 This paper presents results from performance measurements in a test network that can be operated as an ordinary best effort or as a Differentiated Services (DS) capable network. The target of the measurements was to analyse the effects that the DS mechanism has on the behaviour of the TCP flow control mechanism. The network implements service differentiation by using eight drop precedence lev...

We consider the problem of managing a hybrid computing infrastructure whose processing elements are comprised of in-house dedicated machines, virtual machines acquired on-demand from a cloud computing provider through short-term reservation contracts, and virtual machines made available by the remote peers of a best-effort peer-to-peer (P2P) grid. Each of these resources has different cost basi...

In order to support multimedia applications such as voice and video over the wireless medium, a contentionbased channel access function, called Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA), has been developed in the emerging standard IEEE 802.11e. In the EDCA, differentiated channel access is provided for different traffic classes. In this paper, we propose a two-level protection and guarantee me...

To meet the infrastructure coverage and capacity needed by future IoT applications, service providers may engage in mutually-beneficial modes of collaboration such as cooperative packet forwarding and gatewaying through fixed backhauls and Internet uplinks. In an effort to enable these modes of resource pooling while minimizing negative impact on collaborating providers, we developed a transpor...

There are two general approaches to providing for isochronous streams in the current Internet. The first approach is the resource reservation approach through protocols such as RSVP, or ATM technology. This provides bandwidth guarantees, however, it also requires significant upgrading of resources in the underlying network. The other common approach is adaptive rate control where the end-system...

This paper examines whether the Peter Principle operates in a large hierarchical financial sector firm. We use a method that allows for variation in optimal effort over stages in the hierarchy, which suggests, at least in the organisation we study, that the mean fall in performance actually understates the effect of the Peter Principle.

The ability to perform different tasks by a serial manipulator mounted on legged robots, increases the capabilities of the robot. The position/force control problem of such a robot in the stance phase with point contacts on the ground is investigated here. A target plane with known stiffness is specified in the workspace. Active joints of the legs and serial manipulator are used to exert the de...

In response to the growing need to support better than best-effort (BE) quality of service (QoS) in mobile ad-hoc and sensor networks, many QoS models have been proposed. SWAN independent QoS model is introduced to operate on wireless ad-hoc networks. As a cross layer QoS model, SWAN is flexible and may run over any routing protocol or Media Access Control (MAC) layers. SWAN provides some advan...

We describe a delegation-based solution to the planning overconstrained UAV missions. SIFT’s Playbook approach to UAV control allows single operators to request services from multiple-UAV teams, without excessive workload, specialized training, or platform-specific ground control systems. We use the metaphor of a sports team’s playbook: a user “calls a play” for a mission, relying on the system...