Master of Science

thesisArguably, the inherent complexity of network management makes it the top concern for network operators. While true for all networks, network management complexity is significantly exacerbated in open access networks where, unlike more monolithic "closed access networks," services are provided by different service providers on a shared network infrastructure that is operated by a separate network owner/operator. The intricate responsibilities of the role players in this environment, combined with the lack of automation in current network management and operation practices, conspire to prevent open access networks from reaching their true potential. In this thesis, we present our work on the FlowOps framework to address these concerns. FlowOps is a network management and operations framework that provides structured, automated network management for heterogeneous open access network environments. In FlowOps, we are exploring the use of a production rules system to realize automated network management and operations. This rule-based approach enables us to accurately model dependencies and relationships of devices and role players in an open access network. FlowOps enables the automation of network configuration and fault management tasks in both traditional and software-defined networks. We present a prototype implementation of FlowOps and demonstrate its utility for network operators, service providers, and end users

Institutional repositories for knowledge management in academic and research institutions

Information Retrieval Systems (IRS) provide a simple, Webbased mechanism to researchers to deposit (‘self-archive’) and access their research publications. There are many world renowned open source IR softwares available such as EPrints, DSpace, FEDORA, ARNO, i-TOR, CDSWare etc. Each of this software has a host of features, unique facilities and excellent capabilities, which the users could explore and experiment upon. In this paper we emphasize the need for deploying interoperable open access IRs, and share our experience in creating a state-of-art scholarly Institutional Repository using the DSpace software. The system development and administration illustrated in this paper is on Windows environment as we have observed that a large majority of the library professionals in India are more familiar and comfortable with the Microsoft operating system, though strictly speaking, an open source operating environment for an open source IR software would have been more desirable. The method of developing the IR, which include the institutional open access policies, the installation, configuration and customization of the software along with the related workflow operations such as defining the communities and collections, content development and management, designing and creating standard metadata sets are also illustrated

Vwire: Digital Content Management through Spatial Arrangement - a Tool for Visual Argumentation in the Humanities

The Vwire project initiates an open source and extensible environment for producing, sharing and discussing visually ordered data sets in the humanities. Even those existing database tools that allow researchers to see multiple images simultaneously do not allow for the active and intuitive configuration of the images - like arranging snapshots on a table - that Vwire provides. Already implemented as an add-on module for Plone 4 (a mature and recently much improved Content Management System [CMS]), Vwire leverages existing technology and extends the visualization tools available to humanities researchers. We propose a test case using a small group of Teotihuacan stone masks, which are of archaeological and art historical importance, and we will elicit collaboration between experts from both fields to help refine and troubleshoot the existing tool

Разработка многоагентной технологии управления контекстом в открытой информационной среде

Methodology and research prototype of multiagent technology for context management in an open information environment for intelligent decision support have been developed. Formalism of object-oriented constraint networks used for knowledge representation is presented. A set of technological and problem-oriented agents used for accomplishing purposes of context management in open information environment is defined. Models and scenarios of agent interactions are developed. The prototype is tested using a case study for a complex task of portable hospital configuration in an emergency situation of a disaster event.Разработаны, методология и исследовательский прототип многоагентной технологии управления контекстом в открытой информационной среде в рамках интеллектуальной поддержки принятия решений. Показано использование формализма объектно-ориентированных сетей ограничений для представления знаний. Определен набор технологических и проблемно-ориентированных агентов для решения задач управления контекстомв открытой информационной среде, разработаны модели и сценарии их взаимодействия. Исследовательский прототип протестирован на примере комплексной задачи конфигурирования мобильного госпиталя в ситуации техногенной катастрофы

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-based Methods for Serverless Stream Processing Engines: A Vision, Architectural Elements, and Future Directions

Streaming applications are becoming widespread across an extensive range of business domains as an increasing number of sources continuously produce data that need to be processed and analysed in real time. Modern businesses are aggressively using streaming data to generate valuable knowledge that can be used to automate processes, help decision-making, optimize resource usage, and ultimately generate revenue for the organization. Despite their increased adoption and tangible benefits, support for the automated deployment and management of streaming applications is yet to emerge. Although a plethora of stream management systems have flooded the open source community in recent years, all of the existing frameworks demand a considerably challenging and lengthy effort from human operators to manually and continuously tune their configuration and deployment environment in order to reach and maintain the desired performance goals. To address these challenges, this article proposes a vision for creating Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-based methods for transforming stream processing engines into self-managed serverless solutions. This will lead to an increase in productivity as engineers can focus on the actual development process, an increase in application performance potentially leading to reduced response times and more accurate and meaningful results, and a considerable decrease in operational costs for organizations.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure

The transition from static to dynamic web design

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.Recent developments in open source software are enabling web designers to configure dynamic web sites quickly, easily and cheaply. The promise of open source CMS software, ultimately is a web environment in which users are programmers. On the surface it would appear that web site creation is moving in the direction of no longer needing expensive custom solutions by professional web developers. These new software systems use a variety of approaches from mere configuration of the system to script implementation. They may require limited programming experience beyond the web designer’s CSS and XHTML capabilities. Based on the Open Source platform, PHP and MySQL offer an easily learned and supported framework to web designers. Web designers now have a tremendous opportunity to harness open source content management systems and extend what they are offering to clients and their employers. Increasingly, it will become the duty of web instructors and of tertiary institutions to equip students with these capabilities, so that they can function effectively in the new environment. This research uses surveys, interviews, and a research workshop with longitudinal results to explore the questions posed. The collation of materials is hosted on a dedicated web site. The findings of this research indicate that students would benefit from a practical approach to web development through the introduction of a CMS in their studies. These are skills employers consider valuable. The main conclusions and recommendations are firstly that many design students see themselves as performing an exclusively aesthetic role in the development of web projects, and secondly, that these students, with proper instruction in the usage of open source CMS’s, are more than capable of making and implementing decisions concerning the functionality or programming of web projects. As a result of this study it is my belief that design students with a deeper understanding of open source CMS’s will be able to occupy a role currently falling between the occupations of graphic design, web development and object-oriented programming. It is my hope that this project will inform and educate so that the wider design community, and in particular design educators, can make more informed decisions about the transition from static to dynamic web design

Using COPS for managing Active Network Nodes

We propose a Common Open Policy Service (COPS) based architecture to manage Active Network Elements. We use the generic term Active Elements to refer to any active network component on a node, such as an Execution Environment (EE), an Active Application (AA) or any component of an EE or an AA. Our approach consists in the definition of a new client type, called COPS-ANEL- , for the COPS protocol to support the management of these active network elements. The client type supports both the Outsourcing and the Provisionning models of COPS to achieve admission control, configuration and monitoring of Active Elements. We define a set of policies for the two models to be applied when an event occurs on the Execution Environement and needs a response from the policy server. By using a COPS-based management, an active network provider can control and monitor active elements. Our clients have been plugged into the FLAME Execution Environment, an active networking platform developed in our research group

The cyber security learning and research environment

This report outlines the design and configuration of the Cyber Security Learning and Research Environment (CLARE). It explains how such a system can be implemented with minimal hardware either on a single machine or across multiple machines. Moreover, details of the design of the components that constitute the environment are provided alongside sufficient implementation and configuration documentation to allow for replication of the environment

Component-aware Orchestration of Cloud-based Enterprise Applications, from TOSCA to Docker and Kubernetes

Enterprise IT is currently facing the challenge of coordinating the management of complex, multi-component applications across heterogeneous cloud platforms. Containers and container orchestrators provide a valuable solution to deploy multi-component applications over cloud platforms, by coupling the lifecycle of each application component to that of its hosting container. We hereby propose a solution for going beyond such a coupling, based on the OASIS standard TOSCA and on Docker. We indeed propose a novel approach for deploying multi-component applications on top of existing container orchestrators, which allows to manage each component independently from the container used to run it. We also present prototype tools implementing our approach, and we show how we effectively exploited them to carry out a concrete case study