May 15, 2015May 16, 2015 by fromjia

A Packet’s Journey

Understanding Networks

My final project is based on research of NYU-NET and networking hardware and software. It’s also a parody of The Neverending Story, because, well, data packets are neverending like the story and books are replaced by networked devices and computers, so yeah.

The challenge is to make it entertaining and simple to learn about networks with the objective of informing the curious minded. In my outline, I listed out key concepts I needed to cover, such as Internet Protocol, Autonomous System, Routers, Switches, etc. And I tried to incorporate these concepts into the storyline. In terms of the design, I think I’ve succeeded in achieving cheesiness (hopefully in a good way). All visual elements were drawn with only shapes that Google Slide provides.

Click here to view in Google slides. There are glittery gifs left out from the static screenshots below.

Reference links:

ITS NYU-NET Operational Principles

NYU IP Address Space

Head First Networking

Also, thanks to Tom and Karl for showing me how devices are networked in ITP, and to Craig for speaking with his boss at ITS about some of my NYU-NET questions.

April 22, 2015April 22, 2015 by fromjia

Beacon Scavenger Game

Understanding Networks

Today’s Understanding Networks class was a Beacon scavenger hunt. Tom and Maria Paula hid a group of Beacons (Arduinos and Raspberry Pi) around the floor. These Beacons share the same service UUID and characteristic UUID. The assignment and challenge was to build an app that would scan, connect and read the values of these characteristics and earn points. The first team to earn 50 points unlocks the golden egg, which is the last Beacon to discover.

The game rule was to get close enough to each Beacon to claim them. Since the server that was checking this had no way of knowing the actual RSSI value any Beacon was sending to my phone, I cheated a bit by hardcoding the RSSI into my app, so I can scan and claim Beacons even if I’m not close enough. My team earned the most points but lost the golden egg, because another team had connected to it with the LightBlue app. Just shows how sometimes using readymade technology and manual labor can beat out hours of coding something automated from scratch.

The code for my app is here.

Here’s how the app worked. We didn’t have time to make an UI for the app, so I just added some alerts and appended responses in JSON to the html to understand what’s going on.

After login and retrieving a token from the server, I tap the scan button to scan all Beacons with a specific service UUID and list them out.

I tap on any of the listed Beacons to connect, read the value, package its data into an object, and post it to the server to claim points.

So close to claiming the golden egg!

Most importantly, we all got cupcakes in the end.

April 3, 2015April 3, 2015 by fromjia

Traverse the NYU-NET (or Packet’s guide to the AS12)

Understanding Networks

NYU-NET is NYU’s Internet-connected network of computers, computer-related equipment, and information resources. It’s a collection of hardware, software, operating procedures, and policies.

NYU-Domain is an Autonomous System (AS12). It is a collection of IP routing prefixes administrated by NYU with clearly defined routing policy to the Internet.

A Brief History of NYU-NET

1957 – The Courant Institute at NYU gets an IBM 704 computer
ARPANet allowed file transfer and remote login techniques between Courant and other research groups

1983 – ARPANet transition from NCP protocol set to TCP/IP
NYSERNet becomes the first regional network to establish connectivity in the New York State region. NYU-NET partners with NYSERNet

1985 – NYU installed its own internal telephone system, laid broadband cable connecting all main buildings for TV and data communication

1990s – Thousands of nodes are connected through buffered repeaters and low cost terminal control units. Encounters problems running the entire network.

1993 – NYU migrate to NYU-NET-2, a fiber based, routed network with a double ring that loosely circles Washington Square Park. Hubs on the ring connect the outlying NYU buildings around Manhattan

1995 to 1999 – Explosion of applications with the entrance of the World Wide Web, HTML, XML, etc.

Infrastructure