Hosting a RIPE ATLAS Probe in Atlanta

My RIPE ATLAS Probe

I used RIPE Atlas for my Internet measurements in my IFIP Networking 2018 paper (NetUber: A cloud-assisted overlay network as an alternative connectivity provider) and consequently my thesis. I consumed the RIPE Atlas credits from my co-author for those experiments. Afterward, I requested RIPE to send me a probe, and now I have received it! I have connected it to my home router. My probe is currently connected to the RIPE Atlas network and started receiving traffic. I am happy to contribute back to the Internet measurements community! Now I am accumulating RIPE Atlas credits every day. Time for a very large-scale Internet measurement experiment.

A few things that made my 2018 interesting..

A day in Monaco

2018 is one of my most favorite years. It gave me lots of happy moments. Adhering to the habit I started in 2012, this post summarizes 30 things that made my 2018 interesting.

1. Submitting my Ph.D. thesis

I planned to defend by 2018 October. But it got delayed, and I will defend early next year. However, I have submitted the thesis, and my Ph.D. research is complete. :)

2. Return to Emory University, Atlanta
Emory BMI for a longer stint after my previous short one in 2016. Everything felt the same and different at the same time.

3. A day in Monaco, walking across the entire country
It is trivial to walk across a country if it is as small as Monaco. :)

4. The conclusion of Ph.D. collaborations
It is important to conclude the collaborations on a positive note. As my Ph.D. nears the end, I am happy that my collaborations from URijeka (SDSC) and KAUST (NetUber and Dynam-IX) also came to successful completion.

5. Sleepless nights in Shenzhen, China
When deadlines come, you get to work wherever you are. I ended up working overnights for the successful submission of Óbidos.

6. Shopping in rainy and windy days in Jeju
I was lucky (or was that Jeju, which indeed was fortunate to receive me?). After I left Jeju, in a few months, I learned that Jeju does not offer visa-free entry to Sri Lankans anymore.

7. Best Paper Award at SDS'18
I received the best paper award at SDS'18 for my paper on Software-Defined Data Services (SDDS). It was an exciting moment.

Barcelona, once again!

8. Random Walks in Barcelona, once more!
This is a city I adore. I am getting familiar with this city more and more.

9. Cruise in Zurich Lake
Zurich was still cold in May. Of course not as cold as my last visit for the 2017 New Year's Eve. But still raining.

10. IFIP Networking 2018 with an overdose of caffeine
IFIP is a conference I always wanted to participate. Had the chance to present NetUber there this year, finally.

11. Spending a whole day in Sesimbra Beach
Sesimbra is a beach town close to Lisboa in the Setúbal district. I always wanted to go there. I got the chance finally this year.

12. First journal papers and book chapters of my Ph.D.
I started working on 3 journal papers (Évora, Óbidos, and SD-CPS) and 2 book chapters (SDN for big data and SDN for service compositions) last year. They all got accepted and published this year!

13. The views of French Riviera
Despite the predicted weather that it would be warmer than Barcelona, Nice turned out to be cloudy and colder.

14. Fresh Seafood in Jeju
Watching the show of octopus, squids, and several similar sea creatures being cooked alive for me.

15. Leaving Portugal and EU after 6 years
I don't think I will ever forget those sweet memories of Lisboa. Experiencing 'saudade', as we call it in Portugal.

16. Almada, just across the Tagus River.
Pleasant environment, but busy days.

17. Presenting my CAT at IST
I should have tried to make the IST's CAT and UCL's confirmation as a single presentation. But due to the difference in UCL and IST requirements, I chose to make 2 different presentations. With the CAT and my thesis submission, I have met all the requirements for the thesis (ABD/All But Dissertation).

18. A slow-paced year, quite the opposite of 2017
2017 was way too fast with several migrations and travels. 2018, on the other hand, was more stable and slow-paced. This was the first time during the past 6 years that we stayed home during the new year's eve. Feeling somewhat old.

19. Becoming a morning person in Atlanta
Love those early morning commutes to work while it is still dark and cold outside.

20. Hopping on to random buses in Jeju, hoping to reach the destination eventually.

Rainy days in Jeju

And we did. I even made an algorithm out of this.

21. Bus Commutes from Calçada de Carriche to my lab
My apartment was in Calçada de Carriche, a bit farther from my lab, INESC-ID Lisboa, compared to my previous neighborhoods. Therefore, needed a relatively longer bus commute.

22. Parque das Nações revamped.

Parque das Nações is my favorite spot in Lisboa. It has improved within the past few years with new restaurants, yet maintained its charm. It felt nostalgic.

23. Exploring more of greater Lisboa

Even after 6 years in Lisboa, we realized that there were a few places that we hadn't visited. This year, we visited the Loures region and its big shopping mall for the first time. 

24. Évora after 4 years

Évora has its historical significance. It is also where I was informed that I was selected to the prestigious EMJD-DC program with the grant, 4 years ago.

25. Trying to relive moments in Portugal

As we count the last days in Lisboa, we tried our best to visit our favorite places just one more time, with mixed success.

26. Atlanta Botanical Garden in night lights

The entire botanical garden was shining in colorful lights and music during the December nights.

27. Ponce City Market, Atlanta

I like the interiors of this small-scale shopping mall, especially its food court. It gives strong memories.

28. Assembling Furniture from IKEA

IKEA furniture shopping and assembling them for the first time. A fun experience.

29. Atlanta Christkindl Market

Christmas markets are a significant part of the festival season. This market in Atlanta reminded me of the ones I experienced in EU during the past 6 years, such as, Lisbon, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Louvain-la-Neuve Christmas markets.

30. Poble Espanyol, Barcelona

An open-air museum that summarizes entire Spain. Not too big. But it was a pleasant walk with architectures and some snacks from different Spanish regions.

Every year, I have one new year's resolution - to outperform my previous year. :) I already have high expectations for 2019. I wish you a happy new year everyone. Thanks for reading my list until the end. You may also read the blog posts of all the previous years as well.

My "CAT"/ Ph.D. Proposal

Today I presented my CAT, " Software-Defined Systems for Network-Aware Service Composition and Workflow Placement". I should have presented the CAT much earlier. However, it was delayed, and now I have presented it just a few months before my final defense. I received a grade of 18/20 for the CAT. The presentation slides are attached below.

Software-Defined Systems for Network-Aware Service Composition and Workflow Placement from Pradeeban Kathiravelu

The Conference Survival Guide

SoCPar 2010, Paris

I enjoy attending conferences. I never attended a conference when I did not have something to present. This is usually because of the funding, as it is unlikely for me to get funded to a conference when I am not presenting my work. So far, WWW2011 is the only conference that I attended without having a paper to present. Conferences help me fine tune my research, make new friends and build a network. I still vividly recall my first conference, SoCPaR 2010. I was presenting our paper, and luckily for me, I had 3 of my best friends with me. I was not alone. We all were co-authors of the paper, a team effort during our BSc times. I recall presenting the paper confidently and discussing with other researchers. Prof. Ajith Abraham of MIRLABS, who was organizing the conference remarked that he remembered us, a 4-member team arriving in Paris all the way from Sri Lanka to present our paper. It was a nice experience to travel to Paris, my first overseas trip. It was a cold winter, full of snow. The conference was held in Université de Cergy-Pontoise. I met two researchers from the same university in latter conferences, bringing back memories from 2010. 

Be prepared for the delayed luggage

Interestingly, the second conference I presented my paper was again in Paris in 2014. This time, it was MASCOTS, and this was the first paper of my MSc, and also the first paper as the first author. The other conference as part of my MSc research was UCC'14 in London. I met my friend there after a long time, and we had some good chat!

I love visiting different countries and various cities. Attending conferences also offers this opportunity. Moreover, the conferences immediately give you some partners to travel with. You meet some random researchers and make friends with them - because of the shared research interest (or purely because you are from the same university, country, or have something in common other than the research interest). For the rest of the conference, you can explore the city with them.

I try my best to attend all the sessions at the conferences. However, sometimes it is inevitable that I miss one session. Especially the earliest one on the day following my presentation. This is because sometimes I feel tired after the long presentation and its preparations and oversleep the following day. I also enjoy the coffee breaks, lunch times, and the gala dinner. The ideal time to make friends. You are lucky if your presentation comes on the first day. You can relax and enjoy the remaining talks/sessions without having to check your presentation once in a while.

I have attended several conferences during my Ph.D. As a result, I have traveled to several cities: Tempe, AZ, USA (IC2E'15); Berlin, Germany (IC2E'16); San Francisco, CA, USA (AMIA'16 and ICWS'16); Rhodes, Greece (CoopIS'16); Valencia, Spain (SDS'17); Munich, Germany (VLDB'17); Barcelona, Spain (SDS'18); and Zurich, Switzerland (Networking'18). Sometimes, I have one or two additional days following a conference. I use these days to travel to a near-by country or a city.

IFIP Networking'18 is my last conference as a Ph.D. student. It was also my best conference experience so far. I thoroughly enjoyed and actively participated in IFIP where I presented my paper, NetUber. I attended all the sessions. Conferences make me happy. And caffeine helps me remain super-active throughout the whole day of sessions, followed by evening and nightly walks. An overdose of caffeine made me super-active throughout the IFIP sessions. However, after I returned from the conference I became a zombie, with the withdrawal symptoms. :D

Conferences always leave me with good memories - no exceptions so far. They give me more knowledge, and also other experiences with travels. I thank all the conference organizers and volunteers who make sure that we all have good experience attending the conference.

Moving Bits with a Fleet of Shared Virtual Routers

Today I presented my paper titled "Moving Bits with a Fleet of Shared Virtual Routers" at IFIP Networking 2018 in Zurich. The presentation was very interactive. This was my work from KAUST. It is nice to be back in Zurich.

Moving bits with a fleet of shared virtual routers from Pradeeban Kathiravelu

Abstract: The steady decline of IP transit prices in the past two decades has helped fuel the growth of traffic demands in the Internet ecosystem. Despite the declining unit pricing, bandwidth costs remain significant due to ever-increasing scale and reach of the Internet, combined with the price disparity between the Internet's core hubs versus remote regions. In the meantime, cloud providers have been auctioning underutilized computing resources in their marketplace as spot instances for a much lower price, compared to their on-demand instances. This state of affairs has led the networking community to devote extensive efforts to cloud-assisted networks --- the idea of offloading network functionality to cloud platforms, ultimately leading to more flexible and highly composable network service chains.

We initiate a critical discussion on the economic and technological aspects of leveraging cloud-assisted networks for Internet-scale interconnections and data transfers. Namely, we investigate the prospect of constructing a large-scale virtualized network provider that does not own any fixed or dedicated resources and runs atop several spot instances. We construct a cloud-assisted overlay as a virtual network provider, by leveraging third-party cloud spot instances. We identify three use case scenarios where such approach will not only be economically and technologically viable but also provide performance benefits compared to current commercial offerings of connectivity and transit providers.