This meeting: February 27 2020 9 pm Pacific time; a day later 9:00 am Pakistan time; 9:30 am India time; 12:00 pm Malaysian & Guangzhou time; 11:00 am Thailand time; 6:00 am Jordan and 5:00am Turkey.
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Two papers presented at Coinfluence 2020 meeting (they have been submitted to IEEE):
Implementation of PingER on Android Mobile Devices using Firebase, A Rajapappa, A Upadhyay, A S Sabitha, A Bansal, B White, L. Cottrell, Confluence 2020, 10th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering, Amity University, Noida, India, Jan 29-20 2020.
Comparison of Network Performance of India and Pakistan using PingER Data, A Sachan, N Madam, A S Sabitha, A Bansal, L Cottrell, B White, Confluence 2020, 10th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering, Amity University, Noida, India, Jan 29-30 2020.
2/17/2020 Amity sent a video explaining how to access their data. It is a Windows wmv file so on a Mac you will need to download VLC to play it. The format of their data appears to be:
which is very different. Also we wish to add the lat long of the Measurement agent so we can accommodate the maneuverability of the MAs. I propose that in order to maintain backward compatibility we add the lat long of the MA at the end of each record following a semi-colon (;). E.g. monitor.niit.edu.pk 203.99.50.204 www.carnet.hr 161.53.160.25 100 1171756802 10 10 223.323 224.978 226.805 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 226 223 226 223 223 226 223 224 226 225; 37.4472 122.1754
I have emailed Amity with this information 2/27/2020.
Bebo
Bebo's account at SLAC was 'Off-Boarded' since his sponsor (Umar) had left SLAC and there was nobody to 'On-Board' him when his current term expired. Les got the new head of networking at SLAC (Mark) to sponsor Bebo, and Bebo was 'On-Boarded' 3/2/2020.
Bebo brought our attention to a report from KeepitOn on the 213 Internet shutdowns in 2019. An internet shutdown happens when someone — usually a government — intentionally disrupts the internet or mobile apps to control what people say or do.
NUST
IPv6 host at NUST:
Wajahat has requested Hasan to install PingER on an IPv6 host at NUST, Saqib has contacted Hasan to tell him where to find and upload the code. There is not a host name for the MA yet. Hopefully, this will be available by next month's meeting.
7/24/2019 Les emailed Wajahat with a request for an update.
At the meeting Wajahat had asked the student to contact Saqib and get the information on energizing IPv6. Saqib provided the information, but the student could not access the URL (apparently the URLwas down). Wajahat was on leave and when he returned the internship had expired, so Wajahat is unsure what happened. Wajahat will start a new student next week and will set him on the IPv6 project.Progress?
Sent email on 2/4/2020 to Kiran at NUST on how to bring the vu host's pinger.xml up to date. As of 2/3/2020 pinger.xml at vu now looks good and we now appear to be able to gather good data.
Emails exchanged on maggie2 2/18/2020. Not there yet.
2/26/2020 corresponded with Kiran via zoom to clarify problems. She is working on monitor, maggie2, nwfpuet.
UAF (University of Agriculture, Faisalabad)/GHZU
Saqib plans to continue work on PingER monitoring for remote areas, in particular in Pakistan. He will use Android PingERs. This may partially tie into the Amity project.
He will also continue his work on Blockchain and plans to attend a Blockchain workshop in Guangzhou.
The 4th Call for Proposals for The Asi@Connect Project:
Saqib submitted a concept note in WP6 with Wajahat and Les as co-applicant.
It was accepted and Saqib was given the go-ahead to submit a Full Proposal.
With suggestions and an endorsement letter from PERN plus CVs from Wajahat and Les, Saqib put together a full proposal and it was submitted 11/6/2019.
However, it was not accepted
Saqib plans to get 2-3 undergraduate students in a month or so and plans to look at Android PingER.
He has been invited to an APAN meeting in Nepal, however, with the Corona Virus it was postponed.
Saqib registered a DNS name for GC Women University Faisalabad. The new URL is http://pinger.gcwuf.edu.pk/cgi-bin/ping_data.pl. Previously there was no DNS name so the name was reported as 121.52.153.227. This required a change in the <SrcName> in pinger.xml and exposed a bug in ping_data.pl which has been fixed in the latest release (4.6).
SLAC
Les turned on the debugging to investigate the discovery that several analysis scripts had stopped working in November 2019
Each night we run about 100 analysis scripts as batch jobs and after fixing problems with the mon-lib.pl etc. we still found about 10% were randomly failing.
After about 4 weeks it eventually transpired that some of the batch machines had not been enabled to access the Oracle database via the firewall. The jobs submitted to those hosts failed.
The cause of the problem was eventually identified about January 3rd and fixed about January 6th. No data was lost.
The new version of Linux CentOS7, does not appear to support the following modules that are used by the PingER analysis.
The Oracle database interface. PingER uses Oracle so there could be a problem.
The perl statistics module
I will restrict the PingER analysis jobs to the earlier version of Linux (RHEL6) to avoid these problems. I am working with the systems folks at SLAC and looking into when the current version of Linux at SLAC (RHEL6) will no longer be supported and following SLAC's planning on how or whether to address the issues.
Rhel6 has full support until Nov 30, 2020. It then goes on "extended" support until June 2024. I expect SLAC will continue to use it during the extended support phase, at least for a couple of years.
Umar did some research and found:
I did a cursory search and it appears that in addition to having the Oracle database server, we would also need the items listed at the bottom.
If I were to test, I'd consider setting up a VirtualBox VM on my laptop and install CentOS7, Oracle database, instant client, Perl, and Perl driver for Oracle and test in the VM. I also searched to see if I could find some reference of "Oracle driver not available for CentOS7", but I couldn't find any.
I would recommend testing in an isolated VM so that we don't break the existing setup.
Here is a good breakdown that explains the relevant pieces (ignore the references to MySQL here). With testing we'll be sure what works and what doesn't.
Unable to gather data since 29th August, 2019. The host is pingable. Emailed Wajahat 11/3/2019. Wajahat responded 11/11/2019 "Anything improved?". Les responded they are still not working with more details and suggesting we focus on vu. 11/20/2019 Les asks if there is an update? Wajanat responded 11/20/2019 "These guys are not responding. We are trying to contact them. Already tried multiple times." This just applies to vu. Wajahat recommends we keep trying to gather data. I have turned off the warnings. Kiran fixed it 2/3/2020 by restoring the pinger.xml file following email instructions from Les
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.
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.
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.
Continues to be unstable. Email 8/29/2019. Turned off email warnings 11/20/2019.
Next Meeting
Next meeting: There will be a Doodle poll, for 2020 at 9 pm Pacific time; a day later 9:00 am Pakistan time; 9:30 am India time; 12:00 pm Malaysian & Guangzhou time; 1:00 pm Thailand time; 6:00 am Jordan time. 5:00am Turkey time.
MA is down, email sent asking for update 10/13/2019. No response by 11/3/2019, MA has been Disabled.
Thailand, Charnsak 10/15/2019 mioved here 1/10/2020
MAs are down. Charnsak (by email 10/22/2019) said: "They have changed the Networking policy. The pinger may need to wait for 5-6 months for me to go back (from post-doc at University of Vienna) and change things myself." Charnsak is in Vienna for several months. Both the IPv4 and IPv6 MAs were disabled 11/5/2019. Gathering the data from the MAs has been disabled.
Bebo moved here 1/10/2020
Bebo noted the recent unrest in Iran and asked whether the impact could be seen in the PingER data. Les investigated. The impact is very noticeable see PingER Iran Internet interrupted November 2019.
Bebo wondered if we could detect such impacts automatically. Les pointed out it may be possible. A problem maybe avoiding a large number of false positives. Some work was been done on detecting similar anomalies in TCP throughput data. See for example Anomalous Event Detection that included the Plateau project. This would be an interesting project for a student.
Bebo Moved here 11/20/2019
Is wondering about a meeting of PingER collaborators with possible funding from the Internet Archive or possibly others. Also possibly seeking other sources of funding for PingER activities.
It is time to re-raise and discuss the talk for the Internet Archive, and what we might expect from them and how much effort it is to prepare, document and make the data available to the Archive. So far:
Les and Bebo visited the Internet Archive (IA, see https://archive.org/) and initiated a discussion on archiving PingER data (i.e. a mirror for SLAC) at the IA and also giving a talk on PingER at the IA.
We agreed to put together a disk with a snapshot of the appropriate archive files containing analyzed data back to 1998 plus some documentation and then approach them about archiving the data, and a possible talk showing how the data can be used, e.g. comparison with economic indices, identifying on the network on events such as earthquake, societal unrest, cutting of cables etc. First part of the talk based on the presentation at Samsung. Depending on level of interest and support, we could . offer to update the data.
The IA responded with information on using an IA Python library to archive the data at the IA. Les responded with interest but lack of resources until mid-September at the earliest. Also maybe after giving a talk at IA there might be interest in collaborating from some of the attendees.
The IA also responded pointing to a form to fill out for a request to give a talk at the IA.
Les filled out the form.
Les sent an email to the IA to make sure they had received the form and asking if anything else is required.
IA suggested September, given the China meeting, this was missed.
Adib (Updated 7/22/2019) Moved here 11/7/2019.
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. Adib re-submitted 7/22/2019.
8/26/2019 status of this submission has changed to Revision Requested.
Exit plan for PingER moved here 10/10/2019
The general opinion at the July 2019 meeting was that we move to the Soft stop for PingER
Continue running monitors, gathering data, archiving and presenting as long as SLAC provides storage (1TB) andpinger.slac.stanford.eduVM
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
Turkey (No update 7/23/2019), moved here 10/10/2019
Eyad emailed: "I have gathered some information about how to have a public IP address and it seems it is not complicated, just a subscription with the ISP, I will discuss in the next meeting". Sent email requesting update 5/26/2019. 5/27/2019 Eyad responded no progress yet. Another email sent 8/25/2019, Eyad responded 8/25/2019: "I am looking for a PhD position, In Turkey I tried my best to have a public IP but still have no results, I will keep trying and give you updates/"
We also received an unsolicited email: "We are employing PingER in Hasan Kalyoncu University, in Turkey, for the purpose of conducting researches on the Internet performance in Turkey."
We are unable to gather data since it is a private IP address(10.15.2.146). Sent email 7/3/2019 asking for update. Sent a repeat email 7/24/2019 suggesting testing if they have a public IP address and the web server is accessible. Sent another email explaining private vs public IP address 8/9/2019. No response. Will give up.
Jordan moved here
Baraa has just graduated from Princess Sumaya University with a Masters Degree (Major: Enterprise Systems Engineering) and is looking for Universities to continue his education (PhD.)
7/24/2019 Les sent email to Baraa aksing whether and how might Baraa's future affect the MA in Jordan.
7/24/2019 Baraa responded "I will have to check with my system's administrator regarding that, however I will do my best to keep the MA live.". However, Baraa responded 8/15/2019 "Since I will be leaving. The new system administrator turned it off." Les has disabled it.
UAF moved here 8/25/2019
The 4th Call for Proposals for The Asi@Connect Project are now open. Saqib will submit a concept note in WP6 with Wajahat and Les as co-applicants
From Les: WP6 mentions Pakistan, however, the examples are a bit of a stretch for PingER. Possibly deploying PingER MAs based on the Android in remote regions (NWFP, Gilgit, Balochistan, etc.) The difficulty will be getting collaborators in the remote regions, also probably a lot of travel to shake hands, give encouragement, assist, troubleshoot, etc. A challenge will be convincing the collaborators that they are getting something useful out of this. Maybe need to extend PingER to add some easy to use tools. Another possibility is reviving the PingER MAs in Pakistan. Again, as Wajahat indicates, it is finding collaborators willing to install and manage the MAs. Some development may be needed to make the installation easier and maybe add remote management. Again an issue may be what do the collaborators stand to gain, and the longer-term continuation of the collaboration as people move on.
WP4 talks about PerfSONAR which is monitoring. Providing training on PingER, the reverse traceroute servers might have some traction.
For both of these if one could install a mesh of MAs in Pakistan, including the reverse traceroute/ping servers (which are trivial to install on a web server, take minimal maintenance, and are much simpler than an MA) then one could address the problem of locating the lat/long of routers by trilateration of ping response time. Note though getting the lat longs of end hosts is fairly well addressed, routers are usually identified as being located to the owner (e.g. all ESnet's routers on the US and Europe are defined as being located at Berkeley California (the HQ of ESnet)
Turkey moved here 8/9/2019
We also received an unsolicited email:
"We are employing PingER in Hasan Kalyoncu University, in Turkey, for the purpose of conducting researches on the Internet performance in Turkey.
Actually, we have collected data in our node, so we would like our collected data to be retrieved by the archival site at SLAC. Below are the details information on our monitoring node.
DNS: pinger.hku
Public IP: 10.15.2.146
Node Coordinates
Latitude: 37.014764 Longitude: 37.205743
Node Location: Şahinbey Mahallesi, Havalimanı Yolu 8.Km, 27000 Şahinbey/Gaziantep
Contact Person:
Name: Mohammed Madi
Designation: Assistant Professor in Computer Engineering Department
Thank you in advance, looking forward to hearing from you"
Unfortunately, this appears to be a private IP address so is not accessible. Les sent an email 4/19/2019 to Mohammed. Mohammed provided a public IP address (95.0.84.5), however, it is not pingable and the URL does not respond. Sent another email 4/24/2019, 4/28/2019, 5/7/2019, 5/26/2019.
Also sent email to Adib (who is in Turkey) and Eyad in case they know the person or site. Adib responded 4/20/2019: "Yes, I know Mohammed, he graduated from UUM (Malaysia), and we worked together at the same department. He is a good researcher. I think, he can contribute to PingER project."
Mohammed responded 5/28/2019: "Dear Les I am working on it. but currently I am busy with final examinations and project presentations, submitting the results. I will be free next week and will fully concentrate on that issue and settle it. thank you so much for your concern and I am sorry for being late in response."
Sent email 7/3/2019 asking for update. Sent a repeat email 7/24/2019 suggesting testing if they have a public IP address and the web server is accessible. Sent another request for update 8/9/2019.
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.
NUST moved here 7/24/2019
Wajahat suggested a letter to the higher-ups at NUST about PingER would assist. Les worked with Wajahat to craft such a letter. It was sent to Wajahat by email 4/3/2019. It was sent by paper mail 4/4/2019 to Principal SEECS.
Wajahat said the letter has been received and a written response is being drafted. Is there an update?
They (NUST) would also be interested in other collaborations with SLAC
Since Les is no longer an employee of SLAC but rather an emeritus this may complicate things.
A possibility might be in high-speed data transfer. It would need a champion from NUST, and a plan and funding to provide access to 100Gbps
Wajahat said that contacts at some sites are not very interested in PingER and wonder why there are so many pings. Thus he believes we need new sites representing the regions of Pakistan that have willing collaborators. Thus we should give up on sites such as CAE and ISRA that have not had any data to gather for a year or so. Les has since disabled these sites.
