Pretty Good News

Destroy from the inside, erupt like volcano 

Jónsi 

I'm not really good at this, but it's time to show off just a bit. Let's make it quick, in chronological order:

• Historical BGPlay (my thesis work) finally exists, is on RIPE Labs and has been presented at the 60th RIPE meeting in Prague;
• I just graduated cum laude in Computer Science at my home university Roma Tre; and...
• ...I'm leaving in July for a summer internship at CAIDA in San Diego, California. YAY! Life is definitely good sometimes. Pretty often actually.

So now I have a two-month limbo to spend doing absolutely nothing serious - which is good. At CAIDA I'll be working on another visualization project, exploring some of the new research topics they're dealing with right now - which is good as well. As hell.

A friend of mine noticed that I made a good forecast when I first wrote about Amsterdam, citing the well-known song by Phantom Planet which goes like Caaaaalifooooorniaaaa here we coooooome. So what's gonna happen with the Icelandic song I mentioned this time? Destiny's call...

Here's my presentation for Historical BGPlay. Enjoy!

One month left...

I won't be back here 
though we may meet again 
Slint 

...and hundreds of deadlines approaching. Actually just half a dozen, which doesn't sound better anyway.

I've been working like a dog in these last two weeks, and hopefully our beloved Historical BGPlay will be available within a few days somewhere. Basically I just need to stop aiming at some platonic idea of perfection and say: 'Ok, that's it!'.

Some big news are floating in the air; yet it's not time to be more specific. Or at least, that's what I learnt so far from that famous skeptic Apostle whose incredulity is accounted in a well-known holy book - the very same one I saw once here in a bookstore next to mediterranean recipes and kamasutra's, but that's a different story. In the meantime some little meaningless hints might come in handy.

We'll see...

(switch. photo by me)

Going Technical (not that much)

There's always a siren singing you to shipwreck
Radiohead

As the title suggests, this (pretty verbose) post is for anyone interested in what my work will roughly consist of. For those who do not master things like graph theory and routing protocols, it may still be interesting to read the example below, or to look at the bottom of this post for a colorful example.

The first step of my thesis concerns the enhancement of BGPlay, an application developed by the CompuNet Research Group at Roma Tre University and currently hosted by Oregon Route Views. It shows animated graphs with edges (peerings) connecting nodes (Autonomous Systems), therefore allowing an intuitive analysis of interdomain routing events related to a specified prefix, within a time interval. My contribution will be to adapt BGPlay's interface to the INRDB, a prototypical database realized by the Science Group at the RIPE NCC, containing historical data gathered from many authoritative sources. The aim is to provide an instrument for a long-term, coarse-grained analysis of major trends and events affecting the Internet throughout its (relatively) long history.

In plain words? Alice wastes hours on Facebook playing FarmVille. Her CowComputer unwillingly converts every passionate click into a Mooossage, sending it to some FarmerComputer somewhere. Before reaching the FarmerComputer, every message goes through many welcoming TransitFarms. If a FlockOfDumbSheep proudly blocks the path, the Mooossage is incredibly smart enough to find another way visiting different TransitFarms, without letting Alice notice any difference. If however a MadFarmer puts some misleading road signs on the way to the FarmerComputer, or if some NastyChickens tear down all the bridges to cross over the unfailing river, the Mooossage is only able to commit a honorific suicide. Well, in both cases BGPlay acts as the black box secretly hidden under the Mooossage's skin, allowing Alice to understand what led it to such an extreme action.

If you are still awake, here's a video showing a real case study: the Youtube prefix hijacking by Pakistan Telecom in February 2008. It was realized using the previous version of BGPlay, already hosted by the RIPE NCC for some time. Enjoy!

 (Youtube prefix hijacking. More info here)