How to Commission, Operate and Maintain a Large Future Accelerator Complex from Far Remote

A study on future large accelerators [1] has considered a facility, which is designed, built and operated by a worldwide collaboration of equal partner institutions, and which is remote from most of these institutions. The full range of operation was considered including commi-ssioning, machine development, maintenance, trouble shooting and repair. Experience from existing accele-rators confirms that most of these activities are already performed 'remotely'. The large high-energy physics ex-periments and astronomy projects, already involve inter-national collaborations of distant institutions. Based on this experience, the prospects for a machine operated remotely from far sites are encouraging. Experts from each laboratory would remain at their home institution but continue to participate in the operation of the machine after construction. Experts are required to be on site only during initial commissioning and for par-ticularly difficult problems. Repairs require an on-site non-expert maintenance crew. Most of the interventions can be made without an expert and many of the rest resolved with remote assistance. There appears to be no technical obstacle to controlling an accelerator from a distance. The major challenge is to solve the complex management and communication problems.Comment: ICALEPCS 2001 abstract ID No. FRBI001 invited talk submitting author F. Willeke 5 pages, 1 figur

Status Report of the Inter-Laboratory Task Force on Remote Operation

In February 2000, the International Committee for Future Accelerators initiated a study of a new model for international collaboration on a future large accelerator project, the Global Accelerator Network. The study is based on a model of a facility, which is remote from most of the collaborating institutions. It is designed, built and operated by a collaboration of equal partner institutions distributed around the world. According to this model, the expert-staff from each laboratory remains based at their home institution but continues to participate in the operation of the machine after construction. This report summarizes the conclusions of the Task Force on Remote Operation, which investigated the general and technical implications of far-remote operations.Comment: 32 pages, PDF, report of ICFA sponsored task forc

Towards Trouble-Free Networks for End Users

Network applications and Internet services fail all too frequently. However, end users cannot effectively identify the root cause using traditional troubleshooting techniques due to the limited capability to distinguish failures caused by local network elements from failures caused by elements located outside the local area network. To overcome these limitations, we propose a new approach, one that leverages collaboration of user machines to assist end users in diagnosing various failures related to Internet connectivity and poor network performance. First, we present DYSWIS ("Do You See What I See?"), an automatic network fault detection and diagnosis system for end users. DYSWIS identifies the root cause(s) of network faults using diagnostic rules that consider diverse information from multiple nodes. In addition, the DYSWIS rule system is specially designed to support crowdsourced and distributed probes. We also describe the architecture of DYSWIS and compare its performance with other tools. Finally, we demonstrate that the system successfully detects and diagnoses network failures which are difficult to diagnose using a single-user probe. Failures in lower layers of the protocol stack also have the potential to disrupt Internet access; for example, slow Internet connectivity is often caused by poor Wi-Fi performance. Channel contention and non-Wi-Fi interference are the primary reasons for this performance degradation. We investigate the characteristics of non-Wi-Fi interference that can severely degrade Wi-Fi performance and present WiSlow ("Why is my Wi-Fi slow?"), a software tool that diagnoses the root causes of poor Wi-Fi performance. WiSlow employs user-level network probes and leverages peer collaboration to identify the physical location of these causes. The software includes two principal methods: packet loss analysis and 802.11 ACK number analysis. When the issue is located near Wi-Fi devices, the accuracy of WiSlow exceeds 90%. Finally, we expand our collaborative approach to the Internet of Things (IoT) and propose a platform for network-troubleshooting on home devices. This platform takes advantage of built-in technology common to modern devices --- multiple communication interfaces. For example, when a home device has a problem with an interface it sends a probe request to other devices using an alternative interface. The system then exploits cooperation of both internal devices and remote machines. We show that this approach is useful in home networks by demonstrating an application that contains actual diagnostic algorithms

Contextual Analysis of Enterprise Mobile Services Requirements

This article presents a framework to classify various types of mobile services implemented in organizational settings. Based on the objectives of wireless information systems (WIS), we identify three categories viz. enterprise mobile services, enterprise-advantage mobile services, and consumer mobile services. While the last two categories of mobile services have received broader attention, there has not been much work done in analyzing the role of mobile services in the organizational settings specific to various industries. In this article, we attempt to fill this void by synthesizing the extant literature in this area. Based on the degree of user\u27s mobility in their organizational settings, we categorize enterprise mobile services in three subcategories. This categorization helps identijy differences in the information access needs of users. We then discuss how firms belonging to various industries can benefit from mobile services and various issues that need to be addressed before embracing such services. Finally this paper concludes with identification of potential research topics