G-Sense: a graphical interface for SENSE simulator

“Copyright © [2009] IEEE. Reprinted from First International Conference on Advances in System Simulation.ISBN:978-1-4244-4863-0. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to [email protected]. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.”Wireless sensor networks greatly benefit from simulation before deployment, since some of these networks may contain thousands of nodes. The new challenges compared to traditional computer networks led to several approaches for network simulation, namely SENSE – Sensor Network Emulator and Simulator. However this approach presents a limited user interface, namely based on text, forcing users to have knowledge on C++ programming language. This paper presents a tool, called G-Sense, that greatly improves SENSE user friendliness, with graphical input of simulation parameters, save and load simulation features, and simulation results management with plot view. This new tool uses SENSE simulation engine in a transparent way, so the user may be focused on the simulation itself, not in the underlying simulation tool. We present G-Sense architecture, usability and extensive experiments for its validation. We believe that this tool will contribute for SENSE adoption for wireless sensor network simulation, clearly improving on its ease of use

The aptness of tangible user interfaces for explaining abstract computer network principles

The technological deployment of Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) with their intrinsic ability to interlink the physical and digital domains, have steadily gained interest within the educational sector. As a concrete example of Reality Based Interaction, such digital manipulatives have been successfully implemented in the past years to introduce scientific and engineering concepts at earlier stages throughout the educational cycle. With difference to literature, this research investigates the suitability and effectiveness of implementing a TUI system to enhance the learning experience in a higher education environment. The proposal targets the understanding of advanced computer networking principles by the deployment of an interactive table-top system. Beyond the mere simulation and modelling of networking topologies, the design presents students the ability to directly interact with and visualise the protocol execution, hence augmenting their ability to understand the abstract nature of such algorithms. Following deployment of the proposed innovate prototype within the delivery of a university undergraduate programme, the quantitative effectiveness of this novel methodology will be assessed from both a teaching and learning perspective on its ability to convey the abstract notions of computer network principles

The aptness of tangible user interfaces for explaining abstract computer network principles

The technological deployment of Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) with their intrinsic ability to interlink the physical and digital domains, have steadily gained interest within the educational sector. As a concrete example of Reality Based Interaction, such digital manipulatives have been successfully implemented in the past years to introduce scientific and engineering concepts at earlier stages throughout the educational cycle. With difference to literature, this research investigates the suitability and effectiveness of implementing a TUI system to enhance the learning experience in a higher education environment. The proposal targets the understanding of advanced computer networking principles by the deployment of an interactive table-top system. Beyond the mere simulation and modelling of networking topologies, the design presents students the ability to directly interact with and visualise the protocol execution, hence augmenting their ability to understand the abstract nature of such algorithms. Following deployment of the proposed innovate prototype within the delivery of a university undergraduate programme, the quantitative effectiveness of this novel methodology will be assessed from both a teaching and learning perspective on its ability to convey the abstract notions of computer network principles

Huginn: A 3D Visualizer for Wireless ns-2 Traces

Discrete-event network simulation is a major tool for the research and development of mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs). These simulations are used for debugging, teaching, understanding, and performance-evaluating MANET protocols. For the first three tasks, visualization of the processes occurring in the simulated network is crucial for verification and credibility of the generated results. Working with the popular network simulator ns-2, we have not yet found a visualization toolkit capable of reading native ns-2 trace files and providing means to change the evaluated parameters without changing the visualization software. Thus, we developed Huginn, a software providing an intuitive way to visualize simulation properties and to determine how they should be displayed without the need of programming. In addition, Huginn has a 3D interface allowing a high exploitation of the (human) user’s perceptive system. It helps to handle the significant cognitive load associated with the mental reconstruction of simulated network processes. Besides presenting the software interface and architecture, we describe algorithmic solutions that might be of a more general interest for similar problems

Firewall Rule Set Analysis and Visualization

abstract: A firewall is a necessary component for network security and just like any regular equipment it requires maintenance. To keep up with changing cyber security trends and threats, firewall rules are modified frequently. Over time such modifications increase the complexity, size and verbosity of firewall rules. As the rule set grows in size, adding and modifying rule becomes a tedious task. This discourages network administrators to review the work done by previous administrators before and after applying any changes. As a result the quality and efficiency of the firewall goes down. Modification and addition of rules without knowledge of previous rules creates anomalies like shadowing and rule redundancy. Anomalous rule sets not only limit the efficiency of the firewall but in some cases create a hole in the perimeter security. Detection of anomalies has been studied for a long time and some well established procedures have been implemented and tested. But they all have a common problem of visualizing the results. When it comes to visualization of firewall anomalies, the results do not fit in traditional matrix, tree or sunburst representations. This research targets the anomaly detection and visualization problem. It analyzes and represents firewall rule anomalies in innovative ways such as hive plots and dynamic slices. Such graphical representations of rule anomalies are useful in understanding the state of a firewall. It also helps network administrators in finding and fixing the anomalous rules.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Computer Science 201

Visual Execution Analysis for Multiagent Systems

Multiagent systems have become increasingly important in developing complex software systems. Multiagent systems introduce collective intelligence and provide benefits such as flexibility, scalability, decentralization, and increased reliability. A software agent is a high-level software abstraction that is capable of performing given tasks in an environment without human intervention. Although multiagent systems provide a convenient and powerful way to organize complex software systems, developing such system is very complicated. To help manage this complexity this research develops a methodology and technique for analyzing, monitoring and troubleshooting multiagent systems execution. This is accomplished by visualizing a multiagent system at multiple levels of abstraction to capture the relationships and dependencies among the agents

WorldMap – A Geospatial Framework for Collaborative Research

WorldMap is a web-based, map-centric data exploration system built on open-source geospatial technology at Harvard University. It is designed to serve collaborative research and teaching, but is also accessible to the general public. This article explains WorldMap's basic functions through several historical research projects, demonstrating its flexible scale (from neighborhood to continent) and diverse research themes (social, political, economic, cultural, infrastructural, etc.). Also shared in this article are our experiences in handling technical and institutional challenges during system development, such as synchronization of software components being developed by multiple organizations; juggling competing priorities for serving individual requests and developing a system that will enable users to support themselves; balancing promotion of the system usage with constraints on infrastructure investment; harnessing volunteered geographic information while managing data quality; as well as protecting copyrights, preserving permanent links and citations, and providing long-term archiving.East Asian Languages and Civilization

DrAGON: A Framework for Computing Preferred Defense Policies from Logical Attack Graphs

Attack graphs provide formalism for modelling the vulnerabilities using a compact representation scheme. Two of the most popular attack graph representations are scenario attack graphs, and logical attack graphs. In logical attack graphs, the host machines present in the network are represented as exploit nodes, while the configurations (IDS rules, firewall policies etc.) running on them are represented as fact nodes. The actual user privileges that are possible on each of these hosts are represented as privilege nodes. Existing work provides methods to analyze logical attack graphs and compute attack paths of varying costs. In this thesis we develop a framework for analyzing the attack graph from a defender perspective. Given an acyclic logical dependency attack graph we compute defense policies that cover all known exploits that can be used by the attacker and also are preferred with respect to minimizing the impacts. In contrast to previous work on analysis of logical attack graphs where quantitative costs are assigned to the vulnerabilities (exploits), our framework allows attack graph analysis using descriptions of vulnerabilities on a qualitative scale. We develop two algorithms for computing preferred defense policies that are optimal with respect to defender preferences. Our research to the best of our knowledge is the first fully qualitative approach to analyzing these logical attack graphs and formulating defense policies based on the preferences and priorities of the defender. We provide a prototype implementation of our framework that allows logical attack graphs to be input using a simple text file (custom language), or using a GUI tool in graphical markup language (GML) format. Our implementation uses the NVD (National Vulnerability Database) as the source of CVSS impact metrics for vulnerabilities in the attack graph. Our framework generates a preferred order of defense policies using an existing preference reasoner. Preliminary experiments on various attack graphs show the correctness and efficiency of our approach

Department of Computer Science Activity 1998-2004

This report summarizes much of the research and teaching activity of the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College between late 1998 and late 2004. The material for this report was collected as part of the final report for NSF Institutional Infrastructure award EIA-9802068, which funded equipment and technical staff during that six-year period. This equipment and staff supported essentially all of the department\u27s research activity during that period

On characterization of the core of lane covering games via dual solutions

The lane covering game (LCG) is a cooperative game where players cooperate to reduce the cost of cycles that cover their required lanes on a network. We discuss the possibilities/impossibilities of a complete characterization of the core via dual solutions in LCGs played among a collection of shippers, each with a number of service require-ments along some lanes, and show that such a complete characterization is possible if each shipper has at most one service requirement