stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

linux.conf.au domain name

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:29:00 PST

It looks to me like the linux.conf.au domain name is working again. I wonder what effect that will have on registrations? It would be interesting to see a graph of registration behavior over time...

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How far is Wrest Point from the LCA 2009 venue?

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:43:00 PST

It looks to me like Wrest Point is a bit of a hike from the conference venue:

View Larger Map

So, does anyone know how long that would take to walk? How are other people planning on getting around while in Hobart?

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SIGCOMM 2008

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:48:00 PST

SIGCOMM 2008 had about 600 people attend, and felt a little like one of the early AUUG conferences. One of the things I am learning as I get older is that I am having increasing trouble sitting in hard hotel meeting chairs all day -- my back just wont let me. Surprisingly, I find most university lecture theatre seats more comfortable.

Below is a summary of the talks I thought are particularly good.

Don Towsley keynote

Don Towsley is the winner of the 2008 ACM SIGCOMM Award. His talk wasn't really a paper, he instead spoke about the need for models when performing Internet measurement research. If you don't have a theoretical model, then you don't have a way of verifying that your samples from the Internet are valid or not. This is an interesting point I hadn't considered, and which affects my own research work. My new problem is I'm not really sure how to produce models which have meaning to my current SMTP survey project. Additionally, Don asserts that PhD candidates shouldn't attempt to implement new applications. Instead they should work on enabling new applications. This observation is based on many years of supervising PhD candidates and their relative success.

A Case for Adapting Channel Width in Wireless Networks

Microsoft Research -- WiFi cards use a fixed bandwidth of 20 MHz. Using this quite large bandwidth for idle connections consumes a lot of power. This research proposes varying the size of the channel depending on what needs to be transferred -- 5MHz for an idle connection, up to 40 MHz for an active transfer. This does require a protocol for both sides of the connection to agree on a channel width. Sample implementation using the Zune peer to peer song sharing protocol.

Spamming Botnets: Signatures and Characteristics

Microsoft Research -- using URL extraction and a regular expression generator to find spam emails from botnets. Extract URLs from emails, track by domain over time and note bursty arrivals of such URLs. Send the bursty ones to a regular expression generator, which is then generalized to exclude victim specific IDs as well as domains, and then filter based on that. An interesting talk.

To Filter or to Authorize: Network-Layer DoS Defense Against Multimillion-node Botnets

University of California, Irvine -- DoS flooding attacks are a serious problem. The number of sources can be huge, as well as the packet count and bandwidth consumed. There are currently two schools of though on DoS protections -- filtering (anyone can send, and then filters are added when an attack occurs), and capability based systems (senders request permission before sending, and then use proof of that permission in each packet they send). This paper compares the two approaches.

BitTorrent is an Auction: Analyzing and Improving BitTorrent�s Incentives

University of Maryland -- the amount of research that is being conducted into peer to peer protocols, especially BitTorrent, is really interesting. This paper presented an alternative algorithm for how to select which blocks to offer for upload in return for the highest possible download rates. Specifically, it reframes BitTorrent as an auction system, in which leechers should be bidding the lowest possible in order to be selected as a download partner. This is implemented in BitTyrant (http://bittyrant.cs.washington.edu/). The rest of the talk focuses on strategies for gaming BitTorrent based on this observation. Very interesting. Implemented in a client at http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/propshare/.

Network Discovery from Passive Measurements

UW Madison -- the traditional approach to mapping the Internet is to use active measurements. This paper proposes a solution using passive measurements. The underlying problem is that you have data in the form (source IP, destination IP, number of hops) and from that you need to determine which hops are in common for any given pair of readings.

Taming the Torrent: A Practical Approach to Reducing Cross-ISP Traffic in Peer-to-Peer Systems

Northwestern University -- this paper proposes piggy backing on CDN networks in order to determine which peer to peer clients are nearly to a p2p leecher. The network routing overlays produced by these networks can be used to select peers which can provide downloads more efficiently.

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Kernel report video

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:55:00 PST

The video of the kernel report is cool. It only has left hand audio though. I wish people would ask questions using the microphone though.

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LCA 2007 Video: CFQ IO

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 13:44:00 PST

I'm watching the CFQ IO Scheduler talk now on MythTV using my MythTV program downloader thingie. Beware the very large audio volume jump about three minutes in. Just saying.

Oh, and the "pan across blank blackboards for a bit at a funny angle" thing at around 6 minutes is pretty amusing too.

Update: now with working URL for the downloader thingie!

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Wrong timezone batman!

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:39:00 PST

Heh, the LCA2007 planet is running in a timezone offset from Sydney time by one hour. I wonder how many people that will confuse? Oh, and holy crap does it aggregate quickly.

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MySQL User Camp 2006

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 19:46:00 PST

I "sort of attended" the MySQL user's camp on the weekend. More on that later. This blog post from the guy who wrote WordPress makes me think I should have made it to more of the sessions. Oh well.

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Hypothetically speaking

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 01:01:00 PST

Hypothetically speaking, if you needed to write a four hour long presentation (probably around 200 slides), shared with another speaker, and wanted to keep the style consistent and conforming with your approved corporate style, how would you do it?

I'm thinking of some sort of intermediate language, which can then be used to generate slides from a template? Is there anything like that out there?

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AUUG 2006

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 21:26:00 PST

There seems to have been some controversy over the future of AUUG, mainly caused by delays in organising some aspects of the conference, and Greg Lehey sending some email asking if it is time to wind up AUUG. I thought I should just post and say that I am speaking at AUUG 2006 and certainly intend to attend.

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Nice write up of sci foo 06

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 12:56:00 PST

Forbes has a nice write up of Sci Foo 06:

Many of the SciFoo “campers” were the people that other conferences are built around: Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) and inventor of Berkeley UNIX; Danny Hillis, co-founder of Thinking Machines, one of the first massively parallel supercomputers; Esther Dyson, long-time technology pundit and now venture capitalist; the Google duo, Larry and Sergey, along with their new compatriot, Larry Brilliant, who helped squash smallpox and is now running the billion-dollar Google Foundation; and Donald Hopkins, who directs health programs at the Carter Center and is leading the fight to eradicate guinea worm disease.

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I don't think of myself as photogenic

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 18:06:00 PST

This is the least worst photo of me take recently. A free sample:

Mikal at SciFoo

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SciFoo 2006

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 13:56:00 PST

The first Science Foo camp is being hosted by O'Reilly, Nature Magazine, and Google. I'm going and I am excited like other people.

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