TSSG PhD student one of five students attending RIPE66 meeting under the RACI programme

TSSG PhD student Runxin Wang recently attended the RIPE66 meeting in Dublin. This conference was hosted by RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre), which is an independent, not-for-profit membership organization that supports the infrastructure of the Internet through technical coordination in its service region. RIPE NCC is one of five Regional Internet Registries providing Internet resource allocations, registration services and coordination activities that support the operation of the Internet globally. The 66th RIPE meeting (RIPE66) in was well supported by many major IT companies and network operators including Google, Amazon, Netflix, and HEAnet. Presentations at the meeting covered the recent developments, experiences, statistics and new ideas about the management of bandwidth usage, IP usage, routing technologies, DNS security and other topics of global networking from different countries. This year RIPE launched a new program RACI (RIPE Academic Cooperation Initiative) to bring in more students from academia to share their research work to the RIPE community; Runxin was one of the five invited students in the RACI program.

TSSG student presents paper at IT&T 2013

TSSG PhD student Runxin Wang recently presented a paper entitled ‘Experimental evaluation of vector bin packing algorithms on VM consolidations in cloud data centres’, at the 12th Information Technology & Telecommunications (IT&T) conference in Athlone, Ireland. The paper is written by John Furlong, Dr Lei Shi and Runxin Wang; it describes a set of performance evaluations carried out on Virtual Machine (VM) consolidation algorithms used to manage virtual computing resources in cloud computing data centers. When formalizing the problem, VM consolidations can be represented as a bin packing problem, as the application of virtualization technology and live migration allow a large number of VMs, treated as items, to be migrated and concurrently hosted into relatively fewer number of Physical Machines (PMs), treated as bins, as long as the sum capacity of the co-located VMs does not exceed the capacity of a hosting PM. This paper aims to find out which bin packing strategies result in minimal numbers of PMs used to host the given VMs and minimal numbers of migration requested to realize the consolidation.

The IT&T conference in this year was sponsored by Ericsson, the proceedings are comprised of research papers and posters from both academia and industry, providing a good opportunity for the practitioners to discuss their early ideas and results.

Junior Software Engineer

Commencement Date: Immediately

Location: Waterford

Minimum Requirement: A degree in software engineering or equivalent (e.g. BSc) or graduating this year and relevant work experience.

Major Duties:

Work with the Project technical lead to develop requirements for software.
Develop software using the appropriate technology set as specified by the Project technical lead.
Develop Object Oriented software in Java or similar OO language.
Work with network protocols (either telecommunications or Internet).
Work with database technologies – for example PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, MS-SQL Server.
Become familiar with web-based architectures and technologies (REST, XML, JSON)
Have practical experience and understanding of internet APIs.
Unit Test all software personally developed.
Utilise process management tools such as Redmine for time management and Bugzilla for defect management, Git/SVN for revision control, etc.
Work with the software test function to resolve defects promptly.
Work with customers to support the product in production, identify enhancements and/or solve production problems.
Document any necessary processes or procedures.
Support the Unit Manager in defining new products/services/technology roadmaps.
Work with the Unit Manager to write proposals for future funding.
Reports to the Unit Manager.

Requirements:

MUST have Strong Object Oriented Programming ability in Java or similar.
MUST be proficient in Groovy, Javascript, CSS, XML.
MUST have knowledge of Web Technologies (e.g. REST, SOAP, HTML5).
MUST have knowledge of JSON, HTML.
MUST have experience of Agile software development.
MUST have knowledge of database technologies desirable (e.g. PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, MS-SQL Server).
MUST have knowledge of source code control and testing tools (e.g. SVN, Git, JUnit, Code Coverage).
Attention to detail and methodical approach to problem solving.
Good organizational, time management, communication and interpersonal skills.
Strong analytical and interpersonal skills.
Logical approach to problem solving.

Desirable:

Knowledge of node.js and OSGi a distinct advantage.
Knowledge of smart grid communications and energy efficient networking a distinct advantage.

Closing Date for Applications: 4pm on Wednesday, 29^th May 2013.

To apply for this position please submit a loose-leaf CV with accompanying letter/email specifying the position you are interested in to:

The Human Resources Office,
Waterford Institute of Technology,
Waterford,
Ireland.
Telephone: 051-845519
Fax: 051-302663
E-mail: recruitment@wit.ie

TSSG presents at IT&T 2013

Kevin McGrath from the EFM Group recently presented the paper ‘Indoor RTLS Using Smart Devices and Available Sensors’ at the twelfth Information Technology & Telecommunications (IT&T) conference in Athlone. The paper was co-written with his colleagues John McGovern & Leigh Griffin.

The conference combines academic papers with presentations from industry, funding agencies and international business experts. The mandate is to strengthen collaborations between the telecommunications and information technology industries, research laboratories, and all 3rd level institutions in Ireland.

The theme of this year’s event was “Small Devices, Big Data, Real Challenges”.

Real Time Location System (RTLS) applications have the potential to open opportunities for developers to provide innovative new applications in areas as diverse as advertising, retailing and tourism sectors. Thus far however, these systems have been only been able to specify Global Positioning System (GPS) as an interactive location provider or are dependent on user interaction to physically ‘check-in’ their current location.

The aim of this paper is to examine the implementation and testing of an RTLS developed specifically to use smart devices integrated with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi as the proximity sensors. The paper outlines the use of available sensors as proximity enablers, the algorithms needed for these sensors and how to test them within a building to identify Points Of Interest (POI). The expected granularity of each sensor and the potential pitfalls is also examined.

For further information contact: Kevin McGrath or John McGovern

See also details on the IT&T conference here and the COIN project here

TSSG student Frank Walsh successfully defends his PhD

Frank Walsh defended his PhD thesis, entitled “Protocols for Molecular Communication Nanonetworks” on May 7th. His supervisors were Dr. Sasitharan Balasubramaniam and Dr. Dmitri Botvich. The external examiners for Frank’s viva were Dr. Albert Cabellos-Aparicio from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain, and Dr. David Malone from the Hamilton Institute, NUI Maynooth.

Pictured (L-R) are Dr David Malone (external examiner), Frank Walsh, Dr Sasitharan Balasubramaniam (supervisor) and Dr Albert Cabellos (external examiner).

Frank is currently a lecturer at the WIT Department of Computing, Maths, and Physics. He began his Phd in 2007 as a part-time student; he had this status throughout this PhD studies. Frank’s PhD work was on developing new protocols that would enable nano-machines in a biological environment to communicate. As part of his research, he investigated the use of biological components from nature to develop communication systems, which included protocol control for calcium signaling, the use of virus as information carrier for multi-hop nanonetworks, as well as scheduling and access control for artificial neuronal networks.