Global information technology infrastructure for a global non-profit organisation : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology at Massey University

Page 103 missing from vault and scanned copyWith the recent worldwide growth of the Internet, computers are becoming interconnected in a global communications network. Most people view the Internet as a universal communications medium that can replace telephone, television, and radio. Historically, for organisations and enterprises that could afford to do so, expensive telecommunication lines and Wide Area Network technologies were used for global communications, which allowed computers to communicate using proprietary protocols. For non-profit organisations in particular, the Internet has made it possible to connect offices and individuals, using open standard protocols, at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives. This study focuses on the investigation and development of a global communication system and information technology (IT) infrastructure that uses the Internet as its communication platform for a particular non-profit organisation, OMF International. Without a clear understanding of the limitations of the technologies involved, the development of an IT project is likely to be flawed or fail. (Standish Group, 1995) The findings from this investigation revealed that a global communication system and IT infrastructure, suitable for OMF International, needed to overcome limitations in the use and access of the Internet, the unreliability of different email systems to deliver email messages, and financial and human resource constraints. The study found that methods used in 'for-profit' organisations for the development of an IT infrastructure, were applicable to this non-profit organisation, resulting in the successful implementation of a global communication system and IT infrastructure. The choice of IT solutions and technologies within OMF was often based on functionality rather than feasibility, and its global IT infrastructure requirements were overlooked. The study found that by comparison Lotus Notes' client/server IT infrastructure requirements were considerably less than that of Microsoft Exchange client/server, however, alternative low-cost open standard messaging options were more affordable. Conclusively, open standard IT solutions for global communications are better suited that for this non-profit organisation, than proprietary solutions. The study also highlighted the need for an IT architecture, that would provide a plan and strategic context for future IT development within OMF International, which would overcome problems with concurrent IT projects using different technologies

Building Secure and Anonymous Communication Channel: Formal Model and its Prototype Implementation

Various techniques need to be combined to realize anonymously authenticated communication. Cryptographic tools enable anonymous user authentication while anonymous communication protocols hide users' IP addresses from service providers. One simple approach for realizing anonymously authenticated communication is their simple combination, but this gives rise to another issue; how to build a secure channel. The current public key infrastructure cannot be used since the user's public key identifies the user. To cope with this issue, we propose a protocol that uses identity-based encryption for packet encryption without sacrificing anonymity, and group signature for anonymous user authentication. Communications in the protocol take place through proxy entities that conceal users' IP addresses from service providers. The underlying group signature is customized to meet our objective and improve its efficiency. We also introduce a proof-of-concept implementation to demonstrate the protocol's feasibility. We compare its performance to SSL communication and demonstrate its practicality, and conclude that the protocol realizes secure, anonymous, and authenticated communication between users and service providers with practical performance.Comment: This is a preprint version of our paper presented in SAC'14, March 24-28, 2014, Gyeongju, Korea. ACMSAC 201

International benchmarking of South Africa's infrastructure performance

The paper provides a first systematic, comprehensive benchmarking of South Africa's infrastructure performance in four major sectors--electricity, water and sanitation, information and communication technology, and transportation--against the relevant group of comparator countries using a new World Bank international data base with objective and perception-based indicators of infrastructure performance from over 200 countries. Specifically, the paper seeks to answer a number of relevant questions: How does South Africa compare on major indicators of infrastructure sector performance against the relevant country groups? What do outcome indicators tell us about the relative strengths and weaknesses of South Africa's infrastructure compared with various income and geographical comparator groups of countries? Where are the largest deviations-positive and negative-from the benchmarks and other comparators? And how does one interpret some of these comparisons to be useful for policy purposes?Infrastructure Regulation,Economic Theory&Research,Income,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Economic Conditions and Volatility

LHC Communication Infrastructure: Recommendations from the working group

The LHC Working Group for Communication Infrastructure (CIWG) was established in May 1999 with members from the accelerator sector, the LHC physics experiments, the general communication services, the technical services and other LHC working groups. It has spent a year collecting user requirements and at the same time explored and evaluated possible solutions appropriate to the LHC. A number of technical recommendations were agreed, and areas where more work is required were identified. The working group also put forward proposals for organizational changes needed to allow the design project to continue and to prepare for the installation and commissioning phase of the LHC communication infrastructure. This paper reports on the work done and explains the motivation behind the recommendations

The New Grid

The New Grid seeks to provide mobile users with an additional method for off-grid communication, or communication without connection to Internet infrastructure. The motivation for this project was to find another alternative to Internet-dependent communication. Current Internet infrastructure is antiquated; it is expensive to maintain and expand, it has numerous vulnerabilities and high-impact points of failure, and can be rendered unusable for lengthy periods of time by natural disasters or other catastrophes. This current grid will eventually need to be replaced by a more modern, scalable, and adaptive infrastructure. The results of the projects research showed that implementing a library to allow for the creation of mobile peer-to-peer mesh networks could serve as a starting point for a transition from current Internet infrastructure to a more scalable, adaptive, and reliable Internet- independent network grid. Development of The New Grid largely followed the Rational Unified Process, in which the development process is split into four phases: requirements gathering, system design, implementation, and testing. Most of fall quarter was spent outlining functional requirements for the system, designing possible methods of implementation, and researching similar solutions that seek to transition mass mobile communication to a newer, more modern network grid. The New Grid differs from similar solutions because it has been implemented as a modular library. Current systems that allow for off-grid mobile connection exist as independent applications with a defined context and predetermined usability scope. We, the design team, found that implementing the system in the form of a modular library has multiple benefits. Primarily, this implementation would allow The New Grid to be deployed as widely as possible. Developers can both write applications around our library as well as include specific modules into existing applications without impacting other modules or introducing additional overhead into a system. Another benefit of deploying the system as a modular library is adaptability. The current, initial stable build of The New Grid uses Bluetooth Low Energy as its backbone for facilitating communication within large networks of mobile devices; however, this library could use any existing or future communication protocol to facilitate connection as long as a hook is written to allow The New Grid to interface with that protocol. Thus, The New Grid is not limited by which connection protocols currently exist, a property that other similar systems do not possess. The New Grid can be used in any application that requires connection between users. The most common applications would likely be messaging, file sharing, or social networking. While developers may find a variety of uses for The New Grid, its primary purpose is to facilitate reliable connection and secure data transfer in an environment with a large user base. Achieving this goal was proven feasible through research and testing the library with a small cluster of Android devices communicating solely with Bluetooth Low Energy. Expanding this group of a few phones to a larger mesh network of hundreds of devices was shown to be feasible through testing the librarys algorithms and protocols on a large network of virtual devices. As long as developers seek to create applications that allow users to communicate independent of Internet infrastructure, The New Grid will allow smartphone users to communicate off-grid and hopefully spur a switch from infrastructure-dependent mobile communication to user-centric, adaptive, and flexible connection

International benchmarking of Lesotho's infrastructure performance

The author provides a preliminary benchmarking of infrastructure performance in Lesotho in four major sectors--electricity, water and sanitation, information and communication technology, and road transportation--against the relevant group of comparator countries using a new World Bank international data base with objective and perception-based indicators of infrastructure performance from over 200 countries. The results of the benchmarking are revealing of several major, comparative deficiencies in infrastructure performance in Lesotho: (1) extremely low access to electricity and its affordability; (2) poor coverage, quality, and the cost of local (non-cellular) telephony; and (3) poor quality of roads. Infrastructure service delivery in electricity, telephony, and roads is well below what would be expected, on average, for a country in Lesotho's income group. In these sectors, Lesotho also compares unfavorably with many other geographical country groups. Unless addressed, such infrastructure shortfalls are likely to adversely affect the welfare of Lesotho's poor, and the cost competitiveness and growth prospects of a range of economic sectors (such as tourism and trade) that depend critically on a stable and competitive supply of basic infrastructure service. They could also affect the speed and quality of Lesotho's regional economic integration within the South Africa Customs Union (SACU) sub-region with attendant consequences for the long-term growth of regional trade and real output. By contrast, Lesotho's performance is solid in the access to improved water and sanitation, in the aggregate and in both rural and urban areas. Finally, this benchmarking, combined with more in-depth, sector analyses, could provide policymakers in Lesotho a useful guide to the areas of infrastructure performance requiring attention.Infrastructure Regulation,Urban Services to the Poor,Urban Slums Upgrading,Banks&Banking Reform,Roads&Highways

Adaptive reuse of Libre software systems for supporting on-line collaboration

In this paper, the adaptive reuse of Plone; an open source content management system is described. In one instance, Plone has been used as the backbone of a collaboration and communication support infrastructure within a large research project. In the other, Plone has been used as the main web-presence of a specialist group of the British Computer Society. This paper analyses the benefits and problems of reusing Plone to support collaboration. Based on this reuse experience, a more systematic approach to supporting Plone reuse is proposed. This approach takes into account the special case of reuse support relevant to open source software developments