Time & date
Wednesday April 10 2013 8:00pm Pacific Standard Time, Thursday April 11 2013 8:00am Pakistan time, Thursday April 11 2013 11:00am Malaysian time.
There was a doodle poll at http://doodle.com/fnwzs5yu7fmux868. It has been closed as of 4/8/2013. Note that the Doodle poll times are GMT (e.g. 3am 11 April GMT = 8pm 10 April PDT, = 11am 11 April Malaysia time, = 8am 11 April Pakistan time)
Attendees
Invitees: Anjum*, Kashif*, Johari*, Nara, Abdullah-, Badrul*, Hanan-, Fidah, Saqib*, Les*, Raja-, Umar- and Bebo*
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- Unable to attend
Actual attendees: Anjum, Kashif, Johari, Saqib, BeboBadrul, Les
Workshops
Workshop
Johari recommended a future PingER workshop later this year. Hanan at UTM has agreed to take the lead. It will be 25-26 June at the University of Malaya. There is a document. I have amended the schedule to replace Les by a NUST person (Kahsif/Anjum?) for the second day technical sessions from NUST Abdullah has verbal approval, we are awaiting official approval
University of Malaya will issue the invitation letter after receiving an official approval. Hanan will have a meeting with Dr Abdullah and Johari at UM on the upcoming workshop after the middle of April.
It does not appear possible for UM to fund someone from NUST or Bebo. If this is the case, then Saqib and Johari will give the second day technical session using Kashif's presentation at UNIMAS last year. Kashif will connect remotely to provide assistance. For the NUST session on experiences on the first day, Anjum will pre-record the talk. In the case of Bebo he woud only come if he could contribute, also June is a problem for him. He would be able to participate remotely for the session on futures. Also Bebo is interested in working with students at SLAC on new visualization tools.
Les will send an email to Abdullah Bin Gani strongly advocating the funding of a person from NUST.
We have a contingency plan. However Les believes, and sent email to Abdullah stating, that it is critically important to have someone from NUST at the workshop. Abdullah asks if UNIMAS or UTM could fund the NUST person. Johari has forwarded a request to Nara. We hope to hear in a few days.
For attendees it is important to try and For attendees Anjum pointed out it would be good to get 2 representatives from each of the 20 public Malaysian universities. One It would also be good to get a non MYREN University and someone from Malaysia Telecom. Bebo has sent contacts for MIMOS and Manipal. One participant would be from the computer division (more to do with installing and maintaining), the other from Faculty (more for the research side). It would also be good to get a non MYREN University and someone from Malaysia Telecom. Bebo will provide contacts at MIMOS and Manipal.. Johari said there is space for 30. Anjum said we should invite more than 30 since there will be some who will not attend. We could go >30 people for the non technical sessions and restrict for the hands on.
Johari suggested a signing ceremony at the workshop for an MoU between UM, UTM and UNIMAS.
It is not easy to find pingable sites in some Malaysian states. Obvious targets are 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. Another approach is to invite such sites to the workshop.
Les has sent HostFinder.pl to Johari to possibly assist in finding hosts. There appears to be a problem with the Google query. After the meeting Les sent Johari a fix to HostSearcher.pl. Les also sent the documentation on the raw data format to Johari.
Funding/Proposals
Johari reported that the FRGS proposal had been accepted. It is for 75K MRs (~$35K). It is for 5 people.
Badrul is putting together a proposal fro an outreach program. It is similar to Johari's FRGS proposal. It will be used to expand the monitoring hosts.
The Next step in funding is to go for bigger research funding, such as LRGS or eScience. We can use the upcoming workshop (1 specific session) to brainstorm and come up with such proposal. We need to do some groundwork before that as well. Johari will take the lead in putting together 1/2 page descriptions of the potential research projects.
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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.
We also agreed At the last meeting, we agreed that the projects we have been gathering should be divided into Development and Research. Since the last meeting Les did this, see Potential PingER Projects .
UNIMAS
There is a problem with the UNIMAS traceroute. It appears both in pinger.unimas.my and in the Raspberry. It appears pinger.unimas.my is behind a NAT that is not passing the traceroute UDP probes. Other hosts at UNIMAS are not seeing the problem, so Johari believes it may have to do with the IPTABLES in pinger.unimas.my. Traceroute using the -I option (send the probes using ICMP rather than UDP) seems to work (but needs root access). Thus it would appear not to be in the return (ICMP "time exceeded") response. The probes (when not using the -I option are UDP packets using sequentially ports 33434 - 33465 for up to 30 hops). It is possible that ports > some number may be blocked. Update Johari, Anjum. Johari talked to Imran of the UNIMAS Computation Center to discuss the IP address configuration mismatch on private and public addresses
Johari has set up a guest account for Anjum. Anjum logged on and reported some concerns about addresses and interfaces not matching. He does not believe it is due to the Load Balancer. The traceroute/ping server is important for the TULIP trilateration project and also understanding routing within and from Malaysia.
Johari has set up a web landing site for the Malaysian collaboration. It is at http://pinger.unimas.my/pinger. It contains:
- brief history, description of the project and the objectives
- link to main SLAC page
- Link to NUST site
- list of names, contact details (email, etc), their affiliation, and the 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 for 2013 in Confluence to do: links to minutes from 2012, 2011, and 2010
- Bebo added as an advisor
- details of the workshop in UNIMAS and also slides from the talks and hands on sessions
To do for the website:
- add some images from the workshop conducted in UNIMAS
- add a list of monitored sites (currently the list is linked directly to the SLAC site)
- add info on research (what to add here? eventually list of research grants, publication, etc)
Please visit the website, any feedback, corrections, suggestions are much appreciated.
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. SLAC's 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
There is a bug in http://www-wanmon.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/connectivity.pl?monitor=pinger.fsktm.um.edu.my&rawdata=www.aiu.edu.my&format=tsv&. It gives: Content-type: text/html -rw-rw-r-- 1 pinger iepm 245175 Apr 13 01:08 /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/pinger.fsktm.um.edu.my/ping-2013-04-12.txt.gz Les needs to look at connectivity.pl
Les has sent documentation on the PingER raw data format to JohariAssuming we can get these issues addressed, our legal folks think we could seek DOE approval and enter into an agreement with these other universities. We need to hear back from UTM and UM whether we need/want to pursue this further. It will probably be a considerable effort. UTM & UM will need to address 1. We all need to think about 3. 4 is easy, 2 is doable, 7 and 8 are tricky.
UTM
The UTM Pinger site is http://pinger.fsksm.utm.my/cgi-bin/ping_data.pl to get the data. . The traceroute server is also running. It is at: http://pinger.fsksm.utm.my/cgi-bin/traceroute.pl. Saqib discovered the problem was a timeout in traceroute.pl. Saqib has extended the timeout and it works better. There may still be timeout problems and Saqib will experiment with longer timeouts of up to 280ms.
Saqib is starting to look at Pingtable.pl anomalies as a start in a case study for Malaysia and S.E Asia.
We should discuss:
There was a long discussion on traceroute from UTM at the last PingER collaboration meeting. Badrul has contacts at MYREN and will use them to investiate the routing and where some of the routers are actually located. It is peculiar that a tracerouter from UTM to www.unimas.my when used with a time out after 45 seconds just gets the following hosts
1 161.139.68.25
2 10.110.1.67
3. 161.139.248.254
4. 161.139.244.65
whereas with a timeout of 90 seconds it gets the same 1st 4 hops and then
5 161.139.245.254 in < 3ms
6 161.139.251.103 in < 3ms
I.e. the 5th and 6th hop respond in way < 45secs.
One gets the same result from the command line.
All of these hosts are in the UTM autonomous domain
A possibility is that the measurements were made at different times and so the routing changed.
It would be interesting to skip the first 5 or 6 hops using the traceroute -f 6 option from the command line. Also make traceroutes with the 2 time outs at the same timeIt is not easy to find such sites in those states. Obvious targets are 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. Les has sent HostFinder.pl to Johari to possibly assist in finding hosts.
UM
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. Badrul has a student who will be working on the case study and will coordinate with Saqib at UTM and Johari at UNIMAS to combine results and to put together a paper for the Malaysian ISI Journal probably around the end of June. There was no progress reported on this.
NUST
Raja is waiting for the Letter of Support from NUST after which he will mail the documents for SEVIS ID has mailed to the SLAC International Studies Office his documents towards the DS-2019 process. (3/2029/2013). Anjum believes he will get the letter signed by 3/21/2013). Anjum mentioned there were discussions between Raja and NUST that need to be resolved. Next day after the meeting things seemed to be cleared up, since Raja forwarded to SLAC the letter of support from NUST.
The visit of Arshad and the NUST Rector to UM and UTM fell through due the Rector being sick.
Potential projects
Managing <HostList> for Malaysia from Johari
Since the number of monitoring nodes in Malaysia is likely to grow, it is a good idea to start thinking of automated ways of synchronizing the <HostList> section. A few thoughts on this matter:
- we can use the same approach as the automatic updating/sync of the Beacon List. This would require modifications to pinger2.pl
- which node will be the trusted/root node in Malaysia for updating? since any single monitoring host can add any number of new hosts, might a mechanism to cross check between monitoring hosts.
Bebo's suggestions
(1) Creative visualization of PingER data including rich interaction;
(2) Publication of PINGer data in Linked Open Data formats thereby increasing its usefulness to other researchers. An example is RDF/XML. This could be a development project (as opposed to research) for a final year student. Anjum pointed out that converting the PingER storage mechanism is a major task based on the experience at NUST when they converted te SLAC PingER flat files to a database. On the other hand maybe one coud do the conversion on the fly in response to a request. Johari might be able to use some of the funding he received for such a development project (e.g. to enhance pingtable.pl to add this format to its download capabilities).
If these are of interest, Bebo is willing to work with students who come to SLAC and remotely with students at UNIMAS and NUST. Bebo believes that both of these areas have great potential for papers within the conference communities with which he is directly involved.
With PingER going back over a decade, its presentation tools tend to be a bit jaded having in some cases been developed in the 90's. New, modern ways to access display and navigate the data would be a big plus.
Coordinate and lead the installation of PingER monitoring at multiple Malayisan sites
Build and install a new http://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/tools/pingER-2.0.2.tar.gz file with the improved version of pinger2.pl
Make PingER support IPv6.
PingER at SLAC
They were submitted to the Stanford campus Bechtel international center 4/4/2013. We await campus to create the DS-2019 documents(s). Raja has heard that they are being sent to him. Typical turnaround is a few days (< 2 weeks).
Abdullah will be visiting Islamabad, he has been invited by Anjum to visit NUST.
Anjum reported he sent Les a proposal he is planning to send to HEC. Les has not seen it. Anjum will resend.
PingER at SLAC
Les 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.
A graduate student from Brazil will be joining PingER at SLAC for 12 weeks in late May, 2013. He will probably work on web front ends.
TULIP
Raja is experimenting with using different alpha values as well as different target landmarks in Europe, America and Pakistan. So far the results of using a constant alpha value and variable alpha values based on RTT are quite similar. I am He is trying to find the conditions and situations under which using variable alpha values is better. (3/20/2013).
Raja has completed converting CGG the MATLAB script to Mathematica 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. Did you get an answer?
Potential projects
Future meeting - Les
Next meeting Wednesday 10 24 April 2013 8:00pm Pacific Daylight Time, Thursday 11 25 April 2013 8:00am Pakistan time, Thursday 11 25 April 2013 11:00 am Malaysian time.
There is a doodle poll at http://doodle.com/fnwzs5yu7fmux86. Note that the Doodle poll times are GMT (e.g. 3am 11 April GMT = 8pm 10 April PDT, = 11am 11 April Malaysia time, = 8am 11 April Pakistan time)
Coordinates:
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Institute
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name and Email
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Skype ID
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UNIMAS
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Johari Abdullah (johari.abdullah@gmail.com)
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focusit unimas
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UNIMAS
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Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer <nara@fit.unimas.my>
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Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer
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UTM
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Saqib Ali (saqibutm@gmail.com)
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saqibutm
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UTM
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Prof. Dr Hanan <hanan@utm.my>
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profhanan or Abdul Hanan Abdullah
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UM
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ABDULLAH BIN GANI <abdullah@um.edu.my>
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abdullahanakgani
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UM
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Dr Rafidah Md Noor - <fidah@um.edu.my>
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UM
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Dr Nor Badrul Anuar Jumaat - <badrul@um.edu.my>
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askbard
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UM
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salwa@um.edu.my
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NUST/SEECS
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anjum.naveed@seecs.edu.pk
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anjum naveed
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NUST/SEECS
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kashif.sattar@seecs.edu.pk
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kashifsattar75
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NUST/SEECS
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Raja Asad Khan (11mseerakhan@seecs.edu.pk)
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Raja Asad
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Virginia Tech
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Umar Kalim (umar@cs.vt.edu)
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Umar Kalim
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SLAC
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White, Bebo <bebo@slac.stanford.edu>
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Bebo White
Action Items
- We await official approval of the workshop so we can proceed with invites.
- Johari is waiting to hear from Nara on funding someone from NUS for the workshop. This is very important.
- If there is to be an MoU signing ceremony between UM, UTM and UNIMAS, then an MoU will need to be drawn up.
- Hanan, Johari and Abdullah need to meet
- Johari found a bug in HostSearcher.pl, it needs fixing. Les has fixed it since the meeting.
- Badrul is putting together a funding proposal.
- The traceroute at UNIMAS needs further investigation
- There are some suggestions of for Saqib to try on the trace route at UTM
- We look forward to Badrul's student's work on the malaysian Internet case study
- Anjum can you resend the proposal.
- Raja press forward with visa etc.
Coordinates:
See: http://pinger.unimas.my/pinger/contact.php
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SLAC
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Cottrell, R. Les <cottrell@slac.stanford.edu>
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