Multicast Routing Algorithms and Protocols

Introduction
In the age of multimedia and high-speed networks, multicast is one of the mechanisms by which the power of the Internet can be further harnessed in an efficient manner. It has been increasingly used by various continuous media applications such as teleconferencing, distance learning, and voice & video transmission.

Compared with unicast and broadcast, multicast can save network bandwidth and make transmission more efficient. In this seminars, we will review the history of the multicast, present you several existing multicast routing algorithms and analysis the features of the existing Multicast routing protocols that have been proposed for best effort multicast.
Some of the issues and open problems related to multicast implementation and deployment are discussed as well.
An Off-Line Unconstrained Handwriting Recognition System
An Off-Line Unconstrained Handwriting Recognition System

Introduction
The recognition of off-line unconstrained handwriting is one of the most challenging and interesting problems in Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Although many research have been done in this field for about 40 years, a number of problems are still open to us. In this seminars, an integrated recognition system for off-line unconstrained handwriting is proposed.
The proposed system consists of seven main modules:

skew angle correction, printed-handwritten text discrimination, line segmentation, slant correction, word segmentation, character segmentation, and character recognition. Except line segmentation and word segmentation resulting from the known algorithms, all other else are new algorithms. Experimental results based on different handwriting databases show the proposed system has different performances, which are from 65.6% to 100%. Finally, the future work in this field will be discussed.
Fault-Tolerant Broadcasting and Gossiping in Communication Networks
Fault-Tolerant Broadcasting and Gossiping in Communication Networks

Introduction
Broadcasting and gossiping are fundamental tasks in network communication. As communication networks grow in size, they become increasingly vulnerable to component failures. Some links and/or nodes of the network may fail. It becomes important to design communication algorithms in such a way that the desired communication task be accomplished efficiently in spite of these faults, usually without knowing their location ahead of time.

In this seminars, we can review the history of Fault-Tolerant broadcasting and gossiping research, and present you several existing Fault-Tolerant algorithms. Here, we consider two alternative assumptions concerning fault distribution.

The bounded fault model assumes an upper bound on the number of faults and their worst-case location, while in the probabilistic model faults are supposed random and independent. Faults are assumed either of crash type (a faulty page link or node does not transmit) or of Byzantine type (a faulty page link or node may corrupt transmitted messages).
Parallel OLAP for Relational Database Environments
Parallel OLAP for Relational Database Environments

Introduction
On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP) has become a fundamental component of contemporary decision support systems and represents a means by which knowledge workers can efficiently analyze vast amounts of organizational data. Within the OLAP context, one of the more interesting recent themes has been the computation and manipulation of the data cube, a relational model that can be used to represent summarized multi-dimensional views of massive data warehousing archives.

Over the past five or six years a number of efficient sequential algorithms for data cube construction have been presented. Given the size of the underlying data sets, however, it is perhaps surprising that relatively little effort has been expended on the design of load balanced, communication efficient algorithms for the parallelization of the data cube.

Our current research investigates opportunities for high performance data cube computation, with a particular emphasis upon contemporary parallel architectures and relational database environments. In this talk, new parallel algorithms for the computation of both the complete data cube and the partial data cube will be presented. In addition, a model for distributed multi-dimensional indexing is proposed. The associated parallel query engine not only supports efficient range queries, but query resolution on non-materialized views and views containing hierarchical attributes as well. Key design features of the physical architecture will also be discussed.
Data Sharing and Querying for Peer-to-Peer Data Management Systems
Data Sharing and Querying for Peer-to-Peer Data Management Systems

Introduction
Peer-to-peer computing consists of an open-ended network of distributed computational peers, where each peer shares data and services with a set of other peers, called its acquaintances. The peer-to-peer paradigm was initially popularized by file-sharing systems such as Napster and Gnutella, but its basic ideas and principles have now found their way into more critical and complex data-sharing applications like those for electronic medical records and scientific data. In such environments, data sharing poses new challenges mainly due to the lack of centralized control, the transient nature of inter-peer connections, and the limited, ever-changing cooperation among the peers.

In the seminar we can present new solutions for data sharing and querying in a peer-to-peer data management system, that is, a peer-to-peer system where each peer manages its own database. The solutions are motivated by considering data sharing requirements of independent biological data sources. To support data sharing in such a setting, I propose the use of mapping tables containing pairs of corresponding data values that reside in different peers.

I illustrate how automated tools can help manage the tables by checking their consistency and by inferring new tables from existing ones. To support structured querying, I propose a framework in which local user queries are translated, through mapping tables, to a set of queries over the acquainted peers. Finally, I present optimization techniques that enable an efficient rewriting even over large mapping tables. The proposed mechanisms have been implemented and evaluated experimentally and constitute the foundation of a prototype implementation of an architecture for peer-to-peer data management
Cyberterrorism
Cyberterrorism

Introduction
Cyberterrorism is a new terrorist tactic that makes use of information systems or digital technology, especially the Internet, as either an instrument or a target. As the Internet becomes more a way of life with us,it is becoming easier for its users to become targets of the cyberterrorists. The number of areas in which cyberterrorists could strike is frightening, to say the least.

The difference between the conventional approaches of terrorism and new methods is primarily that it is possible to affect a large multitude of people with minimum resources on the terrorist's side, with no danger to him at all. We also glimpse into the reasons that caused terrorists to look towards the Web, and why the Internet is such an attractive alternative to them.

The growth of Information Technology has led to the development of this dangerous web of terror, for cyberterrorists could wreak maximum havoc within a small time span. Various situations that can be viewed as acts of cyberterrorism have also been covered. Banks are the most likely places to receive threats, but it cannot be said that any establishment is beyond attack. Tips by which we can protect ourselves from cyberterrorism have also been covered which can reduce problems created by the cyberterrorist.

We, as the Information Technology people of tomorrow need to study and understand the weaknesses of existing systems, and figure out ways of ensuring the world's safety from cyberterrorists. A number of issues here are ethical, in the sense that computing technology is now available to the whole world, but if this gift is used wrongly, the consequences could be disastrous.

It is important that we understand and mitigate cyberterrorism for the benefit of society, try to curtail its growth, so that we can heal the present, and live the future¦
Adding Intelligence to Internet
Adding Intelligence to Internet

Introduction
Satellites have been used for years to provide communication network links. Historically, the use of satellites in the Internet can be divided into two generations. In the first generation, satellites were simply used to provide commodity links (e.g., T1) between countries. Internet Protocol (IP) routers were attached to the page link endpoints to use the links as single-hop alternatives to multiple terrestrial hops. Two characteristics marked these first-generation systems: they had limited bandwidth, and they had large latencies that were due to the propagation delay to the high orbit position of a geosynchronous satellite.

In the second generation of systems now appearing, intelligence is added at the satellite page link endpoints to overcome these characteristics. This intelligence is used as the basis for a system for providing Internet access engineered using a collection or fleet of satellites, rather than operating single satellite channels in isolation. Examples of intelligent control of a fleet include monitoring which documents are delivered over the system to make decisions adaptively on how to schedule satellite time; dynamically creating multicast groups based on monitored data to conserve satellite bandwidth; caching documents at all satellite channel endpoints; and anticipating user demands to hide latency.

This paper examines several key questions arising in the design of a satellite-based system:

¢ Can international Internet access using a geosynchronous satellite be competitive with today's terrestrial networks?
¢ What elements constitute an "intelligent control" for a satellite-based Internet link?
¢ What are the design issues that are critical to the efficient use of satellite channels?
The paper is organized as follows. The next section, Section 2, examines the above questions in enumerating principles for second-generation satellite delivery systems. Section 3 presents a case study of the Internet Delivery System (IDS), which is currently undergoing worldwide field trials.
Self-Managing Computing

Introduction
The high-tech industry has spent decades creating computer systems with ever mounting degrees of complexity to solve a wide variety of business problems. Ironically, complexity itself has become part of the problem. As networks and distributed systems grow and change, they can become increasingly hampered by system deployment failures, hardware and software issues, not to mention human error. Such scenarios in turn require further human intervention to enhance the performance and capacity of IT components. This drives up the overall IT costs-even though technology component costs continue to decline. As a result, many IT professionals seek ways to improve their return on investment in their IT infrastructure, by reducing the total cost of ownership of their environments while improving the quality of service for users.

Self managing computing helps address the complexity issues by using technology to manage technology. The idea is not new many of the major players in the industry have developed and delivered products based on this concept. Self managing computing is also known as autonomic computing.

The term autonomic is derived from human biology. The autonomic nervous system monitors your heartbeat, checks your blood sugar level and keeps your body temperature close to 98.6°F, without any conscious effort on your part. In much the same way, self managing computing components anticipate computer system needs and resolve problems with minimal human intervention.

Self managing computing systems have the ability to manage themselves and dynamically adapt to change in accordance with business policies and objectives. Self-managing systems can perform management activities based on situations they observe or sense in the IT environment. Rather than IT professionals initiating management activities, the system observes something about itself and acts accordingly. This allows the IT professional to focus on high-value tasks while the technology manages the more mundane operations. Self managing computing can result in a significant improvement in system management efficiency, when the disparate technologies that manage the environment work together to deliver performance results system wide.

However, complete autonomic systems do not yet exist. This is not a proprietary solution. It's a radical change in the way businesses, academia, and even the government design, develop, manage and maintain computer systems. Self managing computing calls for a whole new area of study and a whole new way of conducting business.

Self managing computing is the self-management of e-business infrastructure, balancing what is managed by the IT professional and what is managed by the system. It is the evolution of e-business.

What is self managing computing?

Self managing computing is about freeing IT professionals to focus on high-value tasks by making technology work smarter. This means letting computing systems and infrastructure take care of managing themselves. Ultimately, it is writing business policies and goals and letting the infrastructure configure, heal and optimize itself according to those policies while protecting itself from malicious activities. Self managing computing systems have the ability to manage themselves and dynamically adapt to change in accordance with business policies and objectives.
Unified Modeling Language (UML)
Unified Modeling Language (UML)

Introduction
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standard language for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of software systems, as well as for business modeling and other non-software systems. The UML represents a collection of best engineering practices that have proven successful in the modeling of large and complex systems. The UML is a very important part of developing object oriented software and the software development process. The UML uses mostly graphical notations to express the design of software projects. Using the UML helps project teams communicate, explore potential designs, and validate the architectural design of the software.

Large enterprise applications - the ones that execute core business applications, and keep a company going - must be more than just a bunch of code modules. They must be structured in a way that enables scalability, security, and robust execution under stressful conditions, and their structure - frequently referred to as their architecture - must be defined clearly enough that maintenance programmers can (quickly!) find and fix a bug that shows up long after the original authors have moved on to other projects. That is, these programs must be designed to work perfectly in many areas, and business functionality is not the only one (although it certainly is the essential core). Of course a well-designed architecture benefits any program, and not just the largest ones as we've singled out here.

We mentioned large applications first because structure is a way of dealing with complexity, so the benefits of structure (and of modeling and design, as we'll demonstrate) compound as application size grows large. Another benefit of structure is that it enables code reuse: Design time is the easiest time to structure an application as a collection of self-contained modules or components. Eventually, enterprises build up a library of models of components, each one representing an implementation stored in a library of code modules.

Modeling

Modeling is the designing of software applications before coding. Modeling is an Essential Part of large software projects, and helpful to medium and even small projects as well. A model plays the analogous role in software development that blueprints and other plans (site maps, elevations, physical models) play in the building of a skyscraper. Using a model, those responsible for a software development project's success can assure themselves that business functionality is complete and correct, end-user needs are met, and program design supports requirements for scalability, robustness, security, extendibility, and other characteristics, before implementation in code renders changes difficult and expensive to make.

Surveys show that large software projects have a huge probability of failure - in fact, it's more likely that a large software application will fail to meet all of its requirements on time and on budget than that it will succeed. If you're running one of these projects, you need to do all you can to increase the odds for success, and modeling is the only way to visualize your design and check it against requirements before your crew starts to code.

Raising the Level of Abstraction:

Models help us by letting us work at a higher level of abstraction. A model may do this by hiding or masking details, bringing out the big picture, or by focusing on different aspects of the prototype. In UML 2.0, you can zoom out from a detailed view of an application to the environment where it executes, visualizing connections to other applications or, zoomed even further, to other sites. Alternatively, you can focus on different aspects of the application, such as the business process that it automates, or a business rules view. The new ability to nest model elements, added in UML 2.0, supports this concept directly.
Socket Programming
Socket Programming

Introduction
Sockets are interfaces that can "plug into" each other over a network. Once so "plugged in", the programs so connected communicate. A "server" program is exposed via a socket connected to a certain /etc/services port number. A "client" program can then connect its own socket to the server's socket, at which time the client program's writes to the socket are read as stdin to the server program, and stdout from the server program are read from the client's socket reads.

Before a user process can perform I/O operations, it calls Open to specify and obtain permissions for the file or device to be used. Once an object has been opened, the user process makes one or more calls to Read or Write data. Read reads data from the object and transfers it to the user process, while Write transfers data from the user process to the object. After all transfer operations are complete, the user process calls Close to inform the operating system that it has finished using that object. When facilities for InterProcess Communication (IPC) and networking were added, the idea was to make the interface to IPC similar to that of file I/O. In Unix, a process has a set of I/O descriptors that one reads from and writes to. These descriptors may refer to files, devices, or communication channels (sockets). The lifetime of a descriptor is made up of three phases: creation (open socket), reading and writing (receive and send to socket), and destruction (close socket).

History

Sockets are used nearly everywhere, but are one of the most severely misunderstood technologies around. This is a 10,000 foot overview of sockets. It's not really a tutorial - you'll still have work to do in getting things working. It doesn't cover the fine points (and there are a lot of them), but I hope it will give you enough background to begin using them decently.I'm only going to talk about INET sockets, but they account for at least 99% of the sockets in use. And I'll only talk about STREAM sockets - unless you really know what you're doing (in which case this HOWTO isn't for you!), you'll get better behavior and performance from a STREAM socket than anything else. I will try to clear up the mystery of what a socket is, as well as some hints on how to work with blocking and non-blocking sockets. But I'll start by talking about blocking sockets. You'll need to know how they work before dealing with non-blocking sockets.

Part of the trouble with understanding these things is that "socket" can mean a number of subtly different things, depending on context. So first, let's make a distinction between a "client" socket - an endpoint of a conversation, and a "server" socket, which is more like a switchboard operator. The client application (your browser, for example) uses "client" sockets exclusively; the web server it's talking to uses both "server" sockets and "client" sockets.

Of the various forms of IPC (Inter Process Communication), sockets are by far the most popular. On any given platform, there are likely to be other forms of IPC that are faster, but for cross-platform communication, sockets are about the only game in town. They were invented in Berkeley as part of the BSD flavor of Unix. They spread like wildfire with the Internet. With good reason -- the combination of sockets with INET makes talking to arbitrary machines around the world unbelievably easy (at least compared to other schemes).
SAM
SAM

Introduction
Scientist all over routinely generate large volumes of data from both computational and laboratory experiments. Such data, which are irreproducible and expensive to regenerate, must be safely archived for future reference and research. The archived data form and the point at which users archive it are matters of individual preference. Usually scientists store data using multiple platforms. Further, not only do scientists expect their data to stay in the archive despite personnel changes, they expect those responsible for the archive to deal with the storage technology changes without those changes affecting either the scientist or their work.

Essentially, we require a data-intensive computing environment that works seamlessly across scientific disciplines. Ideally that environment should provide all of the file system features. Research indicates that supporting this type of massive data management requires some form of Meta -data to catalog and organize the data. Problems Identified

National Sciences Digital Library has implemented metadata previously and has find it necessary to restrict metadata to a specific format. The Scientific Archive Management System, a metadata based archive for scientific data has provided flexible archival storage for very large databases. SAM uses metadata to organize and manage the data without imposing predefined metadata formats on scientist. SAM's ability to handle different data and metadata types provides a key difference between it and many other archives.

Restrictions imposed by SAM:

It can readily accommodate any type of data file regardless of format, content or domain. The system makes no assumptions about data format, the platform on which the user generated the file, the file's content, or even the metadata's content. SAM requires only that the user have data files to store and will allow the storage of some metadata about each data file. Working at the metadata level also avoids unnecessary data retrieval from the archive, which can be time- consuming depending on the files size, network connectivity or archive storage medium. SAM software hides system complexity while making it easy to add functionality and augment storage capacity as demand increases.

About SAM

SAM came into existence in 1995 by EMSL - Environmental Molecular Science laboratory. In 2002, EMSL migrated the original two-server hierarchical storage management system to an incrementally extensible collection of linux - based disk firms. The metadata- centric architecture and the original decision to present the archive to users as a single large file system made the hardware migration a relation file system made the hardware migration a relatively painless process.
VoCable
VoCable

Introduction
Voice (and fax) service over cable networks is known as cable-based Internet Protocol (IP) telephony. Cable based IP telephony holds the promise of simplified and consolidated communication services provided by a single carrier at a lower cost than consumers currently to pay to separate Internet, television and telephony service providers. Cable operators have already worked through the technical challenges of providing Internet service and optimizing the existing bandwidth in their cable plants to deliver high speed Internet access. Now, cable operators have turned their efforts to the delivery of integrated Internet and voice service using that same cable spectrum.

Cable based IP telephony falls under the broad umbrella of voice over IP (VoIP), meaning that many of the challenges that telecom carriers facing cable operators are the same challenges that telecom carriers face as they work to deliver voice over ATM (VoATM) and frame-relay networks. However, ATM and frame-relay services are targeted primarily at the enterprise, a decision driven by economics and the need for service providers to recoup their initial investments in a reasonable amount of time. Cable, on the other hand, is targeted primarily at home. Unlike most businesses, the overwhelming majority of homes in the United States is passed by cable, reducing the required up-front infrastructure investment significantly.

Cable is not without competition in the consumer market, for digital subscriber line (xDSL) has emerged as the leading alternative to broadband cable. However, cable operators are well positioned to capitalize on the convergence trend if they are able to overcome the remaining technical hurdles and deliver telephony service that is comparable to the public switched telephone system. In the case of cable TV, each television signal is given a 6-megahertz (MHz, millions of cycles per second) channel on the cable. The coaxial cable used to carry cable television can carry hundreds of megahertz of signals -- all the channels we could want to watch and more.

In a cable TV system, signals from the various channels are each given a 6-MHz slice of the cable's available bandwidth and then sent down the cable to your house. In some systems, coaxial cable is the only medium used for distributing signals. In other systems, fibre-optic cable goes from the cable company to different neighborhoods or areas. Then the fiber is terminated and the signals move onto coaxial cable for distribution to individual houses.

When a cable company offers Internet access over the cable, Internet information can use the same cables because the cable modem system puts downstream data -- data sent from the Internet to an individual computer -- into a 6-MHz channel. On the cable, the data looks just like a TV channel. So Internet downstream data takes up the same amount of cable space as any single channel of programming. Upstream data -- information sent from an individual back to the Internet -- requires even less of the cable's bandwidth, just 2 MHz, since the assumption is that most people download far more information than they upload.

Putting both upstream and downstream data on the cable television system requires two types of equipment: a cable modem on the customer end and a cable modem termination system (CMTS) at the cable provider's end. Between these two types of equipment, all the computer networking, security and management of Internet access over cable television is put into place.
Touch Screens
Touch Screens

Introduction
A type of display screen that has a touch-sensitive transparent panel covering the screen. Instead of using a pointing device such as a mouse or light pen, you can use your finger to point directly to objects on the screen. Although touch screens provide a natural interface for computer novices, they are unsatisfactory for most applications because the finger is such a relatively large object. It is impossible to point accurately to small areas of the screen. In addition, most users find touch screens tiring to the arms after long use.

Touch-screens are typically found on larger displays, in phones with integrated PDA features. Most are designed to work with either your finger or a special stylus. Tapping a specific point on the display will activate the virtual button or feature displayed at that location on the display.Some phones with this feature can also recognize handwriting written on the screen using a stylus, as a way to quickly input lengthy or complex information

A touchscreen is an input device that allows users to operate a PC by simply touching the display screen. Touch input is suitable for a wide variety of computing applications. A touchscreen can be used with most PC systems as easily as other input devices such as track balls or touch pads. Browse the links below to learn more about touch input technology and how it can work for you.

History Of Touch Screen Technology

A touch screen is a special type of visual display unit with a screen which is sensitive to pressure or touching. The screen can detect the position of the point of touch. The design of touch screens is best for inputting simple choices and the choices are programmable. The device is very user-friendly since it 'talks' with the user when the user is picking up choices on the screen. Touch technology turns a CRT, flat panel display or flat surface into a dynamic data entry device that replaces both the keyboard and mouse. In addition to eliminating these separate data entry devices, touch offers an "intuitive" interface. In public kiosks, for example, users receive no more instruction than 'touch your selection.

Specific areas of the screen are defined as "buttons" that the operator selects simply by touching them. One significant advantage to touch screen applications is that each screen can be customized to reflect only the valid options for each phase of an operation, greatly reducing the frustration of hunting for the right key or function.

Pen-based systems, such as the Palm Pilot® and signature capture systems, also use touch technology but are not included in this article. The essential difference is that the pressure levels are set higher for pen-based systems than for touch.Touch screens come in a wide range of options, from full color VGA and SVGA monitors designed for highly graphic Windows® or Macintosh® applications to small monochrome displays designed for keypad replacement and enhancement.

Specific figures on the growth of touch screen technology are hard to come by, but a 1995 study last year by Venture Development Corporation predicted overall growth of 17%, with at least 10% in the industrial sector.Other vendors agree that touch screen technology is becoming more popular because of its ease-of-use, proven reliability, expanded functionality, and decreasing cost.

A touch screen sensor is a clear glass panel with a touch responsive surface. The touch sensor/panel is placed over a display screen so that the responsive area of the panel covers the viewable area of the video screen. There are several different touch sensor technologies on the market today, each using a different method to detect touch input. The sensor generally has an electrical current or signal going through it and touching the screen causes a voltage or signal change. This voltage change is used to determine the location of the touch to the screen.
Tempest and Echelon
Tempest and Echelon

Introduction
The notion of spying is a very sensitive topic after the September 11 attack of Terrorists in New York. In the novel 1984, George Orwell foretold a future where individuals had no expectation of privacy because the state monopolized the technology of spying. Now the National security Agency Of USA developed a secret project to spy on people for keep tracing their messages to make technology enabled interception to find out the terrorist activities across the globe, named as Echelon. Leaving the technology ahead of the any traditional method of interception .

The secret project Developed by NSA (National Security Agency of USA) and its allies is tracing every single transmission even a single of keyboard. The allies of USA in this project are UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Echelon is developed with the highest computing power of computers connected through the satellites all over the world. In this project the NSA left the wonderful method of Tempest and Carnivores behind.

Echelon is the technology for sniffing through the messages sent over a network or any transmission media, even it is wireless messages. Tempest is the technology for intercepting the electromagnetic waves over the air. It simply sniffs through the electromagnetic waves propagated from any devices, even it is from the monitor of a computer screen. Tempest can capture the signals through the walls of computer screens and keystrokes of key board even the computer is not connected to a network. Thus the traditional way of hacking has a little advantage in spying.

For the common people it is so hard to believe that their monitor can be reproduced from anywhere in one kilometer range without any transmission media in between the equipment and their computer. So we have to believe the technology enabled us to reproduce anything from a monitor of computer to the Hard Disks including the Memory (RAM) of a distant computer without any physical or visual contact. It is done with the Electromagnetic waves propagated from that device.

The main theory behind the Tempest(Transient Electromagnetic Pulse Emanation Standard.) is that any electronic or electrical devices emit Electromagnetic radiations of specific key when it is operated. For example the picture tube of computer monitor emits radiations when it is scanned up on vertical of horizontal range beyond the screen. It will not cause any harm to a human and it is very small. But it has a specific frequency range. You can reproduce that electromagnetic waves by tracing with the powerful equipments and the powerful filtering methods to correct the errors while transmission from the equipment. Actually this electromagnetic waves are not necessary for a human being because it not coming from a transmitter, but we have a receiver to trace the waves.

For the project named as Echelon the NSA is using supercomputers for sniffing through the packets and any messages send as the electromagnetic waves. They are using the advantage of Distributed computing for this. Firstly they will intercept the messages by the technology named as the Tempest and also with the Carnivore. Every packet is sniffed for spying for the USA's NSA for security reasons