Client Network Research Articles

Hose-model network virtualization in flexgrid optical networks

Network virtualization, which can flexibly and efficiently embed multiple client networks to a substrate network, is one of the most promising technologies to address the ossification problem of Internet infrastructure. This work focuses on studying the problem of hose-model network virtualization in general topology flexgrid optical networks. A mathematical model for this problem is presented, which integrates hose-model traffic routing and virtual network mapping into a unified integer linear programming (ILP) formulation. Considering the computational difficulty of an ILP algorithm, four heuristic algorithms are presented. They first optimize and allocate link bandwidths to transport hose-model traffic in the virtual network; second, the derived virtual network is mapped in a substrate flexgrid optical network, in which a virtual link is mapped to one or multiple optical connections with or without grooming being allowed. The performance of the mapping success rate and time-average revenue for these algorithms is assessed by extensive simulation.

Knowledge Acquisition and Resource Exploitation of Indigenous Oil and Gas Companies in Niger Delta, Nigeria

This study examined the relationship between knowledge acquisition and resource exploitation of indigenous oil and gas service companies in Niger Delta, Nigeria. Primary data was generated through structured questionnaire. The methodology used was quantitative and a cross-sectional survey method was adopted in the investigation of the study variables. The population of this study consisted of 332 (Three Hundred and Thirty Two) staff members of 26 highly functional/ active operational indigenous oil and gas service companies operating in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. A sample size of 181 was determined using Taro Yamen sample size determination formula. The reliability of the instrument was achieved by the use of the Cronbach Alpha coefficient with all the items scoring above 0.70. The hypotheses were tested using the Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation Coefficient with the aid of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 22.0. The findings of the study revealed that there is a significant relationship between knowledge acquisition and resource exploitation of indigenous oil and gas service companies in Niger Delta, Nigeria. The study recommends that indigenous oil and gas companies should foster relationships with critical stakeholders such as customers and suppliers and develop networks that may bring valuable information to the company, and opportunities to get new ideas from external parties should never be neglected. The managerial implications follow that if a firm enjoys a broad and connected client network it can facilitate the emergence of ambidexterity by stimulating higher levels of trust internally. However, if this firm is heavily dependent on teams to develop ambidextrous abilities in a self-managing and contextual fashion, trust may prove to be detrimental.

MPWiFi: Synergizing MPTCP Based Simultaneous Multipath Access and WiFi Network Performance

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) enables a client to exploit multiple wireless paths simultaneously for improved throughput and mobility resilience. However, MPTCP clients in WiFi networks may easily lower the achievable throughput of the network due to excessively created connections over access points (APs), particularly those that own a weak link quality. This is caused by the fact that the maximal achievable throughput of a WiFi AP can be easily affected by the number of connections accessing it and the link qualities of those connections. In this paper, we first verify such effects through extensive experiments and analysis. We then propose a novel scheme, denoted MPWiFi, to solve this issue while keeping the benefits of MPTCP based multipath access in WiFi networks. Our scheme allows a MPTCP client to obtain resources on its best WiFi path freely and suppresses its subflows in additional paths when congestion happens. As a result, the degrading to the WiFi AP's achievable throughput is greatly prevented with acceptable influences on the benefits of MPTCP clients (i.e., their multipath access is intervened only on congested non-best APs). The fairness to MPTCP clients is also guaranteed through their best WiFi connection. The proposed solution is implemented along with the Linux Kernel MPTCP implementation. Extensive real-world deployment based experiments and NS3 simulation show that the proposed scheme can effectively alleviate the adverse impact of MPTCP based multipath access in WiFi networks while keeping its benefits.

Neighbors as distal support for individuals with serious mental illnesses.

Social networks are regarded as an asset to community integration. While family and friends provide important sources of support, familiar strangers like neighbors can facilitate support through anonymous, but meaningful interactions. Among individuals with serious mental illnesses (SMI), these interactions can help to compensate for increased social isolation and smaller networks of peers. This study explores whether neighbors can play a unique role in decreasing loneliness and bolstering a sense of community for individuals with SMI. Participants in this study were drawn from 2 samples: (a) 232 individuals with SMI receiving services at outpatient community mental health centers throughout the United States; and (b) 300 adults recruited from the Truven Health Analytics' PULSE survey. Independent-samples t tests were performed to compare neighbor relationships between individuals with and without SMI. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine associations between neighbor relationships, sense of community, and loneliness. As hypothesized, individuals with SMI reported weaker relationships with their neighbors, as well as higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of community connectedness compared to individuals without SMI. For participants in both groups, the quality of neighbor relationships was significantly associated with their loneliness and sense of community regardless of how many neighbors they reported feeling close to. Participants with SMI indicated their sense of community and experiences of loneliness were associated with their relationships with their neighbors, no matter the quantity. Providers might capitalize on the utility of neighbors by expanding social and support networks of clients with SMI. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

FELIX: the new detector interface for ATLAS

After the current LHC shutdown (2019-2021), the ATLAS experiment will be required to operate in an increasingly harsh collision environment. To maintain physics performance, the ATLAS experiment will undergo a series of upgrades during the shutdown. A key goal of this upgrade is to improve the capacity and flexibility of the detector readout system. To this end, the FrontEnd Link eXchange (FELIX) system has been developed. FELIX acts as the interface between the data acquisition; detector control and TTC (Timing, Trigger and Control) systems; and new or updated trigger and detector front-end electronics. The system functions as a router between custom serial links from front end ASICs and FPGAs to data collection and processing components via a commodity switched network. The serial links may aggregate many slower links or be a single high bandwidth link. FELIX also forwards the LHC bunchcrossing clock, fixed latency trigger accepts and resets received from the TTC system to front-end electronics. FELIX uses commodity server technology in combination with FPGA-based PCIe I/O cards. FELIX servers run a software routing platform serving data to network clients. Commodity servers, connected to FELIX systems via the same network, run the new multi-threaded Software Readout Driver (SW ROD) infrastructure for event fragment building, buffering and detector-specific processing to facilitate online selection. This presentation will cover the design of FELIX and the results of the installation and commissioning activities for the full system.

Clientelism in small states: how smallness influences patron–client networks in the Caribbean and the Pacific

ABSTRACTStudies of clientelism increasingly focus on the brokers, networks and party machines that make clientelism work in mass democracies. This article highlights the different forms clientelistic politics can take by looking at small, rather than large, democracies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Countries in both regions experience considerable clientelistic politics, but without the same dependence on brokers, networks and party machines. Based on extensive fieldwork in 15 different Caribbean and Pacific small states, resulting in over 200 interviews, we uncover how clientelism is practised in these hitherto neglected cases. We find that the size of these states contributes to the emergence of clientelistic relations based on (1) the ‘face-to-face’ connections and overlapping role relations between citizens and politicians, (2) politicians’ electoral dependence on a very small number of votes, and (3) enhanced opportunities for monitoring and controlling clientelistic exchanges. Smallness is furthermore found to limit, albeit not entirely dispense with, the need for brokers, networks and party machines, and to amplify the power of clients vis-à-vis their patrons, altering the nature and dynamics of clientelism in important ways. In a final section we discuss how clientelism contributes to other dominant trends in small state politics: personalism and executive domination.

Managing Singapore’s residential diversity through Ethnic Integration Policy

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore Singaporeans’ view to a multicultural neighbourhood, specifically, their views on the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP), a housing policy that promotes residential desegregation, and whether this policy has engendered a positive perspective to residential diversity.Design/methodology/approachA grounded theory approach is used to answer the following research questions: how do Singaporeans feel about residential diversity? Does the EIP influence attitudes to residential segregation in Singapore? What do these attitudes mean for governments and policymakers around the world? The research involved focus group discussions with 27 Housing and Development Board real estate agents, in order to tap onto their vast network of clients and better understand the prevailing sentiments on the ground.FindingsThe two major considerations when Singaporeans choose a flat are its price and location. Within the confines of these two factors, however, other considerations like race, nationality and the socio-economic makeup of a neighbourhood will influence their decisions.Social implicationsThese considerations can be condensed into the factors of constrained choice and voluntary segregation. By limiting the impact of voluntary segregation, the EIP can be credited with bridging the racial divide. However, with constrained choice being unaddressed by the policy, the emerging formation of a class divide is an unintended consequence.Originality/valueBecause almost all developed economies are culturally plural, understanding Singapore’s approach to residential desegregation offers insights as to how other countries may learn from the Singapore experience in managing and encouraging multiculturalism, especially since ethnic residential concentration can reduce the formation of strong social relationships.

Clientelism at work? A case study of Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway project

ABSTRACTThrough investigating Kenya’s newly launched Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project, this article explores the impact of clientelism on mega-infrastructure projects. This research traces the initiation and implementation of this Chinese-financed and -constructed railway in Kenya, based on over 100 interviews and triangulated with media and policy reports on SGR. We argue that clientelism had mixed effects on holding project management and the government accountable, conditional on the inclusiveness of the patron–client network. In areas where local people and businesses were included in the patronage system, for instance as constituents or trade union members, the patron–client networks held the project management accountable. The patronage system was conducive to corruption and oligopoly when the system only included elites and excluded citizens/businesses. In most situations we found that China has played a less influential role in the politics around the construction management than is generally assumed. This paper provides new evidence to the debate around clientelism and development in Kenya, and the conditions when patronage systems work for and against accountability. Moreover, this research advances the ‘African agency’ position in Sino-African relations literature by showing not only whether but also how Kenyan actors exercise their agency in interaction with Chinese counterparts.

The Psychiatrist's Role in Implementing an Open Dialogue Model of Care

The Open Dialogue approach is a family‐oriented early intervention model for mental health problems developed in the health district of Western Lapland, Finland. Since the 1990s the psychiatric service system in Western Lapland Health Care District has been organised according to Open Dialogue principles and applied to the treatment of any mental health concerns. The Open Dialogue approach considers the client and their family as active participants rather than as objects of treatment in its planning and implementation with a psychotherapeutic focus. In daily work, the responsibility for the treatment process is shared with the case‐specific team. The model of care requires a dialogical orientation from all staff members, psychiatrists included, to interact with the team and the client's network. In this article I describe the role of the psychiatrist in implementing an Open Dialogue model of care in psychiatric services leaning on my experiences of clinical work in the adolescent psychiatric team in Western Lapland.

How Male Sex Workers and Their Clients Shifted from Reluctance About HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis to Advocating for Its Use: A Longitudinal Mixed Methods Study.

We assessed individual and collective responses to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis ('PrEP') among a network of male sex workers and clients. From 2011 to May 2017, keyword searches on an online discussion forum identified 668 posts that referenced PrEP. We conducted four analyses: (i) discourse analysis identifying reactions to PrEP, (ii) thematic analysis constructing rhetorical strategies, (iii) content analysis comparing discursive positions and rhetorical strategies, and (iv) longitudinal analyses assessing trends over time. Forum posts adopted one of three discursive positions (reluctance, interest, advocacy), drawing upon four non-exclusive strategies (deference to experts and evidence, acknowledging personal and shared experiences, establishing philosophical arguments, engaging in speculation). Posts from sex workers were more likely than clients to be supportive of PrEP (96% vs. 42%; χ2 = 18.46, p < 0.001) while over time this network moved from being predominantly reluctant about PrEP (61% of posts in 2012) to advocating for its use (65% of posts in 2017; Z = 5.01, p < 0.001).

The role of customer orientation in key account managers’ performance: a client network perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate how does key accounts managers’ (KAMs’) customer orientation affect customers’ repurchase intention and how do tie strength and structural holes in KAMs’ client networks moderate these linkages.Design/methodology/approachPaired data of 208 dyadic relationships between KAMs and customers in several Chinese industries are subjected to multiple linear regression analyses.FindingsKAMs’ functional customer orientation can directly increase customers’ repurchase intention, whereas relational customer orientation cannot do that. With strong ties in client networks, KAMs’ relational customer orientation could promote customers’ repurchase intention, whereas when there are many structural holes in a client network, relational customer orientation would constrain customers’ repurchase intention. In addition, structural holes can enhance the effectiveness of functional customer orientation in facilitating customers’ repurchase intention, but tie strength has no impact on this.Originality/valueThis study pays attention to the emerging topic of KAMs’ customer orientation and introduces KAMs’ client networks as a new contextual factor. The findings not only address the outcomes of KAM’s customer orientation but also indicate the vital role client networks play in determining the effectiveness of KAMs’ customer orientation.

ConsenSGX: Scaling Anonymous Communications Networks with Trusted Execution Environments

AbstractAnonymous communications networks enable individuals to maintain their privacy online. The most popular such network is Tor, with about two million daily users; however, Tor is reaching limits of its scalability. One of the main scalability bottlenecks of Tor and similar network designs originates from the requirement of distributing a global view of the servers in the network to all network clients. This requirement is in place to avoidepistemic attacks, in which adversaries who know which parts of the network certain clients do and do not know about can rule in or out those clients from being responsible for particular network traffic.In this work, we introduce a novel solution to this scalability problem by leveraging oblivious RAM constructions and trusted execution environments in order to enable clients to fetch only the parts of the network view they require, without the directory servers learning which parts are being fetched. We compare the performance of our design with the current Tor mechanism and other related works to show one to two orders of magnitude better performance from an end-to-end perspective. We analyse the requirements to actually deploy such a scheme today and conclude that it would only require a small fraction (&lt;2.5%) of the relays to have the required hardware support; moreover, these relays can perform their roles with minimal network bandwidth requirements.

Social movements in Cambodia: why they succeed or fail

In social movements and contentious politics, the factors determining success or failure of a movement remain contested since different scholars tend to argue differently. As a contribution to this debate, this paper draws on two cases representing the relative success and failure of movements targeting the government of Cambodia and foreign joint venture investments to address the communities’ grievances. The paper reveals that, while other factors such as strategies, resource mobilisation, networks and corporate behaviour remain necessary to the debate, the variation in outcome is essentially determined by the patron–client network, a political dynamic employed by the neo-patrimonial rulers to cling onto power.

A Secure Encrypted Protocol for Clients' Handshaking in the Same Network

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt; &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Users in the same network can trace the data being transmitted amongst users and other users to the internet using many available online tools such as packet sniffers and many packets capturing tools, the need to make the data resistible to be read comes obvious. The proposed solution is to encrypt the data using inscription algorithm. In this paper, we propose a solution to protect Network Clients from other Clients in the same network.&lt;/p&gt;

Aboriginal entrepreneurship in the Northern Ob region

he article deals with the history of the development of entrepreneurship in the Northern Ob region among the Nenets, Khanty and Mansi. The author calls it «aboriginal” meaning that it as an economic activity that makes profit from the works directly related to the traditional sectors of the economy of the indigenous North peoples or from sale of products of economy. The article is based on the author’s field materials obtained during many years of field research (2000, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2017 years) in different areas of Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. It was found that two types of aboriginal entrepreneurship are developed in the Northern Ob region: institutional and informal. The first is represented by communities (either tribal or national) of indigenous people and farms. Their organization is socially oriented: communities are primarily a place of work for fishermen and reindeer herders. Community entrepreneurship is supported by the authorities of the district and the Okrug through a system of grants. The income of most community members is low, forcing them to seek additional income opportunities. The structure of communities of indigenous people is based on family ties. Informal aboriginal entrepreneurship spontaneously emerged in the crisis of the 1990-s and still does not give up its position. It provides the main income to families of private reindeer herders and fishermen. As a result of this aboriginal business quite stable client networks are formed that contribute to the social integration of local communities. Such entrepreneurship brings higher incomes, compared with the legalized formal ones, despite the lack of support from the “top” of the authorities. This largely contributes to its stability in the harsh northern conditions, where the market is small. The risk of being deceived is not an obstacle to the development of such business. The boundaries between institutional and informal economies in the North are penetrable and fluid. A private reindeer herder can be a member of the family community, and after delivering the minimum rate of products traditional industries can act as an independent businessman, selling products through his customers or visiting merchants. The same can be true for members of fishing communities. The interweaving of institutional and informal entrepreneurship forms a complex network of social and economic interaction in local communities.

Analisis QoS (Quality of Service) Pada Jaringan Internet (Studi Kasus: Universitas Advent Indonesia)

Konektivitas jaringan internet merupakan hal yang tidak bisa dipisahkan dari kegiatan sehari-hari saat sekarang ini. Kecepatan transfer data yang mumpuni serta kualitas layanan pun menjadi tolak ukur penilaiannya. Universitas Advent Indonesia merupakan salah satu institusi pendidikan yang menyediakan akses internet kepada seluruh penghuni kampus sebagai sarana bagi mahasiswa untuk mencari data dan informasi. Besaran bandwidth yang dialokasikan untuk mahasiswa sebesar 60 Mbps, sedangkan 40 Mbps dialokasikan untuk perkantoran dan perumahan dosen yang juga berada di dalam area kampus. Penelitian ini menggunakan parameter bandwidth, throughput, delay, jitter, dan packet loss menggunakan software Iperf, Ping, dan Command Prompt untuk mengetahui Quality of Service dari koneksi internet di kampus. Adapun penelitian ini bertujuan untuk 1) mengetahui kinerja layanan jaringan internet dan 2) memberikan hasil pengukuran analisis Quality of Service pada Universitas Advent Indonesia. Metodologi penelitian yang digunakan untuk penelitian ini yaitu dengan menggunakan studi literatur dan penelitian langsung di beberapa lokasi strategis. Kesimpulan dari penelitian ini adalah: 1) kinerja jaringan internet pada area NACB, asrama putra dan asrama putri sangat bagus dengan nilai indeks 4 yang didasarkan pada perhitungan parameter QoS yaitu bandwidth, delay, jitter, throughput dan packet loss. 2) kualitas layanan jaringan internet client sudah memenuhi nilai standarisasi sesuai dengan versi TIPHON. Nilai rata-rata kapasitas bandwidth client yang diperoleh dari NACB yaitu kecepatan transfer data sebesar 6,48 Mbps. Nilai rata-rata kapasitas bandwidth client dari asrama putra yaitu 13,2 Mbps. Sedangkan nilai rata-rata kapasitas bandwidth client di asrama putri yaitu 10,1 Mbps.&#x0D; Kata kunci: quality of service, internet, bandwidth, throughput, delay, jitter, packet loss

The evaluation of AdBlock technique implementation for enterprise network environment

This paper presents the evaluation of AdBlock technique implementation for enterprise network environment. This study has presented the impact of web browsing activities where it is the most active traffic where is consumed the highest inbound bandwidth usage in enterprise network environment. We can conclude that DNS AdBlock is the best solution for enterprise network environment in term of blocking advertisement compare to extension adblock. Adblock technique also reduce network data request by comparing front-end solution (browser extension AdBlock) at client web browser and networks level adblock. The parameters such as HTTP request, TCP connection and network bandwidth are being examined to measure the effectiveness of blocking online advertisement. Both techniques perform the reduction of traffics and bandwidth utilization. The result shows that DNS AdBlock is the most effective in blocking online advertisement using the examined parameters. DNS AdBlock can sustain the usage of web browsing activity for enterprise network and also generate substantial saving across several fonts. This study has identified current web browsing trends traffic in enterprise network where it consumed 50 percent in average. This number increased when industries are moving to cloud web-based consumption. However, industries such as educational sector, web browsing traffic is one of connectivity that enterprises network should be investing to support openness and heavy traffic from educational users.

Security Pricing as Enabler of Cyber-Insurance &lt;italic&gt;A First Look at Differentiated Pricing Markets&lt;/italic&gt;

Despite the promising potential of network risk management services (e.g., cyber-insurance) to improve information security, their deployment is relatively scarce, primarily due to such service companies being unable to guarantee profitability. As a novel approach to making cyber-insurance services more viable, we explore a symbiotic relationship between security vendors (e.g., Symantec) capable of price differentiating their clients, and cyber-insurance agencies having possession of information related to the security investments of their clients. The goal of this relationship is to (i) allow security vendors to price differentiate their clients based on security investment information from insurance agencies, (ii) allow the vendors to make more profit than in homogeneous pricing settings, and (iii) subsequently transfer some of the extra profit to cyber-insurance agencies to make insurance services more viable. In this paper, we perform a theoretical study of a market for differentiated security product pricing, primarily with a view to ensuring that security vendors (SVs) make more profit in the differentiated pricing case as compared to the case of non-differentiated pricing. In order to practically realize such pricing markets, we propose novel and <i>computationally efficient</i> consumer differentiated pricing mechanisms for SVs based on (i) the market structure, (ii) the communication network structure of SV consumers captured via a consumer's <i>Bonacich centrality</i> in the network, and (iii) security investment amounts made by SV consumers. We validate our analytical model via extensive simulations conducted on practical SV client network topologies; main results show (through those simulations) that (a) a <i>monopoly</i> SV could improve its profit margin by upto <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\approx$</tex-math></inline-formula> 25 percent (based on the simulation setting) by accounting for clients’ investment information and network locations, whereas in an <i>oligopoly</i> setting, SVs could improve their profit margins by upto <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\approx$</tex-math></inline-formula> 18 percent, and (b) differentiated security pricing mechanisms are fair among SV consumers with respect to the total investment made by a consumer. To the best of knowledge, the proposed differentiated pricing framework is the first of its kind in the security products domain, and is generally applicable to usecases beyond the one investigated in this work.

Collaboration for children with complex needs: What adolescents, parents, and practitioners tell us.

Children with complex needs require coordinated care and collaboration between the different sectors in child mental health care. These needs and service issues are individually defined and therefore challenging for the mental health system to respond effectively. Different barriers at the organizational and policy level to initiate and maintain collaborative relationships are reported. This research explores the reality of working with a protocol for collaboration (Client Network Consultation (CNC)) by questioning the experiences of adolescents, parents, and practitioners. A qualitative design with semistructured individual interviews is used, guided by the questions from the Wraparound Fidelity Index. Useful and practical insights on effective collaboration result from the in-depth analysis of the interviews. A neutral chairperson, the presence of specialist practitioners, visualization, participation of adolescents, and parents are among the effective elements reported. Some challenges remain; the principle of equality, monitoring the action points resulting from the collaboration and effective crisis management seem very difficult to fully achieve in practice. These results present experiences from adolescents, parents, and practitioners to support an effective collaborative process for working together with children and families with complex needs.

A machine learning based intrusion detection scheme for data fusion in mobile clouds involving heterogeneous client networks

The combination of traditional cloud computing and mobile computing leads to the novel paradigm of mobile cloud computing. Due to the mobility of network nodes in mobile cloud computing, security has been a challenging problem of paramount importance. When a mobile cloud involves heterogeneous client networks, such as Wireless Sensor Networks and Vehicular Networks, the security problem becomes more challenging because the client networks often have different security requirements in terms of computational complexity, power consumption, and security levels. To securely collect and fuse the data from heterogeneous client networks in complex systems of this kind, novel security schemes need to be devised. Intrusion detection is one of the key security functions in mobile clouds involving heterogeneous client networks. A variety of different rule-based intrusion detection methods could be employed in this type of systems. However, the existing intrusion detection schemes lead to high computation complexity or require frequent rule updates, which seriously harms their effectiveness. In this paper, we propose a machine learning based intrusion detection scheme for mobile clouds involving heterogeneous client networks. The proposed scheme does not require rule updates and its complexity can be customized to suit the requirements of the client networks. Technically, the proposed scheme includes two steps: multi-layer traffic screening and decision-based Virtual Machine (VM) selection. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed scheme is highly effective in terms of intrusion detection.