If the present world scenario in telecommunication systems is considered thousands of systems are getting moved into the cloud because of its wide features. This thesis explains the efficient ways to upgrade Docker containers in a way to support backward compatibility. It mainly concerns about the high-availability of systems in the cloud environment during upgrades. Smaller changes can be implemented automatically to some extent. The minor changes can be handled by Apache Avro where schema is defined in it. But at some point Avro also cannot handle the situation which becomes much more complex. In a real world example, we need to perform major changes on the top of an application. Here we are testing different upgrade strategies and comparing the code complexity, total time to upgrade, network usage of single upgrades strategy versus multiple upgrade strategy with and without Use of Avro. When code complexity is compared the case without Avro performs well in single upgrade strategy with less time to upgrade all six instances but the network usage is more compared to multiple upgrades. So single upgrade strategy is better to maintain high availability in Cloud by performing the upgrades in an efficient manner.

Master of Science / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Anil Pahwa / Due to the ongoing changes in the structure of the electricity markets, distribution networks have developed an appealing potential for housing distributed generation (DG). In order to make the most out of the present distribution network, this project report verifies the results and method developed in a paper (Optimal Allocation of Embedded Generation on Distribution Networks) by A. Kean and M. O’Malley, which discusses an efficient way of incorporating DG in the current power system. The methodology under consideration elaborates on how certain constraints should be adopted that will lead toward optimally sizing and placing DG in the network under examination. Along with that, the effect of voltage rise and short circuit current are observed which shows that a certain allocation to some buses will cause a sudden rise in voltage and short circuit levels throughout the network. Furthermore, the adopted methodology with its relative constraints is solved using linear programming. Linear programming provides a more accurate allocation than its heuristic counterparts when it comes to embedding DG in smaller networks. The adopted methodology is then applied to a section of the Irish rural distribution network and the results pinpoint that appropriate placement of the DG will pave the way toward higher levels of penetration. The results obtained showed the same pattern as those recorded in the aforementioned source paper, there were only minor differences that are the result of using different software’s than those that were used by the authors of the paper.

This thesis presents a resource based approach to model generation for performance characterization and correctness checking of large scale telecommunications networks. A notion called the timed automaton is proposed and then developed to encapsulate behaviours of networking equipment, system control policies and non-deterministic user behaviours. The states of pooled network resources and the behaviours of resource consumers are represented as continually varying geometric patterns; these patterns form part of the data operated upon by the timed automata. Such a representation technique allows for great flexibility regarding the level of abstraction that can be chosen in the modelling of telecommunications systems. None the less, the notion of system functions is proposed to serve as a constraining framework for specifying bounded behaviours and features of telecommunications systems. Operational concepts are developed for the timed automata; these concepts are based on limit preserving relations. Relations over system states represent the evolution of system properties observable at various locations within the network under study. The declarative nature of such permutative state relations provides a direct framework for generating highly expressive models suitable for carrying out optimization experiments. The usefulness of the developed procedure is demonstrated by tackling a large scale case study, in particular the problem of congestion avoidance in networks; it is shown that there can be global coupling among local behaviours within a telecommunications network. The uncovering of such a phenomenon through a function oriented simulation is a contribution to the area of network modelling. The direct and faithful way of deriving performance metrics for loss in networks from resource utilization patterns is also a new contribution to the work area.

Thesis advisor: Vincent Cho / This case study of a public school district in the Northeast United States explores the leadership practices of elementary and middle school counseling staff and principals in supporting SEL, using a distributed leadership framework (Spillane, 2006). Data sources included 24 interviews with administrators, guidance counselors and social workers and document review. Findings indicate counseling staff support students and staff in a variety of ways through both formal and informal leadership practices. Principals support SEL by establishing SEL programs or strategies to match the needs of their student population. Two different models were found for how guidance counselor and social worker responsibilities are structured. The most common model, in six of the nine schools, is a tiered model where guidance counselors work with the majority of students on academic support/monitoring and delivering SEL lessons. Social workers focus on smaller numbers of students with more intensive needs. The second but less common model, in three of the nine schools, does not differentiate the roles of social workers and guidance counselors and instead assigns responsibilities by grade level. Concerns with this second model were raised by some administrators and several counselors. The quality of peer and administrator relationships was reported to be supportive and collaborative in the schools with differentiated roles. In the non-differentiated schools, it varied, and was related to shifting staff, a misunderstanding of the role differences, and challenges in developing collaborative relationships. Recommendations include assessing support structures to ensure the model adequately supports the SEL needs of the school. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This thesis proposes a new dynamic resource management architecture, Magnet, to meet the requirements of users in flexible and adaptive systems. Computer systems no longer operate in centralized isolated static environments. Technological advances, such as smaller and faster hardware, and higher reliability of networks have resulted in the growth of mobility of computing and the need for run-time reconfigurability. The dynamic management of this diversity of resources is the central issue addressed in this thesis. Applications in environments with frequently changing characteristics are required to participate in dynamic resource management, to adapt to ever-changing conditions, and to express their requirements in terms of quality of service. Magnet enables dynamic trading of resources which can be requested indirectly by the type of service they offer, rather than directly by their name. A dedicated component, the Trader, matches requests for services against demands and establishes a component binding - resource allocation. In addition, the architecture is extensible - it does not constrain the information on services and allows user-customization of the matching process. Consequently, this allows resource definitions to be parametrized (to include QoS-based characteristics), and the matching process to be user-customized (to preform QoS-based negotiation). In order to fulfill the requirements of users relying on ever-changing conditions, Magnet enables runtime adaptation (dynamic rebinding) to changes in the environment, constant monitoring of resources, and scalability of the architecture. The generality of the Magnet architecture is illustrated with several examples of resource allocation in dynamic environments.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Typescript, etc. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Published methods for distributed information retrieval generally rely on cooperation from search servers. But most real servers, particularly the tens of thousands available on the Web, are not engineered for such cooperation. This means that the majority of methods proposed, and evaluated in simulated environments of homogeneous cooperating servers, are never applied in practice. ¶ This thesis introduces new methods for server selection and results merging. The methods do not require search servers to cooperate, yet are as effective as the best methods which do. Two large experiments evaluate the new methods against many previously published methods. In contrast to previous experiments they simulate a Web-like environment, where servers employ varied retrieval algorithms and tend not to sub-partition documents from a single source. ¶ The server selection experiment uses pages from 956 real Web servers, three different retrieval systems and TREC ad hoc topics. Results show that a broker using queries to sample servers’ documents can perform selection over non-cooperating servers without loss of effectiveness. However, using the same queries to estimate the effectiveness of servers, in order to favour servers with high quality retrieval systems, did not consistently improve selection effectiveness. ¶ The results merging experiment uses documents from five TREC sub-collections, five different retrieval systems and TREC ad hoc topics. Results show that a broker using a reference set of collection statistics, rather than relying on cooperation to collate true statistics, can perform merging without loss of effectiveness. Since application of the reference statistics method requires that the broker download the documents to be merged, experiments were also conducted on effective merging based on partial documents. The new ranking method developed was not highly effective on partial documents, but showed some promise on fully downloaded documents. ¶ Using the new methods, an effective search broker can be built, capable of addressing any given set of available search servers, without their cooperation.

In this thesis, three model-based methods are presented for finding the location of a point source with possibly time-varying strength for a class of distributed parameter systems. The first method involves off-line numerical computation of the time-response data at the sensor(s) from all possible source locations and functions of source strength, and comparison of these data with actual measurements. The second method involves approximation of the infinite-dimensional distributed parameter system by a finite-dimensional lumped parameter system: the partial differential and/or integral equations describing the distributed parameter system are replaced by a set of ordinary differential equations, which are obtained through finite difference or finite element methods. The resulting model is used to construct an auto-regressive (AR) filter that takes the sensor data as inputs and produces a scalar output whose value determines the source location. The third method involves off -line steady-state solution of an adjoint problem based on the dual system model. The solutions are used to construct localization functions whose contours, corresponding to a set of sensor data, provide an estimate of the source location. For each method, the sensor data evaluation algorithm is presented, and analysis is given of appropriate sensor placement and the minimal required number of sensors. The robustness of each method to sensor noise and modeling inaccuracies is studied, and techniques to improve robustness are discussed. These techniques include strategic sensor placement to reduce sensitivity to noise and modeling inaccuracies, and prioritization of sensor data in the data evaluation algorithms. In all three methods, a minimal amount of on-line computation is required. The methods are applied to the two-dimensional heat conduction problem with Robin's boundary conditions, and their performances are tested via computer simulations. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the relative strengths and shortcomings of each method and suggestions for future research. / Graduation date: 1999

Effective collaboration is essential for engineers at geographically dispersed locations to accomplish good design with less iteration. Over the last several years, more and more efforts have been put into such research as many industries have distributed their product development to locations with knowledge force. This paper presents a collaborative engine to facilitate collaborations among distributed mechanical designs. Using component-based software technology, collaboration functionality is developed into a set of groupware that makes the collaborative engine applicable to develop new collaborative applications or integrate legacy applications into collaborative environments. An XML-based information representation is developed to streamline the information transmission within the distributed environment. A case study is carried out to show how this engine facilitates designers to collaboratively create a 3D solid model of a same part in real time. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)