Bridging the Disciplines: Student Academic Conference

Moorhead State University Student Academic Conference abstract book.https://red.mnstate.edu/sac-book/1000/thumbnail.jp

ATOM : a distributed system for video retrieval via ATM networks

The convergence of high speed networks, powerful personal computer processors and improved storage technology has led to the development of video-on-demand services to the desktop that provide interactive controls and deliver Client-selected video information on a Client-specified schedule. This dissertation presents the design of a video-on-demand system for Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks, incorporating an optimised topology for the nodes in the system and an architecture for Quality of Service (QoS). The system is called ATOM which stands for Asynchronous Transfer Mode Objects. Real-time video playback over a network consumes large bandwidth and requires strict bounds on delay and error in order to satisfy the visual and auditory needs of the user. Streamed video is a fundamentally different type of traffic to conventional IP (Internet Protocol) data since files are viewed in real-time, not downloaded and then viewed. This streaming data must arrive at the Client decoder when needed or it loses its interactive value. Characteristics of multimedia data are investigated including the use of compression to reduce the excessive bit rates and storage requirements of digital video. The suitability of MPEG-1 for video-on-demand is presented. Having considered the bandwidth, delay and error requirements of real-time video, the next step in designing the system is to evaluate current models of video-on-demand. The distributed nature of four such models is considered, focusing on how Clients discover Servers and locate videos. This evaluation eliminates a centralized approach in which Servers have no logical or physical connection to any other Servers in the network and also introduces the concept of a selection strategy to find alternative Servers when Servers are fully loaded. During this investigation, it becomes clear that another entity (called a Broker) could provide a central repository for Server information. Clients have logical access to all videos on every Server simply by connecting to a Broker. The ATOM Model for distributed video-on-demand is then presented by way of a diagram of the topology showing the interconnection of Servers, Brokers and Clients; a description of each node in the system; a list of the connectivity rules; a description of the protocol; a description of the Server selection strategy and the protocol if a Broker fails. A sample network is provided with an example of video selection and design issues are raised and solved including how nodes discover each other, a justification for using a mesh topology for the Broker connections, how Connection Admission Control (CAC) is achieved, how customer billing is achieved and how information security is maintained. A calculation of the number of Servers and Brokers required to service a particular number of Clients is presented. The advantages of ATOM are described. The underlying distributed connectivity is abstracted away from the Client. Redundant Server/Broker connections are eliminated and the total number of connections in the system are minimized by the rule stating that Clients and Servers may only connect to one Broker at a time. This reduces the total number of Switched Virtual Circuits (SVCs) which are a performance hindrance in ATM. ATOM can be easily scaled by adding more Servers which increases the total system capacity in terms of storage and bandwidth. In order to transport video satisfactorily, a guaranteed end-to-end Quality of Service architecture must be in place. The design methodology for such an architecture is investigated starting with a review of current QoS architectures in the literature which highlights important definitions including a flow, a service contract and flow management. A flow is a single media source which traverses resource modules between Server and Client. The concept of a flow is important because it enables the identification of the areas requiring consideration when designing a QoS architecture. It is shown that ATOM adheres to the principles motivating the design of a QoS architecture, namely the Integration, Separation and Transparency principles. The issue of mapping human requirements to network QoS parameters is investigated and the action of a QoS framework is introduced, including several possible causes of QoS degradation. The design of the ATOM Quality of Service Architecture (AQOSA) is then presented. AQOSA consists of 11 modules which interact to provide end-to-end QoS guarantees for each stream. Several important results arise from the design. It is shown that intelligent choice of stored videos in respect of peak bandwidth can improve overall system capacity. The concept of disk striping over a disk array is introduced and a Data Placement Strategy is designed which eliminates disk hot spots (i.e. Overuse of some disks whilst others lie idle.) A novel parameter (the B-P Ratio) is presented which can be used by the Server to predict future bursts from each video stream. The use of Traffic Shaping to decrease the load on the network from each stream is presented. Having investigated four algorithms for rewind and fast-forward in the literature, a rewind and fast-forward algorithm is presented. The method produces a significant decrease in bandwidth, and the resultant stream is very constant, reducing the chance that the stream will add to network congestion. The C++ classes of the Server, Broker and Client are described emphasizing the interaction between classes. The use of ATOM in the Virtual Private Network and the multimedia teaching laboratory is considered. Conclusions and recommendations for future work are presented. It is concluded that digital video applications require high bandwidth, low error, low delay networks; a video-on-demand system to support large Client volumes must be distributed, not centralized; control and operation (transport) must be separated; the number of ATM Switched Virtual Circuits (SVCs) must be minimized; the increased connections caused by the Broker mesh is justified by the distributed information gain; a Quality of Service solution must address end-to-end issues. It is recommended that a web front-end for Brokers be developed; the system be tested in a wide area A TM network; the Broker protocol be tested by forcing failure of a Broker and that a proprietary file format for disk striping be implemented

Web Page Recommendation Using Domain Knowledge and Improved Frequent Sequential Pattern Mining Algorithm

Web page recommendation is the technique of web site customization to fulfil the needs of every particular user or group of users. The web has become largest world of knowledge. So it is more crucial task of the webmasters to manage the contents of the particular websites to gather the requirements of the web users. The web page recommendation systems most part based on the exploitation of the patterns of the site's visitors. Domain ontology’s provide shared and regular understanding of a particular domain. Existing system uses pre-order linked WAP-tree mining (PLWAP Mine) algorithm that helps web recommendation system to recommend the interested pages but it has some drawbacks, it require more execution time and memory. To overcome the drawbacks of existing system paper utilizes PREWAP algorithm. The PREWAP algorithm recommends the interested results to web user within less time and with less memory and improves the efficiency of web page recommendation system. In work, various models are presented; the first model is Web Usage Mining which uses the web logs. The second model also utilizes web logs to represent the domain knowledge, here the domain ontology is used to solve the new page problem. Likewise the prediction model, which is a network of domain terms, which is based on the frequently viewed web-pages and represents the integrated web usage. The recommendation results have been successfully verified based on the results which are acquired from a proposed and existing web usage mining (WUM) technique

Information Technology Dominance at Florida Gulf Coast University

Accreditation guidelines usually dictate that information technology resources and systems shall be essential components of the university infrastructure. But, what is the competitive advantage of universities born in the information-age and the Internet revolution? As a Florida\u27s newest public university, Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) is known for its strategic use of technology and innovation, including use of information technology for distance learning delivery as well as internal administration and student-service processes. At FGCU, information technology is intertwined with academic and administrative operations, such as curriculum-design, course-delivery, resource-allocation, and everyday decision-making. The objective of this paper is to examine the developmental decisions, including policy, computer hardware and software, communications networks, and user services that led to the University\u27s accreditation in record time. It illustrates sample technology-driven course-delivery tools like the WebClassroom of the Future. The paper examines the outcomes, problems and solutions and provides a framework for next-generation universities

How CIOs Can Enable Governance of Value Nets

Value nets are the architecture of sourcing agreements and alliances that firms implement to gain complementary resources and capabilities from other firms. They are a source of innovation, growth, and competitive success. However, governing value nets is challenging, and the IT support needed to enable them depends on the governance mode a firm chooses. Based on case studies of three Fortune 100 firms, we define three governance modes—prescriptive, evaluative, and collaborative. Prescriptive governance specifies partners\u27 activities and retains decisions rights. It is effectively supported by dashboards that monitor the status of partners\u27 activities, alerts that surface exceptions and errors, business rules that automate activities and handling of errors, and extended enterprise architectures that protect intellectual property. Evaluative governance delegates decision rights to partners for operational execution and assesses their capabilities through periodic evaluations. It is effectively supported by loosely coupled processes that provide partners with limited autonomy, periodic reporting of performance on service level agreements, and data and process mining directed at improving partners\u27 capabilities. Collaborative governance promotes peer-to-peer collaboration with value net partners. It is supported by metadata architectures that control repositories of information and process resources, by consistent business rules to coordinate processes, by monitoring of the total costs of the relationship, and by business intelligence for predictive monitoring. CIOs and senior IT executives can apply these findings to choose an appropriate governance mode and enable it with appropriate IT applications and processes

Compare multimedia frameworks in mobile platforms

Multimedia feature is currently one of the most important features in mobile devices. Many modern mobile platforms use a centralized software stack to handle multimedia requirements that software stack is called multimedia framework. Multimedia framework belongs to the middleware layer of mobile operating system. It can be considered as a bridge that connects mobile operating system kernel, hardware drivers with UI applications. It supplies high level APIs that offers simple and easy solutions for complicated multimedia tasks to UI application developers. Multimedia Framework also manages and utilizes low lever system software and hardware in an efficient manner. It offers a centralize solution between high level demands and low level system resources. In this M.Sc. thesis project we have studied, analyzed and compared open source GStreamer, Android Stagefright and Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework from several perspectives. Some of the comparison perspectives are architecture, supported use cases, extensibility, implementation language and program language support (bindings), developer support, and legal status aspects. One of the main contributions of this thesis work is that clarifying in details the strength and weaknesses of each framework. Furthermore, the thesis should serve decision-making guidance when on needs to select a multimedia framework for a project. Moreover, and to enhance the impression with the three multimedia frameworks, a basic media player implementation is demonstrated with source code in the thesis.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Web Service Reliability for Deactivation and Decommissioning Knowledge Management Information Tool (D&D KM-IT) Vendor Management with Mobile Applications

This thesis presents the Knowledge Management Information Tool (KM-IT) Vendor Management Web Service and its reliability features. KM-IT is a web-based knowledge management information tool for the deactivation and decommissioning (D&D) user community. The Vendor Management (VM) module provides a directory service for searching D&D vendors. Clients have an increasing need to integrate and display the vendor information in their own applications. As such, this study proposes Web Services technology to provide VM access to clients. Moreover, when clients access information, particularly via mobile applications, they can encounter different failures that may occur on the network or the server. Such problems require fault tolerance in the VM Service. This study examines various reliability standards and selects the WS-ReliableMessaging standard as the best-suited approach to implement the reliability features for the VM Service. Implementation evaluation confirms that the KM-IT VM Service can effectively tolerate different types of failures

Secure Network Access via LDAP

Networks need the ability to be access by secure accounts and users. The goal of this project is to configure and expand on LDAP configurations with considerations for AAA via TACACS+ and Radius for network equipment. This will provide adequate security for any given network in terms of access and prevent lose of access to devices which happens all to often with locally configured accounts on devices

The School of Information and Library Science Information Technology Recovery Plan

Many schools and organizations make the mistake of not preparing for potential crisis situations in advance. As a result, schools and organizations often make erroneous decisions, waste critical time and allow the crisis to control them and/or spiral out of control. Being fully prepared ahead of time can be the difference between keeping your business up and running or going out of business. This project takes a look at the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure of the School of Information and Library Science, documents all IT related procedures, machines, and processes, which are needed to keep the school functioning. This disaster recovery plan is an ongoing process that should be evaluated and re-examined every semester in order to update critical services

The challenge of e-learning for healthcare professionals: an exploration in rural Thailand

This research investigates the barriers and drivers of eLearning for healthcare professional students in rural Thailand. An initial deskstudy was undertaken to investigate the factors that had an impact on eLearning within a professional healthcare environment. This was followed by a pilot study in a university in rural areas of Thailand. The results from the investigation led to a model being created to identify the barriers and drivers for implementing eLearning programmes in rural Thailand. This research explores the challenges of eLearning within four domains (IFPC);infrastructure (I), financing eLearning courses (F), university policy (P), and cultural diversity (C). The research utilised mixed research methods to identify the impacts of eLearning; employing both quantitative and qualitative methods. The participants of this research included healthcare professionals associated with the eLearning environment within rural areas in Thailand. The fieldwork data from both quantitative and qualitative methods were analysed assisting by SPSS software and Nvivo software. The results and findings demonstrated that the IFPC domains impact on the uptake of eLearning for healthcare professionals and healthcare professional students. The results of statistical testing corroborated that healthcare professional students with their own computers perceived that eLearning was useful to their professional development. In addition, it showed that universities’ policies on eLearning affected the use of the iv eLearning infrastructure, the participants’ motivation to undertake eLearning courses and that eLearning course-uptake was affected by both healthcare professionals’ motivation and their ability to use a computer. The subject of the financing of eLearning course was directly correlated to the level of computer skills held by the healthcare professional students and their attitude towards their own use of computers. The results identified how the elements of the IFPC model were related to each other and affected the implementation of eLearning programmes. It is hoped that these findings will make a significant contribution by informing lecturers about online teaching material, course delivery and design. They will also inform policymakers when considering budgets, plans and requirements for supporting healthcare professional students undertaking eLearning in rural Thailand. In particular the results will provide useful lessons for healthcare professionals undertaking similar programmes in other developing countries