20190723 PingER Team Meeting

Time & date 

This meeting:  July  23rd 10 pm Pacific time; a day later 10:00 am Pakistan time; 10:30 am India time; 1:00 pm Malaysian & Guangzhou time;  12:00 pm Thailand time; 7:00 am Jordan and 6:00am Turkey.  

Doodle poll invites sent 7/3/2019.

Format

New items and updates are in boldface.

Coordinates of team members:

Mailing list: pinger-my@googlegroups.com for membership see  https://groups.google.com.

Attendees

Invitees:

Wajahat Hussain+ (SEECS), Saqib+ (GZHU); Johari+ (UNIMAS);  Adib (Turkey); Dr. Charnsak Srisawatsakul (Ubru), Eyad Ayoubi (Jordan), Baraa Muslmani ( Jordan), Dr. Shadi Jawarneh (Jordan), Bebo White+, Umar Kalim, Les Cottrell+

•  + Responded via Doodle can attend; - Responded, but unable to attend on this date; ? extra email sent asking if attending 
• Email addresses (all the following are in pinger-my).
  • cottrell@slac.stanford.edu; wajahat.hussain@seecs.edu.pk; saqibutm@outlook.com; johari.abdullah@gmail.com; adibhabbal@karabuk.edu.tr; charnsak.s@ubru.ac.th; eyadayoubi@gmail.com; b.muslmani@yahoo.com; shadi.jawarneh@yahoo.com; bebo@slac.stanford.edu; umar.kalim@gmail.com; xsaifahmadx@gmail.com

Actual Attendees

Others

Administration

Use of Zoom

Exit plan for PingER - Discussion Topic

Time to start thinking about this. Do we need one?

• Les retired, still active.
• Bebo's SLAC account expires early 2020, he will bow out then.
• Topher busy getting funding etc.
• Umar has left SLAC, but still involved.
• In the over two decades since PingER started, the Internet and wide area networking have changed dramatically
  • Speeds, deployment,  reliabililty, number of users and applications have improved exponentially
  • There are lots of other monitoring tools nowadays: perfSONAR, ISP monitoring, Akamai

What does it affect?

• Pakistan monitoring - Wajahat
  • What is the commitment from Pakistan?
• China - monitoring; big data, blockchain - Saqib
  • Is the current historical data sufficient?
• ePingER on Android - Amity, Bebo, Topher
  • This is new, Amity would need to take leadership
  • Topher is very busy with getting funding and other projects
  • Bebo less interested partially due to loss of SLAC account early next year
• Three PingER analysis projects - Amity
  • Title (tentative): Correlation Analysis between network performance and GDP of a country using PingER data. Abstract (tentative):
  • Title (tentative): Comparison of network performance of India and Pakistan using PingER data. Abstract (tentative): 
  • Title (tentative): Data packets loss prediction due to environmental factors. 
  • Is the current historical data sufficient?
• Compare IPv4 with IPv6 and ICMP versus UDP versus TCP pings - Umar
  • Umar in new job may not have resources/time
  • Measurements probably do not rely on PingER project, rather they can be made ad hoc.
• Monthly meetings - Les, Umar
  • Scheduling with doodle - Les
  • Making up agenda and current status - Les
  • Invitation via Zoom - Umar
  • Attending - all

Possible scenarios

• Hard stop
• Soft stop:
  • Continue running monitors, gathering data, archiving and presenting  as long as SLAC provides storage (1TB) and pinger.slac.stanford.edu VM
    • Give up on monitors after email prompt and no resolution
    • Do not add any extra functions
  • Keep historical data publicly available as long as SLAC provides storage (1TB) and pinger.slac.stanford.edu VM
• In either case explore what role the Internet Archive might play in maintaining/storing PingER data.
• Meet with Amity, Topher, Bebo, Les to get their input to
  • Access to PingER historical data
  • their taking leading role
  • ePinger Android futures

Jordan  (Updated 4/25/2019)

• Baraa is interested in monitoring other Jordanian hosts.  
  • There are 4 other existing targets in Jordan. 
    • http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/dbprac.pl?alias=JO.EDU.GJU.WWW&monalias=EDU.SLAC.STANFORD.PINGER
    • http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/dbprac.pl?alias=JO.GOV.CBJ.WWW.N1&monalias=EDU.SLAC.STANFORD.PINGER
    • http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/dbprac.pl?alias=JO.JUST.EDU.N1&monalias=EDU.SLAC.STANFORD.PINGER
    • http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/dbprac.pl?alias=JO.NEXT.WWW&monalias=EDU.SLAC.STANFORD.PINGER
    • If there are other sites in Jordan that should be monitored from say SLAC and Jordan please let me  know the details and you can add them to the PingER Oracle NODEDETAILS database, so they are monitored from SLAC. If they are to be monitored from Telephoenics then they will need to be added to the <HostList>stanza of the Telephoenics pinger.xml.
    • Sent email 4/18/2019: E.g. say you wanted to add alias=JO.EDU.GJU.WWW then click on the above link and you will get information like:

    • NODENAME: www.gju.edu.jo IPADDRESS: 87.236.233.242 SITENAME: gju.edu.jo NICKNAME: JO.EDU.GJU.WWW FULLNAME: German Jordanian University LOCATION: German Jordanian University, Amman Madaba Street, Amman, Jordan COUNTRY: Jordan CONTINENT: Middle East LATANDLONG: 31.7769 35.8 PROJECTTYPE: NOT-SET PINGSERVER: NOT-SET TRACESERVER: NOT-SET DATASERVER: NOT-SET URL: http://www.gju.edu.jo/ CONTACTS: Google COMMENTS: Add by Cottrell 5/17/2018. 

      Following this information you will need to edit pinger.xml to add a stanza in <HostList></HostList> of the form:
      <HostList>

      <Host>
      	<EnableDNSCache>false</EnableDNSCache>
      	<IP>87.236.233.242</IP>
      	<Name>www.gju.edu.jo</Name>
      </Host>

      </HostList>

    • Baraa responded 4/18/2019: "Sorry for this delay we have finished our mid term exams, I gathered a set of host and will filter them according to the given criteria by this weekend. In Jordan the weekend is Friday and Saturday."
  • Baraa asked what the criteria are for choosing targets, emailed him (4/4/2019) about Finding PingER Hosts.
  • Baraa provided details of 4 sites apparently in Jordan. However, only two had RTTs of > 80ms as seen from SLAC. Thus the others are probably proxies in North America. Unfortunately, the remaining two have RTTs from Jordan of 80ms which probably means they are proxies in Europe.
  • 7/3/2019: Requested update and offered to find some Jordanian hosts that are in Jordan and respond to pings.

Turkey (Updated 4/25/2019)

Amity (Updated 4/25/2019).

Amity team photo:

Android progress:

• Instructions from Aayush to load the application are at ePingER Functional prototype (for Androids only)
  • They sent a new copy of the app 4/6/2019, see ePingER Functional prototype
    • The information has been passed to Topher, who plans to install on an Android. The ball is now in our court
    • There is a discussion between Les and Aayush on how to format the raw data records, in particular with respect to the lat/long. Sent a reminder 4/18/2019.
    • We (SLAC) an email to Aayush asking how we gather the raw data from the cloud. Sent reminder 4/18/2019.
      • Aayish responded 4/18/2019: 
        Yes, we have modified the app to write the semi-colon to the file as a separator.
        However, at this point we suggest you to not make any changes to the pinger project yet. 
        
        
        Let us see and run in this parallel to what is already setup at Amity MA. This will allow us to compare the quality of results by both the systems – one at present which does not utilize the app, and the new one which requires an app for data collection.
        We send the data from the app to the firebase cloud service as JSON objects via a REST API. 
        On the cloud-server side, we intend to build a compute-service that automatically converts the json data to a txt format, for consumption by data researcher team at amity (because they are already used to running analysis on the txt files; but seem to be open to working with JSON data as well). [For the SLAC gatherer we would at least initially prefer the data to be retrieved/available in txt form. This way the changes to the gatherer are minimized and more consistent with current practice.]
        
        
        So once the team finds that the results are significant enough, then we can formally propose to include lat/long data in the Pinger gathering, archiving and analysis.
        For now, it would be best that we do not disturb the current Amity MA, and that the android project runs parallel to this."

• Topher is back, Bebo is contacting him. Bebo's thoughts were that:PingER will need a fixed name for each Android MA.  Since the Android may be mobile the IP address may be dynamic. There is a DNS name to dynamic IP address service that may be useful. Maybe there is another unique fixed identifier in an Android that could be used such as a serial number or SIM ID.
  •  If the Amity app is robust  (i.e. it does not noticeably impact the other services, power, networking, security etc) make it part of the standard Rainforest installation;
  • Topher's package knows the GPS location, so it should be available to PingER for recording.
  • 
    
• Amity MA continues to be frequently non pingable from SLAC, and hence no data is gathered. See plot below:
  • 
    

Adib (Updated 3/3/2019)

• Adib is wondering about 
  1. Journal of Computer Information Systemshttps://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=ucis20
  2. The Information Societyhttps://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=utis20

Bebo reviewed and responded to Adib suggesting the second one is a better choice. Adib  submitted it to the 2nd journal. He sent email 4/20/2019: "we received an unfavorable response from the information society. So sad that this paper does not get enough attention from journal editors. But I will keep trying, let's pray for the best." 

•  Adib submitted to "Socio-economic Development Indices and Their Reflection on Internet Performance in ASEAN Countries" to Journal: Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal. They have requested a re-submission since it is over the limit of 10 pages.
  
  

Saqib joined the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad. He plans to pursue the blockchain paper.

Thailand, Charnsak

UNIMAS

Need to add Umar Kalim to http://pinger.unimas.my/pinger/contact.php. From the 7/5/2018 meeting: Johari can't ssh into the server so he will go to it on Monday.  He will also upload the new UNIMAS PingER website next week.

Email from Johari 4/21/2019:  I am still very much interested in the project but I have to manage my time better. Will try to join the next meeting and probably get someone from my side to monitor the equipment and make use of the data collected

SLAC (Updated 4/25/2019) 

Also they shut down (since it did not support SSL) a web server (www-wanmon.slac.stanford.edu) I was using which is causing some PingER web cronjobs to fail. Nothing too serious at the moment, I am working to see if the problem can be fixed.  Also tighter security was imposed on https which broke some links to get the pinger.xml configuration file. Les believes most of the problems have been discovered and fixed. www-wanmon has been shut-down.

Les has been working with FNAL to migrate the MA to a new FNAL host, hopefully pretty seamlessly.

Les has read the documents on PingER Metrics Motion Chart and updated the PingER measurement data, the country populations, the Human Development Index and ICT Development Index for the Pinger Motion Charts (see https://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/pinger-metrics-motion-chart.html using Firefox and enabling Flash).

State of MAs.

Umar compare ICMP and TCP Ping

Umar is looking at the scamper project from CAIDA, see https://www.caida.org/tools/measurement/scamper/. Les will put Umar in contact with the scamper folks (email sent 4/28/2019)

Unfortunately, for the IPv4 vs IPv6 comparison, there is insufficient data (i.e. only about targets)

Next Meeting

Next meeting:  There will be a Doodle poll, for August 12-18  or August 19-22 at 10 pm Pacific time; a day later 10:00 am Pakistan time; 10:30 am India time; 1:00 pm Malaysian & Guangzhou time;  2:00 pm Thailand time; 7:00 am Jordan time. 6:00am Turkey time.  

Old information