The aim of this Master’s thesis is to analyze the performance of Air Bank a. s. in the period 2012 – 2017 using indicators typical for the banking sector. The results are compared with three selected competing banks. Then from publicly available information assesment is made for the two scenarios of the future development of Air Bank a. s. on the basis of the results of the economic evaluation. In the discussion part the scenarios are evaluated and then deducted the implications of Air Bank a. s. in case of fulfillment of the scenarios. The merger scenario is more advantageous in terms of economic and long-term competitiveness.

The diploma thesis is focused on the evaluation of the financial and business performance of the company NOVA Blansko Ltd. by using the benchmarking method. The first part of this work consists of the theoretical basis of the specific issue. The second part focuses on introducing the company and performing a situation analysis. The following part is a key part of this work, it contains the actual implementation of benchmarking of the company with selected competitors. The final part of this work summarizes the main findings obtained from individual analyses and recommendations for improving the company's performance.

As per its theme, this thesis deals with company performance assessment of the selected company according to the multicriterial model START PLUS. The work consists of three main parts: theoretical, analytical and design. The output of performed analyzes via point evaluation is to identify strengths and weaknesses of the company, on basis of what proposals for changes leading to an overall improvement of the company's performance will be presented.

This work focuses on the evaluation of financial and business performance of STARTECH spol. s.r.o. through the benchmarking method. The first part of the thesis defines the theoretical background related to the topic. The second part of the work contains a situational analysis, which includes a presentation of the analyzed company and competing partners who were selected for benchmarking and benchmarking itself. The last part of the work are general summaries and recommendations. The aim of the analysis is to identify the weknesses of STARTECH spol. s.r.o. and formulate suggestions for improvement.

Una de las preocupaciones que mayormente tienen los países en vías de desarrollo es el efecto de los desastres naturales sobre la educación. Por este motivo, la presente investigación realiza un análisis del efecto de los desastres naturales: Heladas e inundaciones, sobre la generación de resultados educativos, medido como puntaje de pruebas estandarizadas de matemática y lenguaje. Además, se analiza si la tipología de estos desastres podría implicar resultados diferenciados. Para ello, se aplica un modelo de efectos aleatorios con una base de datos panel disponible del estudio Young Lives (Niños del Milenio). En efecto, el estudio confirma la hipótesis de que los desastres naturales evaluados influyen en los resultados educativos por el lado de riqueza del hogar y estado de salud del estudiante. / One of the concerns that developing countries have mostly is the effect of natural disasters on education. Therefore, the present investigation carries out an analysis of the effect of natural disasters: Frost and floods, on the generation of educational results, measured as a standardized math and language test score. Furthermore, whether the typology of these disasters could imply differentiated results. For this, a random effects model is applied with a panel database available from the Young Lives study. Hence, the study confirms the hypothesis that the natural disasters evaluated influence educational outcomes on the side of household wealth and student health status. / Trabajo de investigación

Endpoint devices are integral in the realisation of any industrial cyber-physical system (ICPS) application. As part of the work of promoting safer and more secure industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks and devices, the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and the OpenFog Consortium have developed security framework specifications detailing security techniques and technologies that should be employed during the design of an IIoT network. Previous work in establishing cryptographic services on platforms intended for wireless sensor networks (WSN) and the Internet of Things (IoT) has concluded that security mechanisms cannot be implemented using software libraries owing to the lack of memory and processing resources, the longevity requirements of the processor platforms, and the hard real-time requirements of industrial operations. Over a decade has passed since this body of knowledge was created, however, and IoT processors have seen a vast improvement in the available operating and memory resources while maintaining minimal power consumption. This study aims to update the body of knowledge regarding the provision of security services on an IoT platform by conducting a detailed analysis regarding the performance of new generation IoT platforms when running software cryptographic services. The research considers execution time, power consumption and memory occupation and works towards a general, implementable design of a secure, IIoT edge device. This is realised by identifying security features recommended for IIoT endpoint devices; identifying currently available security standards and technologies for the IIoT; and highlighting the trade-offs that the application of security will have on device size, performance, memory requirements and monetary cost. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / MSc / Unrestricted

In this paper, we introduce and evaluate ScaleMesh, a scalable miniaturized dual-radio wireless mesh testbed based on IEEE 802.11b/g technology. ScaleMesh can emulate large-scale mesh networks within a miniaturized experimentation area by adaptively shrinking the transmission range of mesh nodes by means of variable signal attenuators. To this end, we derive a theoretical formula for approximating the attenuation level required for downscaling desired network topologies. We present a performance study in which we validate the feasibility of ScaleMesh for network emulation and protocol evaluation. We further conduct singleradio vs. dual-radio experiments in ScaleMesh, and show that dual-radio communication significantly improves network goodput. The median TCP goodput we observe in a typical random topology at 54 Mbit/s and dual-radio communication ranges between 1468 Kbit/s and 7448 Kbit/s, depending on the current network load.

In this paper, we introduce an effective congestion control scheme for TCP over hybrid wireless/wired networks comprising a multihop wireless IEEE 802.11 network and the wired Internet. We propose an adaptive pacing scheme at the Internet gateway for wired-to-wireless TCP flows. Furthermore, we analyze the causes for the unfairness of oncoming TCP flows and propose a scheme to throttle aggressive wired-to-wireless TCP flows at the Internet gateway to achieve nearly optimal fairness. Thus, we denote the introduced congestion control scheme TCP with Gateway Adaptive Pacing (TCP-GAP). For wireless-to-wired flows, we propose an adaptive pacing scheme at the TCP sender. In contrast to previous work, TCP-GAP does not impose any control traffic overhead for achieving fairness among active TCP flows. Moreover, TCP-GAP can be incrementally deployed because it does not require any modifications of TCP in the wired part of the network and is fully TCP-compatible. Extensive simulations using ns-2 show that TCPGAP is highly responsive to varying traffic conditions, provides nearly optimal fairness in all scenarios and achieves up to 42% more goodput than TCP NewReno.

In this paper, we introduce a novel congestion control algorithm for TCP over multihop IEEE 802.11 wireless networks implementing rate-based scheduling of transmissions within the TCP congestion window. We show how a TCP sender can adapt its transmission rate close to the optimum using an estimate of the current 4-hop propagation delay and the coefficient of variation of recently measured round-trip times. The novel TCP variant is denoted as TCP with Adaptive Pacing (TCP-AP). Opposed to previous proposals for improving TCP over multihop IEEE 802.11 networks, TCP-AP retains the end-to-end semantics of TCP and does neither rely on modifications on the routing or the link layer nor requires cross-layer information from intermediate nodes along the path. A comprehensive simulation study using ns-2 shows that TCP-AP achieves up to 84% more goodput than TCP NewReno, provides excellent fairness in almost all scenarios, and is highly responsive to changing traffic conditions.

This paper introduces an effective congestion control pacing scheme for TCP over multihop wireless networks with Internet connectivity. The pacing scheme is implemented at the wireless TCP sender as well as at the Internet gateway, and reacts according to the direction of TCP flows running across the wireless network and the Internet. Moreover, we analyze the causes for the unfairness of oncoming TCP flows and propose a scheme to throttle aggressive wired-to-wireless TCP flows at the Internet gateway to achieve nearly optimal fairness. The proposed scheme, which we denote as TCP with Gateway Adaptive Pacing (TCP-GAP), does not impose any control traffic overhead for achieving fairness among active TCP flows and can be incrementally deployed since it does not require any modifications of TCP in the wired part of the network. In an extensive set of experiments using ns-2 we show that TCP-GAP is highly responsive to varying traffic conditions, provides nearly optimal fairness in all scenarios and achieves up to 42% more goodput for FTP-like traffic as well as up to 70% more goodput for HTTP-like traffic than TCP NewReno. We also investigate the sensitivity of the considered TCP variants to different bandwidths of the wired and wireless links with respect to both aggregate goodput and fairness.