Simulator touch-ups

We want to upload a more finished form of the simulator soon. For this reason, we've been working to remove difficult operating procedures from the simulation testbed and to streamline the operation in addition to bug-removal. With some great help from Dr. Zartash, I've done some major touch-ups and we'll soon be finally uploading this new version of our GELS simulator. After our presentation at IEEE GlobeCom 2007, Dr. Zartash will be delivering a tutorial session at Doha Qatar next year. We are planning to hand out CD-ROMs containing our simulator source code during the tutorial.

Gearing up for conference

Last night, Dr. Zartash and Dr. Shahab Baqai initiated the launch of the 2nd International Networking and Communications Conference (INCC) 2008. The first one was held in 2004 and was a huge success. This time is expected to be even better. I'm also chipping in some volunteer efforts. We've inintiated the IEEE Communications Society Technical Co-sponsorship request and will soon move forward with the IEEE Conference Acquisition. The conference will be held on May 1-3, 2008. The conference website is coming up real soon.

For all Pakistani researchers

If you are a researcher in Pakistan, who has published a research paper in a conference abroad, you may avail the HEC Travel Grant for Conference Paper Presentation Abroad. However, be wary of the following:
1- Have a proof of oral presentation during the conference attached with the application for travel grant. This means a letter from the organizers.
2- When filling the application form, do not pay any attention to the airfare being the lowest with the "most direct route." Get PIA fare only. They dont say it in the application form, but the post approval sanction letter says that you must travel by PIA and if you dont, you must document the reason for not doing so. That requires approval from the Finance Ministry. If getting the grant approved isnt difficult enough, getting through another level of bureaucracy will be nearly impossible.
Happy presenting

Conditionally cleared PhD qualifying exam

I was declared conditionally passed in the PhD qualifying exam held in our department at LUMS. The condition is to clear a course in Digital System Design with a minimum of B+ within the next one year. I am happy to have moved closer to another milestone.

Camera ready paper submitted to IEEE GlobeCom 2007

After I worked with my advisor and my co-author Atif Nazir all day yesterday, and they spent the night working on the paper after I departed at 11 pm, and I caught up with them today, we have submitted the camera ready copy of the research paper "A simulation study of GELS for Ethernet over WAN." We found some issues with the simulation results before submission of the camera ready paper and I had to incorporate several fixes to the simulator code with very valuable help and guidance from my advisor and Atif Nazir.

Paper accepted

Our paper on simulation study of GELS has been accepted in IEEE GlobeCom 2007, a premier conference on networking and telecommunications. It is a moment of great joy for us. I am the first author. We owe a lot to Dr. Zartash Uzmi for his tremendous amount of work in the writing of the paper in addition to our own efforts in doing the same. All reviews rated our paper as "well-written."

Executive summary

I've just submitted this executive summary to my advisor. This is related to the summer seminar that every PhD student has to give here at LUMS in the summer. This summarizes the work that we did related to the GELS framework.

Project webpage online

The web page for the LUMS Siemens GMPLS Controlled Ethernet Label Switching project is now live!

Submitted to GlobeCom 2007

It's the 50th anniversary of GlobeCom. It's a premier networking conference. We've submitted a paper about GMPLS Controlled Ethernet Label Switching (GELS) to this conference today. It wouldnt have been possible without the untiring amazing hard work by my advisor Dr. Zartash. I had gone to Sialkot at a crucial stage due to the death of my cousin. I came back the next day, which was one day before the deadline. I had been up all night and driving tired. I slept for only a couple of hours and came for an all night long hard work at Dr. Zartash's office. I slept for three hours at 3 am and then resumed work with him. Atif Nazir was there and he went to sleep later on. Fawaz joined us at around 10 am. By 1 pm, we had completed the paper and submitted it to the conference. My friends later discovered some needed corrections to the paper which were incorporated by my advisor and the paper submitted to the conference again. I'm hoping and praying for the paper to be accepted.