Filed under Networks, Research by Oscar Boykin | 0 comments
A paper using P2P overlays for virtual IP networks will be presented at IPDPS 06 next month. This is joint work with Professor Renato Figueiredo and students Arijit Ganguly and Abhishek Agrawal.
The main problem we are addressing is virtual networks for grid computing. We want to enable virtual nodes (compute nodes running on Xen or VMWare to migrate across the physical network and keep all their virtual network connections active. We want nodes be able to be hosted behind NAT/Firewalls without changing any existing network policies (including reconfiguring the firewalls). We also want the network to self organize so that new nodes can be added with no administration of the virtual network. IPOP is our project to meet these goals.
IPOP uses the Brunet P2P library. Each node has a Brunet address which enables all other nodes to route packets to them. Brunet automatically handles NAT traversal (without any addiitonal servers or specially designated third parties) and makes sure all pairs of nodes can communicate, regardless of any firewalls and NATs which may be between them. Secondly, since Brunet addresses are independent of the underlying network addresses (such as TCP/IP or UDP/IP which may be transporting Brunet), the node can move to a different IP address, but keep its same Brunet address. This application layer mobility allows migration of virtual machines without assigning new virtual IP addresses.
This project views P2P primarily as paradigm of self-organization to build maintainence free information systems. We are also interested in using the IPOP/Brunet infrastructure to provide effient scheduling of grid resources and self-reconfiguration of grid resources. A second IPOP paper covering our initial work on migration and reconfiguration will appear in HPDC 06.
Filed under Software by Oscar Boykin | 0 comments
A very large part of research is communicating with others. As the geeky math sort of kid, I wrongly assumed that communication and writing was not something I needed to focus on. Like many researchers, I find doing the work much more enjoyable than communicating it. That’s why I’m happy when I find a new tool that makes communicating more fun. Such a tool is Beamer. If you like markup languages and beautifully typeset presentations (and who doesn’t?), you’ll love using Beamer and Latex.
If you are doing technical publishing and you are not using Latex, obviously that is your first major mistake, which you should remedy. The reasons for using Latex are well known: excellent separation of content and layout, superior output quality, unparalleled equation typesetting, syntax which reminds you of the hours of fun you have enjoyed programming.
Given that you are using Latex to write your documents, you probably also want that same power to produce your presentations, but how to do this? There are several packages for this, for instance Seminar or Prosper. Personally, I have used Prosper. It works okay, but there are some minor annoyances. I have been encouraged to try Beamer, but as I am hardheaded, I never looked closely. That all changed when I saw this presentation. What could produce such beautiful slides?
Naturally I feared that those slides were produced with some non-free software such as Apple’s Keynote software (because clearly powerpoint does not look so nice). Fortunately, I was in luck, they were produced with Beamer. The most striking aspect of the slides, in my opinion, is that the structure of the talk is not hidden from the audience. Of course many presenters give an outline of their talk, but in the case of beamer, the outline and navigation are all produced automatically from the structure of your latex document (sections and subsections). Additionally, this rich navigation is not stictly available in some particular viewer program, instead it is in standard pdf files which may be viewed on almost any semi-modern computer.
And all of this is available to you at the low low price of zero dollars. Of course, one does need to educate oneself on how to produce beamer slides, but anyone using a computer as a serious tool must become accustomed to learning new software periodically. I am planning to make all my future presentations using Beamer.