Policies for Self Tuning Home Networks

A home network (HN) is usually managed by a user who does not possess knowledge and skills required to perform management tasks. When abnormalities are detected, it is desirable to let the network tune itself under the direction of certain policies. However, self tuning tasks usually require coordination between several network components and most of the network management policies can only specify local tasks. In this paper, we propose a state machine based policy framework to address the problem of fault and performance management in the context of HN. Policies can be specified for complex management tasks as global state machines which incorporate global system behaviour monitoring and reactions. We demonstrate the policy framework through a case study in which policies are specified for dynamic selection of frequency channel in order to improve wireless link quality in the presence of RF interference

Globalization and International entrepreneurship

Despite its specific destabilizing effects, the real dimensions of globalization do not justify a general alarm. Although technology revolution, "knowledge society", and deregulation trend bring uncertainty and risks, there is not a real global market yet, abolishing the national policy field and exposing firms, social groups and states to the threat of the global speculative capital. Objective difficulties restrict the irrepressible development of globalization while, concerning firms, the dangers hanging over the big multinational firms weaned from their national base, explain the absence of a generalized trend for their conversion to supranational firms. However, the ineluctable character of globalization and the ensuing competitive landscape, force firms to permanently adjust their strategy, structure and processes and often to internationalize in order to survive and sustain their competitive advantage. Lastly, prerequisites for successful internationalization are examined, especially for mall and middle sized enterprises which, far from being in rivalry with the multinational firms, they do well to develop complementary relationships and mutually profitable synergistic links with them.peer-reviewe

Faithful reproduction of network experiments

The proliferation of cloud computing has compelled the research community to rethink fundamental aspects of network systems and architectures. However, the tools commonly used to evaluate new ideas have not kept abreast of the latest developments. Common simulation and emulation frameworks fail to provide scalability, fidelity, reproducibility and execute unmodified code, all at the same time. We present SELENA, a Xen-based network emulation framework that offers fully reproducible experiments via its automation interface and supports the use of unmodified guest operating systems. This allows out-of-the-box compatibility with common applications and OS components, such as network stacks and filesystems. In order to faithfully emulate faster and larger networks, SELENA adopts the technique of time-dilation and transparently slows down the passage of time for guest operating systems. This technique effectively virtualizes the availability of host’s hardware resources and allows the replication of scenarios with increased I/O and computational demands. Users can directly control the tradeoff between fidelity and running-times via intuitive tuning knobs. We evaluate the ability of SELENA to faithfully replicate the behaviour of real systems and compare it against existing popular experimentation platforms. Our results suggest that SELENA can accurately model networks with aggregate link speeds of 44 Gbps or more, while improving by four times the execution time in comparison to ns3 and exhibits near-linear scaling properties.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from ACM via http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2658260.265827

Resolving data center power bill disputes: the energy-performance trade-offs of consolidation

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from ACM via http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2768510.2770933In this paper we challenge the common evaluation practices used for Virtual Machine (VM) consolidation, such as simulation and small testbeds, which fail to capture the fundamental trade-off between energy consumption and performance. We identify a number of over-simplifying assumptions which are typically made about the energy consumption and performance characteristics of modern networked systems. In response, we describe how more accurate models for data-center systems can be designed and used in order to create an evaluation framework that allows the more reliable exploration of the energy-performance trade-off for VM consolidation strategies.This work was jointly supported by by MINECO (grant TEC2014- 55713-R), the EPSRC INTERNET Project EP / H040536/1, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), under contract FA8750-11-C-0249. The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this article/presentation are those of the author/presenter and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or the Department of Defense

Home Network Management Policies: Putting the User in the Loop.

Home networks are becoming increasingly complex but existing management solutions are not simple to use since they are not tailored to the needs of typical home-users. In this paper we present a new approach to home network management that allows users to formulate quite sophisticated comic-strip policies using an attractive iPad application. The policies are based on the management wishes of home users elicited in a user study. Comic-strip policies are passed to a Policy engine running on a new Home Network Router designed to facilitate a variety of management tasks. We illustrate our approach via a number end-to-end experiments in an actual home deployment, using our prototype implementation. © 2012 IEEE

An Emerging Natural History in the Development, Mechanisms and Worldwide Prevalence of Major Mental Disorders

Conciliating recent findings from molecular genetics, evolutionary biology, and clinical observations together point to new understandings regarding the mechanism, development and the persistent worldwide prevalence of major mental disorders (MMDs), which should be considered the result of an evolutionary downside trade off. Temperamental/trait variability, by facilitating choices for individual and group responses, confers robustness flexibility and resilience crucial to success of our species. Extreme temperamental variants, originating evolutionarily from the asocial aspect of human nature, also constitute the premorbid personality of the disorders. The latter create vulnerable individuals out of whom some will develop MMDs but at much higher rate to that of the general population. Significantly, similar temperamental “lopsidedness� enables many of these vulnerable individuals, if intelligent, tenacious, and curious, to be creative and contribute to our survival while some may also develop MMDs. All have a common neural-developmental origin and share characteristics in their clinical expression and pharmacological responses also expressed as mixed syndromes or alternating ones over time. Over-pruning of synaptic neurons may be considered the trigger of such occurrences or conversely, the failure to prevent them in spite of it. The symptoms of the major mental disorders are made up of antithetical substitutes as an expression of a disturbed over-all synchronizing property of brain function for all higher faculties previously unconsidered in their modeling. The concomitant presence of psychosis is a generic common occurrence

Integration of Web Browsers and Interactive TV

Interactive TV(ITV) technologies enhance the conventional TV services and enable user--content interaction. The World Wide Web is currently the most popular approach to information exchange. The ``Integration of Interactive TV and web browsers'' project studies the convergence of the two areas which is important since both areas can benefit each other. We focus on an ITV extension for an existing web browser. The ``Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Experts Group'' part 5 (MHEG-5) standard is selected as representative for the ITV area, and the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Document Object Model (DOM) standards for the web browsers area. We present the design and implementation of an MHEG extension for a web browser and integrate the MHEG and DOM event models in order to achieve an easier and more compact MHEG event model implementation. Our study provides the foundation for the convergence of the two technologies by a thorough study, implementation and evaluation of ITV and browser integration

An Information Plane Architecture Supporting Home Network Management

Home networks have evolved to become small-scale versions of enterprise networks. The tools for visualizing and managing such networks are primitive and continue to require networked systems expertise on the part of the home user. As a result, non-expert home users must manually manage non-obvious aspects of the network - e.g., MAC address filtering, network masks, and firewall rules, using these primitive tools. The Homework information plane architecture uses stream database concepts to generate derived events from streams of raw events. This supports a variety of visualization and monitoring techniques, and also enables construction of a closed-loop, policy-based management system. This paper describes the information plane architecture and its associated policy-based management infrastructure. Exemplar visualization and closed-loop management applications enabled by the resulting system (tuned to the skills of non-expert home users) are discussed. © 2011 IEEE.Accepted versio

Presenting multi-language XML documents : an adaptive transformation and validation approach

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