Simple steps to conduct research

A research newbie may face problems in understanding 2 main questions in research - What is research? What are my directions in conducting this research?

Research is "re-search" which most probably you are doing some stuff that had been implemented before and your role is "re-search" the elements of the domain, find the existing problems that aren't solved yet and propose a possible solution to solve difficulties through scientific proven study.

Research has various requirement and constraint to achieve objectives for different domain. However, generally, below is my own direction in doing research.

1) Problem formulation. We first formulate the problem. What is the existing unsolved problems and current state of art. It is a need to show that the importance of solving the selected problem(s) and search others similar/comparative solution to serve as benchmark for later performance study. Do certain literature review smart by identify the research element that we need to study.

2) Propose solution. What is your new solution and how is it scientifically proven? How do you defend your finding and proposed solution that it is better? Remember to draft a good picture on how your mechanism works and your objectives.

3) Performance study. No matter it is a simulation study or distributed machine study, identify the parameters you want to capture. Make certain assumption on your performance study if required. At last, plan well on displaying your result, either statistically or statement based.

Not every research can be organized as above. However, with experience grows, research becomes easier and funnier for you. Lastly, "Don't be too focus on your result till you forget the process".

Introduce to Share by BitTorrent

This is the first post in year 2012 and it comes to "Share" from BitTorrent. I always have difficulties to share large files via internet, especially my research data which mostly sizing from 1GB and above for one round of network simulation. In addition, even dropbox doesn't solve my problem as well. However, BitTorrent launches Share which really caught my eyes, especially the big panel stating "No Size Limit !". It is always frustrating sending large files to someone over internet, torrent technology did solve this issue years ago but there isn't really a platform/medium available to define personal file sharing. Traditionally, it requires me to create a torrent file using any BitTorrent client software and share to any torrent sharing site (with ISP throttling of torrent traffic, the user experience wasn't great). To be specific, we need a round table for file sharing so that I can specifically share my files with a brunch of colleague and of course offer by cloud computing model but by the nature of p2p, uploading and downloading happen at the same time which can increase the efficiency. It is a hybrid model between cloud and P2P which I like most.

I tried Share by sending a video to my work machine, unfortunately it is half way done and the resulting speed wasn't ideal. Now, the application was not showing the normal interface but only grey background with a grey facebook feedback button on the right. I will tried this application again this weekend and see if I can grabbed more information for users to know how to utilize this application for personal large files sharing.

Google censors torrent list

According to TorrentFreak, Google is now extending its censorship till pirate bay, isohunt, 4shared and more. I tried to search, the auto-complete and instant search filter all the term and even item list from the search bar. I was impressed by Google's instant search ability and they engineer the search very well. This censorship doesn't affect on user's search query for torrent file or tracker site as these site are still indexed (So, how to define censorship as search engine doesn't block the results?). However, sites that rely on user population and unique visitors may face disadvantage from that, the number of page view might reduce.  However, the torrent sharing hub in Asia is still actively sharing and searching for content of the copyright items. China, in particularly, gougou.com, sogou.com (just to name a few), mostly power by Xunlei BitTorrent client are providing a strong content search to find whatever relevant content that can be found. The positive side is the hub is growing and maintaining strong user traffic in searching for content. Let's see what can torrent content provider site counter against the search engine censorship.

uTorrent dives into Smartphones and Consoles

The latest release of uTorrent is now supports multi platform integration where we can actually sync our downloaded stuff to a number of devices. The devices which are supported include iPhone, Ipad, PS3, Xbox and Android. This news comes from TorrentFreak recent article which reported that users can transfer their downloaded files to a device plus the feature of converting them into an appropriate format. However this feature is only available for premium uTorrent users only which means BitTorrent (company that owns uTorrent) is trying to make money out of this feature. Well, I think this is probably one of their coming monetization method (as I said before, BitTorrent needs a new monetization model instead of relying on plugins/toolbar/search only). There are a number of files transfer client/server software available for the devices mentioned above (e.g. AirVideo for converting/streaming video from your PC and the easiest way I find is using dropbox/sugarsync/SK sync to sync the files), but if you appear to be a hardcore BitTorrent downloder, you might find this new integration of uTorrent is useful and definitely a good idea to kick off the adoption of BitTorrent in multiple platform and devices in future. Whether you are excited or not, I am one of the user who really like device integration.

Device Integration panel. Pick your preferable device for synchronization  of files.

Media conversation feature. 

Ipad integration, requires to open iTune for files synchronization.

How uTorrent µTP promises less congestion?

uTorrent has a mini build-in BitTorrent protocol named uTP (Micro Transport Protocol), aims to increase incredibly efficient use of network bandwidth while reducing network problems. Many of you might encounter inefficiency of bandwidth utilization in a Local Area Network where someone is "torrenting", this indicates BitTorrent traffic is indirectly the root of network congestion (due to its flooding mechanism). To maximize network throughput and reduce network latency and congestion, BitTorrent introduced uTP to eliminate ISP throttling. 


uTP is user friendly within a Local Area Network, which means one PC which runs uTorrent will not consume the whole network for itself. It is designed to slow itself down when the network is overloaded, is considered a win-win situation for other users/ISP and downloader itself. In short, it is network-aware and will self-throttle if other traffic on the network is being limited. 


But, what really caught my interest is : Does its' network-aware feature limits its connectivity and download completion? To the best of my knowledge, uTP can get through most firewalls and NATs leading to greater peer connectivity. There is a performance evaluation of uTP in BitTorrent blog here, it mentioned uTP is created to help consumers. "A poorly tuned BitTorrent client may well result in an internet connection that habitually gets congested and then drops packets, then recovers and repeats the process. This is not good for anyone." uTP reduces the traffic overhead, in addition reaching better peers with its UDP NAT traversal techniques. You can know more by reading the comments of their post as there are much later discussion on this protocol, specifically end user. 


How uTP works? uTP protocol works based on network delays and dynamic packet size to determine if it is consuming the entire bandwidth in a network, and accordingly uTorrent slows the download. I have a doubt on how smart this protocol is (judge from the nature of BitTorrent protocol) and also the speed. This may be one of the reasons why other BitTorrent clients (Vuze, BitComet etc) are not implementing uTP yet. uTP has a lot of potential to be applied in research or even commercial side. In fact, uTP is an open source project and hopefully it is getting better and better by redevelopment. I am looking forward to grab few more performance evaluation of uTP protocol because of one thing: For low bandwidth internet package (like what I am using - 1Mbps) , torrent activity needs a good bandwidth management.  

P2P streaming simulation: Simple underlay network to Brite network

In order to perform a P2P research, simulation is the most common method to be used to simulate environment, collect data and analyze your hypothesis. Omnet++ is a network event simulator that is popular for simulating communication network. However, Omnet++ is just a piece of software, it relies on different additional packages/models to assist researcher to focus on simulating your work rather than extra work on building the whole network environment. If you are researching on P2P streaming area, probably INET framework and Oversim DenaCast are the models you need. 

INET framework is used for simulating TCP/IP network (includes UDP, IP and Data link layer). Oversim DenaCast is a mesh based P2P streaming simulation model which uses INET framework for underlay layers. DenaCast offers three reusable modules for us to explore and build on top of the framework - Underlay network, Overlay network and Application layer.

In this post , our main focus is on Underlay network modules. DenaCast by default specifies Simple Underlay Network as the main simulation physical topology, which includes a network without a backbone configurator, router configurator and self-form mesh-based host. The main configuration we can specify for Simple Underlay Network is by specifying constant UDP/TCP delay for each link to work as incoming and outgoing connection delay.

Simple Underlay Network

For simulating video stream in a complex physical network, Brite network is used. Modification is done in configuration file of DenaCast to create a Brite network that has the option to generate backbone router and access router per AS. In fact, each host will randomly attached to different access router from different AS and this eliminates the need to create regional network.

Initialize Brite network

Creating host in Brite network

Brite network with 40 hosts 

I can't explain more on Brite network as I am working on it right now. However, the fact is, this physical topology gives us a better comprehensive network virtual environment that is similar to real world. A good model to kick off your research!

The impact of BitTorrent network traffic (statistically )

Super Peer just read a newly published paper in SIGCOMM'11 about network impact in large distributed system. It presents a very comprehensive latest large measurement of BitTorrent, using data from 500,000 users over 2 years, located in 169 countries. Considering BitTorrent network traffic is already tagged as the main ISPs internet traffic, it is interesting to study and know the impact of it statistically. Few important figures that are interesting have been summarize as below:

a) The average download volume per user per hour increased by 25% from Nov 2009 to Nov 2010. This means that the data size per hour increase from 110MB/hour to 139MB/hour.

b) The number of unique users dropped by 10%. This is probably due to we are having a faster internet speed today and able to finish a download quicker.

c) The total volume of  BitTorrent traffic increased by 12% from year 2009 till 2010.

d) 32% of BitTorrent traffic is a local BitTorrent traffic which means the origin of the source stays in the country. Meanwhile, 41% of Bittorrent travels to one another country.

e) Tier 2 ISPs make money from these BitTorrent network traffic, thanks to many heavy download.

f) However, tier 3 ISPs don't really benefit from the traffic increment but paying for the traffic transit charges of BitTorrent traffic.