Multi-granular, multi-purpose and multi-Gb/s monitoring on off-the-shelf systems

This is the accepted version of the following article: [Moreno, V., Santiago del Río, P. M., Ramos, J., Muelas, D., García-Dorado, J. L., Gomez-Arribas, F. J. and Aracil, J. (2014), Multi-granular, multi-purpose and multi-Gb/s monitoring on off-the-shelf systems. Int. J. Network Mgmt., 24: 221–234. doi: 10.1002/nem.1861, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nem.1861/abstractAs an attempt to make network managers’ life easier, we present M3Omon, a system architecture that helps to develop monitoring applications and perform network diagnosis. M3Omon behaves as an intermediate layer between the traffic and monitoring applications that provides advanced features, high performance and low cost. Such advanced features leverage a multi-granular and multi-purpose approach to the monitoring problem. Multi-granular monitoring gives answer to tasks that use traffic aggregates to identify an event, and requires either flow records or packet data or even both to understand it and, eventually, take the convenient countermeasures. M3Omon provides a simple API to access traffic simultaneously at several different granularities—i.e., packet-level, flow-level and aggregate statistics. The multi-purposed design of M3Omon allows not only performing tasks in parallel that are specifically targeted to different traffic-related purposes (e.g., traffic classification and intrusion detection) but also sharing granularities between applications—e.g., several concurrent applications fed from flow records that are provided by M3Omon. Finally, the low-cost characteristic is brought by off-the-shelf systems (the combination of open-source software and commodity hardware) and the high performance is achieved thanks to modifications in the standard NIC driver, low-level hardware interaction, efficient memory management and programming optimization

Stokes Phenomena and Quantum Integrability in Non-critical String/M Theory

We study Stokes phenomena of the k \times k isomonodromy systems with an arbitrary Poincar\'e index r, especially which correspond to the fractional-superstring (or parafermionic-string) multi-critical points (\hat p,\hat q)=(1,r-1) in the k-cut two-matrix models. Investigation of this system is important for the purpose of figuring out the non-critical version of M theory which was proposed to be the strong-coupling dual of fractional superstring theory as a two-matrix model with an infinite number of cuts. Surprisingly the multi-cut boundary-condition recursion equations have a universal form among the various multi-cut critical points, and this enables us to show explicit solutions of Stokes multipliers in quite wide classes of (k,r). Although these critical points almost break the intrinsic Z_k symmetry of the multi-cut two-matrix models, this feature makes manifest a connection between the multi-cut boundary-condition recursion equations and the structures of quantum integrable systems. In particular, it is uncovered that the Stokes multipliers satisfy multiple Hirota equations (i.e. multiple T-systems). Therefore our result provides a large extension of the ODE/IM correspondence to the general isomonodromy ODE systems endowed with the multi-cut boundary conditions. We also comment about a possibility that N=2 QFT of Cecotti-Vafa would be "topological series" in non-critical M theory equipped with a single quantum integrability.Comment: 43 pages, 3 figures; v2:references and comments added (footnote 24

Economies of scale and scope in local public transportation

The purpose of this study is to analyze the cost structure of a sample of Swiss multi-modal urban transport operators in order to assess economies of scale and scope. The results suggest that the industry is characterized by increasing returns to scale and economies of scope. Several European countries have introduced a competitive tendering procedure in the assignment of franchised monopoly in the local transport industry. In the case of multi-modal systems the regulator has to decide to open the competitive tendering procedure for supplying the entire transport services or to unbundle the multi-modal systems and open separate tenders for different modes of transport. In order to make the decision the regulator should have information on the economies of scope. Only few studies have addressed the issue of scope economies in local transport systems.

Neurons and symbols: a manifesto

We discuss the purpose of neural-symbolic integration including its principles, mechanisms and applications. We outline a cognitive computational model for neural-symbolic integration, position the model in the broader context of multi-agent systems, machine learning and automated reasoning, and list some of the challenges for the area of neural-symbolic computation to achieve the promise of effective integration of robust learning and expressive reasoning under uncertainty

Global dynamics of coupled standard maps

Understanding the dynamics of multi--dimensional conservative dynamical systems (Hamiltonian flows or symplectic maps) is a fundamental issue of non-linear science. The Generalized ALignment Index (GALI), which was recently introduced and applied successfully for the distinction between regular and chaotic motion in Hamiltonian systems \cite{sk:6}, is an ideal tool for this purpose. In the present paper we make a first step towards the dynamical study of multi--dimensional maps, by obtaining some interesting results for a 4--dimensional (4D) symplectic map consisting of N=2 coupled standard maps \cite{Kan:1}. In particular, using the new GALI$_3$ and GALI$_4$ indices, we compute the percentages of regular and chaotic motion of the map equally reliably but much faster than previously used indices, like GALI$_2$ (known in the literature as SALI).Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the international conference "Chaos in Astronomy", Athens, Greece (poster contribution

Design Principles for Scaling Multi-core OLTP Under High Contention

Although significant recent progress has been made in improving the multi-core scalability of high throughput transactional database systems, modern systems still fail to achieve scalable throughput for workloads involving frequent access to highly contended data. Most of this inability to achieve high throughput is explained by the fundamental constraints involved in guaranteeing ACID --- the addition of cores results in more concurrent transactions accessing the same contended data for which access must be serialized in order to guarantee isolation. Thus, linear scalability for contended workloads is impossible. However, there exist flaws in many modern architectures that exacerbate their poor scalability, and result in throughput that is much worse than fundamentally required by the workload. In this paper we identify two prevalent design principles that limit the multi-core scalability of many (but not all) transactional database systems on contended workloads: the multi-purpose nature of execution threads in these systems, and the lack of advanced planning of data access. We demonstrate the deleterious results of these design principles by implementing a prototype system, ORTHRUS, that is motivated by the principles of separation of database component functionality and advanced planning of transactions. We find that these two principles alone result in significantly improved scalability on high-contention workloads, and an order of magnitude increase in throughput for a non-trivial subset of these contended workloads