etc), their affiliation, and they scope of job in the project
- a link to the data collected from UNIMAS and also other hosts in UM, USM, and UTM when they have their monitoring host running
- link to meeting minutes in Confluence
- Bebo added as an advisor
- details of the workshop in UNIMAS and also slides from the talks and hands on sessions
It would help to have an MoU between SLAC and UTM. Based on DOE current MOU policy, using the UNIMAS MOU format will not work. Our legal folks also do not think that merely adding additional parties to the current MOU will work either. The new DOE policy will require a new approval. We may be able to get DOE approval of a Work for Others agreement. To do a WFO agreement we would need, at a minimum:
- A detailed project description describing the activities each party will perform
- A description of the deliverables SLAC will provide
- A schedule with completion dates for the activities
- The key personnel and contact information for both parties
- The term for performance of the project activities
- An explanation of the unique capabilities SLAC will provide to the project not available elsewhere
- An explanation how the project is compatible with existing SLAC program(s)
- An explanation how the project enhances the mission of SLAC
Assuming we can get these issues addressed, our legal folks think we could seek DOE approval and enter into an agreement with these other universities.
Workshops
Johari is putting together a web site for the workshop at UNIMAS.Johari recommended a future PingER workshop later this year. This time it would be in a Peninsular Malaysia site hosted at either UTM or UM. Hanan at UTM has agreed to take the lead. We need to get 4 or 5 universities involved. We will need travel funding to fund Les. Les has provided his CV to assist in the paper work. This may be associated with a thesis review or something similar. Update?
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Apart from that, if we target a lot of academicians, then the best time would be during semester break, we will get the dates for that.
*Hanan, we need to get moving on this. Should we set up a Doodle page, see http://doodle.com/?locale=en*. ?
Funding
Johari has submitted a proposal for FRGS (Fundamental Research Grant Scheme). There are 5 members of the proposal (5 is the max). Johari decided to get 2 more people from the group in UNIMAS to join the PingER project, thus we are unable to include our counterparts in UM and UTM (Dr Abdullah and Prof Hanan). We can go for a bigger project such as the eScience or LRGS (Long-term Research Grant Scheme) which can accommodate a larger number of people, more funding and encourage cross institutions collaboration. Any Update?
At a later stage the infrastructure and data can be used for research in: anomaly detection; correlation of performance across multiple routes; and for GeoLocation. Johari would like to see UM and UTM, which are research universities, strongly engaged in the next round of research proposals. Anjum mentioned a paper on Evaluation of IP Geolocation Algorithms on PingER and PlanetLab Infrastructures, by Fida Gilani et. al. submitted to IEEE INFOCOM 2011UNIMAS. This could be updated with new data and maybe submitted to a different venue. Anjum forwarded a copy of the paper to Johari, Abdullah and Hanan with copies to the team. The idea is to see whether there is interest at UTM, UM or UNIMAS. Johari has put together a draft that has been reviewed by Anjum. It will need to be shared when closer to completion. Update?
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Saqib is starting to look at Pingtable.pl anomalies as a start in a case study for Malaysia and S.E Asia. The general idea of the case study is to be found at: https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Malaysian+Case+study. Saqib is making up a list of hosts in Malaysian states that respond to pings.
We should discuss:
It is not easy to find such sites in those states. Obvious target is universities, for example UUM in Kedah and UNIMAP in Perlis, but those sites are not ping-able. One way is to approach these universities and explain to them about PingER project and request for the ping packet to be enable.
UM
Dr Nor Badrul Anuar Jumaat has installedl PingER on a cloud at UM. The machines are virtualized and running Ubuntu Linux. Anjum pointed out that at NUST they are having a problem with a virtual machine running pinger2.pl and the /tmp/ disk space filling up. Anjum is exploring this in more detail, so at the moment it is just a head's up. Johari has sent Kashif's workshop presentations to Dr. Nor. The name and address of the server is pinger.fsktm.um.edu.my (202.185.107.238). The UM monitoring host has been added to the NODELIST PingER meta data base at SLAC a nd and the <HostList> for Malaysian and S.E Asian hosts has been added to the pinger.xml file at UM. We need to get the latest pinger2.pl installed. Since the traceroute is working, "we" can start to make a routing study similar to https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Routing+from+UNIMAS.
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From Arshad: Rector has agreed to support one person visit to SLAC. Raja has been nominated. Cybersecurity wanted a rsiks and mitigations document. It has been created and accepted. Raja's invitation letter has been signed by the CIO. It was sent to the Associate lab Director last Friday. It was sent to Raja about 2 hours ago.
*Arshad and the NUST Rector visited UM and UTM earlier this week. They visited *visited UM Monday at about 1030AM along with the NUST Pakistan delegation. They visited the Deputy Vice Chancellor and the EE Dept in Faculty of Engineering. At this occasion they also sent email to Abdullah, Fidah, Badrul, and Salwa, to engage in a discussion on collaboration in the PingER project being pursued by NUST team in partnership with Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) USA.
It will be an honor to meet all the colleagues at this occassion. Look forward seeing you all.
Any feed back?
Kashif reports that the Multan PoP node was under observation for many days. Now its working fine with little bit of un-reachability. It has been added back to the list of Monitors in the meta database.
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With Malaysia moving quickly to IPv6 (already Nava at USM has sent Les an IPv6 address that he recommends monitoring), converting PingER (especially the gathering, analysis) work with IPv6 is an interesting problem. Anjum believes he could provide an undergraduate to start on this. SLAC looks like it may be getting some traction to enable IPv6 on a some subnets. We have an official Provider Indpendent IPV6 address space. We will start with DNS, the site web server and email.
Bebo's suggestions
(1) Creative visualization of PINGer data including rich interaction;
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The annual report to the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) Standing Committee on Inter-regional Connectivity (SCIC) has also been completed. Les has been invited to give a general colloquiam at SLAC on the Internet where it came from, challenges and how it is performing. the latter section will report some PingER case studies and measurements.
TULIP
Raja has completed the MATLAB script and used it to generate some input files for Pakistan and Europe. However using the alpha values (function of both region and RTT value) found through the alpha analysis the distances were underestimates in some cases. He is working on finding the cause and possible solution.
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