Engineering Commons^™

Issues In Distributed Control For Atm Networks, Jonathan S. Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network technology is expected to become a central part of the emerging global information infrastructure. ATM networks introduce a number of features that distinguish them from earlier technologies and introduce new issues in network control. This paper offers a framework for precisely defining and analyzing alternative approaches to the distributed control of ATM networks and explores some of the key design issues through a series of examples. It is hoped that it will provide a useful foundation for researchers in networking and distributed computing interested in exploring these issues further and developing more complete solutions.

Synchronized Data Objects, Marin Bezic

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Synchronized Data Objects (SDOs) are presented as a method of encapsulating, in the datatype definition, synchronization protocols that are used to control information exchange. SDOs are presented in the context of I/O abstraction, a programming model that seeks to separate communication from computation in order to support dynamic end-user configuration of distrivuted applications. SDOs can be used to implement a variety of synchronization paradigms, including remote invalidation, demand-driven data streams, remote procedure call, and promises. An implementation of SDOs is described in the context of The Programmers' Playground, a distributed application development environment that supports the I/O abstraction programming model. …

Distributed Debugging With I/O Abstraction, Andrew S. Koransky

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This thesis presents a simple, yet powerful, set of mechanisms for testing and debugging distributed applications consisting of modules that communicate through well-defined data interfaces. The tools allow default or programmer-defined functions to be attached to various communication events so that particular data values at interesting points in the program are made available for testing and debugging. The debugging status of each component of the communication interface can be controlled separately so that various debugging information can be turned on and off during program execution. By attaching breakpoints to programmer-defined fucntions in a standard debugger, fine-grained examination of each module …

User Interface Applications Of A Multi-Way Constraint Solver, T. Paul Mccartney

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Constraints are widely recognized as a useful tool for user interface constructino. Through constraints, relationships among user interface components can be defined declaratively, leaving the task of relationship management to a constraint solver. Multi-way constraint solvers supporting constraint hierarchies provide a means to specify preferential constraint relationships with a dynamically changing computation flow, making them especially well suited to interactive user interfaces. However, previous such constraint solvers lack the ability to enforce inequalities or to effectively handle cyclic constraint relationships. These deficiencies limit the problems that could be solved using a constraint-based approach. This paper presents a new algorithm called …

Redesigning The Bsd Callout And Timer Facilities, Adam M. Costello, George Varghese

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We describe a new implementation of the BSD callout and timer facilities. Current BSD kernels take time proportional to the number of outstanding timers to set or cancel timers. Our implementation takes constant time to start, stop, and maintain timers; this leads to a highly scalable design that can support thousands of outstanding timers without much overhead. Unlike the existing implementation, our routines are guaranteed to lock out interrupts only for a small, bounded amount of time. We also extend the setitimer() interface to allow a process to have multiple outstanding timers, thereby reducing the need for users to maintain …

Self-Stabilization By Window Washing, Adam M. Costello, George Varghese

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A useful way to design simple and robust protocols is to make them self-stabilitizing. We describe a new general technique for self-stabilization called window washing. We apply this technique to generalized sliding window protocols that work on a number of topologies. This results in simple, efficient, and self-stabilizing protocols. As far as we know, both window washing and generalized sliding window protocols are new ideas. Our protocols can be used for data links, reliable broadcast, and flow control.

Reasoning About Program Interactions In The Presence Of Mobility, Gruia-Catalin Roman, Peter J. Mccann

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Mobile computing is emerging as an important new paradigm which has the potential to reshape our thinking about distributed computation. Mobility has far-reaching implications on what designers and users can assume about communication patterns, resource availability, and applciation behaviors as components move from one location to another while joining or leaving groups of other components in their vicinity. New distributed algorithms are likely to be required as the nature of applications shifts with the emergence of this new kind of computing environment. Formal methods have an important role to play in the midst of these developments both in terms of …

Assertional Reasoning About Pairwise Transient Interactions In Mobile Computing, Gruia-Catalin Roman, Peter J. Mccann, Jerome Plun

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Mobile computing represents a major point of departure from the traditional distributed computing paradigm. The potentially very large number of independent computing units, a decoupled computing style, frequent disconnections, continuous position changes, and the location-dependent nature of the behavior and communication patterns of the individual components present designers with unprecedented challenges in the areas of modularity and dependability. This paper describes two ideas regarding a modular approach to specifying and reasoning about mobile computing. The novelty of our approach rests with the notion of allowing transient interactions among programs which mobe in space. In this paper we restrict our concert …

Distributed Radiological Multimedia Conferencing, Naeem Bari

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Distributed Radiological Multimedia Conference (DRMC) is a collaborative imaging/multimedia conferencing tool which allows geographically separated physicians to confer over a shared projection radiograph. DRMC utilizes the advantages of high bandwidth and scalability offered by the new Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network technology. This application is customized for the high quality of displayed images and rapid response to user requests. It allows conferees to: share a common radiograph; each possess an independently controlled globally visible cursor; be able to point to and outline areas on the image to bring it to the other conferees' attention; and see and hear each other …

Euphoria: End-User Construction Of Direct Manipulation User Interfaces For Distributed Applications, T. Paul Mccartney, Kenneth J. Goldman, David E. Saff

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The Programmers' Playground is a software library and run-time system for creating distributed multimedia applications from collections of reusable software moduels. This paper presents the design and implementation of EUPHORIA, Playground's user interface management system. Implemented as a Playground module, EUPHORIA allows end-users to create direct manipulation graphical user interfaces (GUIs) exclusively through the use of a graphics editor. No programming is required. At run-time, attributes of the GUI state can be exposed and connected to external Playground modules, allowing the user to vosualize and directly manipulate state information in remote Playground modules. Features of EUPHORIA include real-time direct manipulation …

Design Of A Tool For Rapid Prototyping Of Communication Protocols, Aniruddha Gokhale, Ron Cytron, George Varghese

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We present a new tool for automatically generating prototypes of communication protocols on a wide variety of platforms. Our goal is to reduce design time, enhance portability, and accommodate optimizations automatically. Users of the tool are required to provide an abstract implementation of the protocol in C++ without worrying about the underlying operating system specific system calls. Instead, the user employs high-level interface functions provided by the tool to interact with the underlying operating system. Users also need not worry about complex packet formats that involve fields of various bit and byte lengths. Instead, they use simple C/C++ struct declarations …

An Oo Encapsulation Of Lightweight Os Concurrency Mechanisms In The Ace Toolkit, Douglas C. Schmidt

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper describes the design of the ACE object-oriented thread encapsulation class library. The architecture of this class library is presented from an end-user and internal design perspective and several key design issues are discussed. Readers should gain an understanding of the overall design approach as well as the tradeoffs between various software quality factors such as performance, portability, and extensibility.

Load Balance Properties Of Distributed Data Layouts For Clustered Mod Servers, Milind M. Buddhikot, Guru Parulkar

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Large scale storage servers that provide location transparent, interactive access to hundreds or thousands of concurrent, independent clients will be important components of hte furture information super-highway infrastructure. Two key requirements of such servers are as follows: support high parallelism and concurrency in data access to allow large number of access to the same or different data. Second, support independent interactive playout control operations such as fast-forward, rewind, slow-play, pause, resume, random access etc. with minimal latency. This paper assumes a distributed storage server architecture consisting of several high performance storage nodes interconnected by a high speed desk area network …

Error Control For Continuous Media And Multipoint Applications, Christos Papadopoulos, Guru Parulkar

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

High-bandwidth multimedia applications pose new challenges to error control. These include the support of error control for Continuous Media (CM) streams and the scalable support of error control in multipoint applications where the number of participants is large. Current error control mechanisms provide no support for the above applications. In this report we present new error control mechanisms that provide the required support. Continuous media applications have strict timing requirements which greatly affect recovery. To support continuous media applications we have designed and implemented a point-to-point error control mechanism which features the following: (1) selective repeat retransmission, (2) conditional retransmission, …

Real-Time Upcalls: A Mechanism To Provide Real-Time Processing Guarantees, Raman Gopalakrishna, Guru M. Parulkar

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Real-time upcalls (RTUs) are an operating systems mechanism that can be used by applications to efficiently schedule code segments (or handlers) that must execute periodically. While the mechanism was conceibed to support protocol processing with quality-of-service guarantees for networked multimedia applicatoins it is general enough to be applicable in other domains like real-time image processing. Until now real-time threads have been the only mechanism for implementing protocols in user space with QoS guarantees. The RTU mechanism avoids the implementation complexity of the thread based approach while retaining its ability to ensure real-time behavior. In addition, our design simplifies protocol code, …

Reliable Fifo Load Balancing Over Multiple Fifo Channels, Hari Adieseshu, Gurudatta M. Parulkar, George Varghese

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Link striping algorithms are often used to overcome transmission bottlenecks in computer networks. However, traidtional striping algorithms suffer from two major disadvantages. They provide inadequate load sharing in the presence of variable length packets, and may result in non-FIFO delivery of data. We describe a new family of link striping algorithms that solve both problems. Our scheme applies to packets at any layer (physical, data, link, network, and transport) that work over multiple FIFO channels. We deal with variable sized packets by showing how a class of fair queueing algorithms can be converted into load sharing algorithms. Our transformation results …

Efficient Demultiplexing Of Network Packets By Automatic Parsing, Mahesh Jayaram, Ron K. Cytron

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Packet filters are a mechanism for efficiently demultiplexing network packets to application endpoints. There is currently no general, formal specification method for packet filters that allows for easy or efficient composition of specifications. In this paper we present an automatic approach that achieves all of these goals. We approach packet filter specification as a language recognition problem: each filter is represented by a context-free grammar, whose language is the set of packets the filter should accept. Thus, packet filters can be formulated through a general, well defined specification; further, the grammar-based approach simplifies filter composition, which is essential where scalability …

Time Variability While Training A Parallel Neural Net Network, Tina L. Seawell, Barry L. Kalman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The algorithmic analysis, data collection, and statistical analysis required to isolate the cause of time variability observed while an Elman style recurrent neural network is trained in parallel on a twenty processor SPARCcenter 2000 is described in detail. Correlations of system metrics indicate the operating system scheduler or an interaction of kernel processes is the most probable explanation for the variability.

Regional Variation In Temperature Humidity Index For Poultry Housing, Richard S. Gates, Hanzhong Zhang, Donald G. Colliver, Douglas G. Overhults

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

A building thermal model was used to compute hourly values of temperature humidity index (THI) for a broiler house with and without an evaporative misting system. Hourly summer time weather data for 238 U.S.A. locations covering 30 years were used to develop extreme occurrences of THI. Results were incorporated into a Geographical Information System (GIS) database to create isolines of THI and percentage of hours exceeding a heat stress threshold. Regional variations in misting as a suitable cooling technique are presented in terms of hours reduction in annual heat stress. The technique may be used for assisting in management decisions …

Test 1693: Agco Allis 9455 Diesel 32-Speed, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURE

General

Tractors are tested at the University of Nebraska according to the Agricultural Tractor Test Code approved by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers or official Nebraska test procedure.

The manufacturer selects the tractor to be tested and certifies that it is a stock model. Each tractor is equipped with the common power consuming accessories such as power steering, power lift pump, generator, etc., if available. Power consuming accessories may be disconnected only when the means for disconnecting can be reached from the operating station. An official representative of …

Test 1696: Massey-Ferguson 9240 Diesel 18-Speed, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURE

General

Tractors are tested at the University of Nebraska according to the Agricultural Tractor Test Code approved by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers or official Nebraska test procedure.

The manufacturer selects the tractor to be tested and certifies that it is a stock model. Each tractor is equipped with the common power consuming accessories such as power steering, power lift pump, generator, etc., if available. Power consuming accessories may be disconnected only when the means for disconnecting can be reached from the operating station. An official representative of …

Test 1689: John Deere 8200 Diesel 16-Speed, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURE

General

Tractors are tested at the University of Nebraska according to the Agricultural Tractor Test Code approved by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers or official Nebraska test procedure.

The manufacturer selects the tractor to be tested and certifies that it is a stock model. Each tractor is equipped with the common power consuming accessories such as power steering, power lift pump, generator, etc., if available. Power consuming accessories may be disconnected only when the means for disconnecting can be reached from the operating station. An official representative of …

Test 1687: Caterpiller Challenger 85c Diesel 10-Speed, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURE

General

Tractors are tested at the University of Nebraska according to the Agricultural Tractor Test Code approved by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers or official Nebraska test procedure.

The manufacturer selects the tractor to be tested and certifies that it is a stock model. Each tractor is equipped with the common power consuming accessories such as power steering, power lift pump, generator, etc., if available. Power consuming accessories may be disconnected only when the means for disconnecting can be reached from the operating station. An official representative of …

Test 1692: Agco Allis 9435 Diesel 32-Speed, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURE

General

Tractors are tested at the University of Nebraska according to the Agricultural Tractor Test Code approved by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers or official Nebraska test procedure.

The manufacturer selects the tractor to be tested and certifies that it is a stock model. Each tractor is equipped with the common power consuming accessories such as power steering, power lift pump, generator, etc., if available. Power consuming accessories may be disconnected only when the means for disconnecting can be reached from the operating station. An official representative of …

Test 1705: Ford 7740 Pulsecommand Diesel 16-Speed, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURE

General

Tractors are tested at the University of Nebraska according to the Agricultural Tractor Test Code approved by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers or official Nebraska test procedure.

The manufacturer selects the tractor to be tested and certifies that it is a stock model. Each tractor is equipped with the common power consuming accessories such as power steering, power lift pump, generator, etc., if available. Power consuming accessories may be disconnected only when the means for disconnecting can be reached from the operating station. An official representative of …

Test 1699: Agco Allis 9675 Diesel 18-Speed, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURE

General

Tractors are tested at the University of Nebraska according to the Agricultural Tractor Test Code approved by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers or official Nebraska test procedure.

The manufacturer selects the tractor to be tested and certifies that it is a stock model. Each tractor is equipped with the common power consuming accessories such as power steering, power lift pump, generator, etc., if available. Power consuming accessories may be disconnected only when the means for disconnecting can be reached from the operating station. An official representative of …

Nebraska Summary: S198 Massey Ferguson 8140, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

Nebraska Summary: S197 Massey Ferguson 8120, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

Test 1690: John Deere 8300 Diesel 16-Speed, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURE

General

Tractors are tested at the University of Nebraska according to the Agricultural Tractor Test Code approved by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers or official Nebraska test procedure.

The manufacturer selects the tractor to be tested and certifies that it is a stock model. Each tractor is equipped with the common power consuming accessories such as power steering, power lift pump, generator, etc., if available. Power consuming accessories may be disconnected only when the means for disconnecting can be reached from the operating station. An official representative of …

Test 1691: John Deere 8400 Diesel 16-Speed, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURE

General

Tractors are tested at the University of Nebraska according to the Agricultural Tractor Test Code approved by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers or official Nebraska test procedure.

The manufacturer selects the tractor to be tested and certifies that it is a stock model. Each tractor is equipped with the common power consuming accessories such as power steering, power lift pump, generator, etc., if available. Power consuming accessories may be disconnected only when the means for disconnecting can be reached from the operating station. An official representative of …