Institute for Systems Research Technical Reports

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/4376

This archive contains a collection of reports generated by the faculty and students of the Institute for Systems Research (ISR), a permanent, interdisciplinary research unit in the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. ISR-based projects are conducted through partnerships with industry and government, bringing together faculty and students from multiple academic departments and colleges across the university.

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Author: search.filters.author.Karne, Ramesh K.Subject: search.filters.subject.Systems Integration

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    Object Oriented Hybrid Network Simulation
    (1994) Baras, John S.; Atallah, George C.; Karne, Ramesh K.; Murad, A.; Jang, Kap D.; ISR; CSHCN
    As the complexity and diversity of networks have grown, simulation has proved an important tool in their design, analysis, testing and performance estimation of networks. Hybrid networks involve a variety of network elements - both mobile (e.g., satellites, mobile radio) and fixed nodes (e.g., switches, hubs, network gateways) linked via varied broadcast, multicast and point-to-point communication channels. Because of their complex nature, design and evaluation of hybrid networks is a particularly complicated task. Major requirements of a hybrid network simulation tool are (i) Flexibility and Adaptability - to accommodate all kinds of hybrid networks and protocols, (ii) Advanced Network Visualization Techniques - to clearly visualize complex communication network systems, (iii) Data Management - to organize and analyze the vast quantities of data generated in a typical simulation run, and (iv) Distributed Implementation - to fully utilize available computing resources to speed up simulation. This paper describes the design and functional description of an Object-Oriented Hybrid Network Simulation tool. Its object oriented design and implementation (in C++) allows flexibility through incorporation of new, user specified network elements, protocols and functional blocks. Advanced visualization techniques are combined with the graphical user interface to allow better visualization of complex network structures. A sophisticated geographical database is also incorporated to aid terrestrial mobile, and satellite network systems. To handle and effectively analyze the vast quantities of data generated, an object-oriented database is incorporated into the simulation. In addition to network simulation, the tool is also designed to serve other needs. An interface is provided to allow the user to run real network applications over the simulated network, allowing network application designers to judge the performance of their applications over various network configurations. Incorporation of a database allows computation of network performance dynamically. A network management tool receiving network performance data both from the actual and the simulated network may use the simulation data to make a long term prediction of the actual network behavior to perform long-term network management.
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    Next Generation Network Management Technology
    (1994) Atallah, George C.; Ball, Michael O.; Baras, John S.; Goli, Shravan K.; Karne, Ramesh K.; Kelley, Stephen; Kumar, Harsha P.; Plaisant, Catherine; Roussopoulos, Nick; Shneiderman, Ben; Srinivasarao, Mulugu; Stathatos, Kostas; Teittinen, Marko; Whitefield, David; ISR; CSHCN
    Today's telecommunications networks are becoming increasingly large, complex, mission critical and heterogeneous in several dimensions. For example, the underlying physical transmission facilities of a given network may be ﲭixed media (copper, fiber- optic, radio, and satellite); the sub networks may be acquired from different vendors due to economic, performance, or general availability reasons; the information being transmitted over the network may be ﲭultimedia (video, data, voice, and images) and, finally, varying performance criteria may be imposed e.g. data transfer may require high throughput while the others, whose concern is voice communications, may require low call blocking probability. For these reasons, future telecommunications networks are expected to be highly complex in their services and operations. Due to this growing complexity and the disparity among management systems for individual sub networks, efficient network management systems have become critical to the current and future success of telecommunications companies. This paper addresses a research and development effort which focuses on prototyping configuration management, since that is the central process of network management and all other network management functions must be built upon it. Our prototype incorporates ergonomically designed graphical user interfaces tailored to the network configuration management subsystem and to the proposed advanced object-oriented database structure. The resulting design concept follows open standards such as Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) and incorporates object oriented programming methodology to associate data with functions, permit customization, and provide an open architecture environment.
      A revised version of this technical report has been published in
      The 12th Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion/Commercialization, pp. 75-82, Albuquerque, NM, January 8-12, 1995.