InfoFilter: Supporting Quality of Service for Fresh Information Delivery

With the explosive growth of the Internet and World Wide Web comes a dramatic increase in the number of users that compete for the shared resources of distributed system environments. Most implementations of application servers and distributed search software do not distinguish among requests to different web pages. This has the implication that the behavior of application servers is quite unpredictable. Applications that require timely delivery of fresh information consequently suffer the most in such competitive environments. This paper presents a model of quality of service (QoS) and the design of a QoS-enabled information delivery system that implements such a QoS modeL The goal of this development is two-fold. On one hand, we want to enable users or applications to specify the desired quality of service requ.irements for their requests so that application-aware QoS adaptation is supported throughout the Web query and search processing. On the other hand, we want to enable an application server to customize how it shou.ld respond to external requests by setting priorities among query requests and allocating server resources using adaptive QoS control mechanisms. We introduce the Infopipe approach as the systems support architecture and underlying technology for building a QoS-enabled distributed system for fresh information delivery

Flashover performance of lightning protected buildings using scaled models and electric field analysis

In early era, Benjamin Franklin discovered that the application of Lightning Rod (also known as the Franklin Rod) method is found to be effectived as a lightning protective device for buildings. Hence, it was considered among the best solution to overcome the problems facing by publics due to lightning strikes. However, few years later it was found that the corroded Franklin Rod due to the impact of environmental contaminations tends to reduce its ability to effectively capture the lightning strikes. The directly or indirectly impacts of lightning strikes had caused owners to spend huge amount of money just to repair damages on the buildings. Nowadays, there were many professional standards and documents guiding public to properly install the building’s lightning protection system, yet the same damages problems had shown to be frequently occur that related to the strikes often bypasses the of Lightning Air Terminal (LAT) system. The main reason for this could be due to lacking ideas by learned circle of lightning experts as not to fully understand the behavior of Franklin Rods system when it interacts with the lightning leaders. Therefore, this thesis discusses the works that investigated the flashover performances occurred on the buildings with various structural geometry shapes. The case study method is using small scaled models for both laboratory and simulation works, aiming to understand the Franklin Rods performance on capturing lightning leaders. Summarizing the works, about 11 scaled-down building shape models equipped with Franklin Rods system are selected in the case studies such as follows; a conical, gable, triangular, half circle, L-shape, square, cylindrical, butterfly, pyramid, rectangular and inclined like shapes. These models were then injected with 30 lightning flashes each using the 100 kVpeak single stage impulse generator. This number of flashes is considered as total two-years lightning activity frequencies in Malaysia, which the lighting flash density is statistically recorded to be around 15 flashes / year / km2. The maximum applied voltage is about 86.5 kVpeak. The model scaling concept is based on 1:30 cm ratio for every 3 m height of building structure. Interestingly, the overall work data had shown that the pyramid-like shapes is found to be the best structure type to be used in reducing the LAT bypasses and direct strike damages. The structure’s Franklin Rod protection system captured the least number of strikes during competitive tests conducted on all of the scaled down building models. Works of electric field analysis on all building models were conducted using ANSYS Maxwell simulation tool. Utilisation of electric field plot data in this work enables the creation of likelihood factor (ranging from 0.1 to 0.9) method that so useful to capable predict the strikes pattern occurring on dedicated terminal rod. Both laboratory and simulation work also confirm that the edge shapes play crucial roles as intense electric fields is found to accumulate on the edges area when the Franklin Rod intercepts the lightning leaders. These mentioned findings lead to introducing better method of LAT placement on the top of the building, whereby the existing lightning protection system is recommended to have one of installed LAT rods elongated to act as sacrificial point to directly attract lightning strikes. All the work and key findings in this work can contribute to the science and technology field toward having a better LAT lightning protection system and also lead to better decision in selecting / designing the shapes and edges concept as to reduce likelihood of LAT bypasses and damages of the building structure

Data center virtualization and its economic implications for the companies

In the current situation of the economic crisis, when companies target budget cuttings in a context of an explosive data growth, the IT community must evaluate potential technology developments not only on their technical advantages, but on their economic effects as well.data centre; virtualization; tiered storage; provisioning software; unified computing.

The future of computing beyond Moore's Law.

Moore's Law is a techno-economic model that has enabled the information technology industry to double the performance and functionality of digital electronics roughly every 2 years within a fixed cost, power and area. Advances in silicon lithography have enabled this exponential miniaturization of electronics, but, as transistors reach atomic scale and fabrication costs continue to rise, the classical technological driver that has underpinned Moore's Law for 50 years is failing and is anticipated to flatten by 2025. This article provides an updated view of what a post-exascale system will look like and the challenges ahead, based on our most recent understanding of technology roadmaps. It also discusses the tapering of historical improvements, and how it affects options available to continue scaling of successors to the first exascale machine. Lastly, this article covers the many different opportunities and strategies available to continue computing performance improvements in the absence of historical technology drivers. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Numerical algorithms for high-performance computational science'

Wearable Communications in 5G: Challenges and Enabling Technologies

As wearable devices become more ingrained in our daily lives, traditional communication networks primarily designed for human being-oriented applications are facing tremendous challenges. The upcoming 5G wireless system aims to support unprecedented high capacity, low latency, and massive connectivity. In this article, we evaluate key challenges in wearable communications. A cloud/edge communication architecture that integrates the cloud radio access network, software defined network, device to device communications, and cloud/edge technologies is presented. Computation offloading enabled by this multi-layer communications architecture can offload computation-excessive and latency-stringent applications to nearby devices through device to device communications or to nearby edge nodes through cellular or other wireless technologies. Critical issues faced by wearable communications such as short battery life, limited computing capability, and stringent latency can be greatly alleviated by this cloud/edge architecture. Together with the presented architecture, current transmission and networking technologies, including non-orthogonal multiple access, mobile edge computing, and energy harvesting, can greatly enhance the performance of wearable communication in terms of spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, latency, and connectivity.Comment: This work has been accepted by IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazin

FABRIC: A National-Scale Programmable Experimental Network Infrastructure

FABRIC is a unique national research infrastructure to enable cutting-edge and exploratory research at-scale in networking, cybersecurity, distributed computing and storage systems, machine learning, and science applications. It is an everywhere-programmable nationwide instrument comprised of novel extensible network elements equipped with large amounts of compute and storage, interconnected by high speed, dedicated optical links. It will connect a number of specialized testbeds for cloud research (NSF Cloud testbeds CloudLab and Chameleon), for research beyond 5G technologies (Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research or PAWR), as well as production high-performance computing facilities and science instruments to create a rich fabric for a wide variety of experimental activities

The battle between standards: TCP/IP vs OSI victory through path dependency or by quality?

Between the end of the 1970s and 1994 a fierce competition existed between two possible standards, TCP/IP and OSI, to solve the problem of interoperability of computer networks. Around 1994 it became evident that TCP/IP and not OSI had become the dominant standard. We specifically deal with the question whether the current dominance of the TCP/IP standard is the result of third degree path dependency or of choices based on assessments of it being technical-economically superior to the OSI standard and protocols

Inter-Domain Integration of Services and Service Management

The evolution of the global telecommunications industry into an open services market presents developers of telecommunication service and management systems with many new challenges. Increased competition, complex service provision chains and integrated service offerings require effective techniques for the rapid integration of service and management systems over multiple organisational domains. These integration issues have been examined in the ACTS project Prospect by developing a working set of integrated, managed telecommunications services for a user trial. This paper presents the initial results of this work detailing the technologies and standards used, the architectural approach taken and the application of this approach to specific services