Msit Voice April, 2009

Vol : 1 Edtion : 5 April 2009

B +ve…..universal motivating factor!! Unbridled optimistic outlook on life is advised by all, but staying positive in the face of difficulty isn’t all that easy, opine the ones caught in the whirlpool of trouble. Openness to possibilities, a constructive rational attitude combating dogmatic thinking, an experimental approach with a willingness to take calculated risks coupled with a sense of personal responsibility can bail us out of complicated situations. History has proved this time and again and we need to believe in uplifting effects of optimism with an active responsible approach to living in the light of reality. In times of the much talked about recession, optimism becomes an essential ingredient to keep our hope afloat to reach the far-flung shores that we aspire for. Economic slowdown across the globe and recession witnessed in most of the countries has certainly dampened the spirits of all those who are badly hit by the ramifications of the slump. Let us try and understand what recession actually is and why many nations are reeling under the pressure of this swirling current. Before we understand recession, we need to understand certain aspects of market like market economy and market demand and supply. When the consumers are confident in future of economy, they buy more goods and avail more services. This in turn triggers off an increased demand which would lead to more hiring by producers and consumption of more raw materials. As a result, the employment increases which enhances the consumers’ capability to buy more, strengthening the investors’ belief that the trend would continue and hence the value of stock increases. This leads to a rise of over all stock market. Consumers’ compliance to buy is the starting point for a growing economy. On the contrary, the same cycle goes in a reverse direction when the consumers are reluctant to buy because of the same reasons afore mentioned and the overall stock market falls and this phenomenon leads to a declining economy. Coming to market demand and supply, competitive prices prevailing in the market imply more demand as demand is not measured in terms of quantity but it is the price at which the consumer is prepared to buy and producer is ready to sell. Recession is the downturn of economy shrinking for two consecutive quarters (=6 months) with a decrease in GDP. GDP stands as a good indicator of economy as it represents the value of all the reported goods and services produced by the people operating in the country, and so if it’s growing, then market is growing due to increased demand. If the recession continues for next quarter (> 6 months) then we go through depression economy. Let’s look at the reasons which could cause a recession. It can be traced to either over production or low confidence level of consumers. Over production occurs because of pseudo demand where supply exceeds demand. Low confidence level of consumers could be due to word of mouth publicity as they get to hear job cuts, companies’ bankruptcy etc and start saving money instead of spending money causing a downward spiral and producers begin cost cutting activities worried about profitability. There might be an effect on confidence level due to bad incidents happening like, Sep 11 attacks, or Mumbai attacks in India. The repercussions of such attacks can be seen in Airline and Hotel industries, which in turn can affect the food caterers to these industries. If the company decides to lay off people or reduce the salaries, the demand for goods will go down and people start saving instead of spending. This is an example to illustrate how one industry can hit many other industries when the confidence level of consumers and producers is hit. How do we identify that our economy is into recession? Decrease in consumption of goods and services, slowdown on the production front in the factories, fall in personal income, and an unstable and unhealthy stock market. Is there a way to come out of recession? Today it is a free market economy where producers can decide their selling price and consumers can accordingly take a call to go for them or to refrain from purchasing them. Hence, government can only influence through its policies. Fiscal policies like tax cuts on businesses and individuals, spending more on creating jobs, unemployment insurance etc can help market recover as the demand picks up. Monetary policies where RBI reduces reserve ratio, enabling the banks to give more loans. RBI could reduce the interest rates or buy government bonds using its own reserved money to help markets recover.

It is important for any nation to wriggle out of recession and put up a healthy stock market. Recession in a country is influenced by the actions of everybody living in that country and so understanding the repercussions of a non spending population is essential. Currently most of the developed countries like US, Japan, Germany are into a recession and countries like India and China are into a slow down stage and not in recession. Let’s stay positive that things would definitely show up and we would be out of recession very soon and get back to our GDP growth rate of 8% to 10%. Padmaja N Principal Mentor, SoftSkills.

And God replied…. There was once a man, who throughout his life, Said a prayer which would always be, “Lord, when I’m to leave this world, weary and old”, “It’s you who should come to receive me” Keeping this faith in mind, the man went on a trek, Where he was confronted by a bear, “I must not fear,” said the man confidently, “For I know the Lord is there” Yet even as he said this, the bear steadily approached, “And Lord see to me!” the man frantically cried, But the bear ofcourse leapt and squeezed him hard And the man instantly died. “Not fair!” the man howled on reaching heaven “This has been a very bitter lesson I’ve had to learn,” “For all my prayers and faith in you,” “This is what I get in return!” “But my dear child,” said the Lord soothingly, As if quietly taking the blame, “You asked that I come to receive you and so, “With open arms I came!” -

Amrita Suresh ( Written when I was 17 )

MSIT Project List for R&D Showcase’09

A Scheme for Contention Window Adjustment By Ravi Kant Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) based on the IEEE 802.11have been widely implemented in most commercial products available in the market. This paper proposes a simple and effective contention window-resetting scheme, named Random Increment(RI) , to improve the performance of the contention based IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). Performance results are obtained by the simulation analysis to identify the improvement of RI in terms of throughput and packet delay comparing to the Binary Exponential Backoff (BEB) utilized in the legacy IEEE 802.11 DCF. An approach to tune Backoff algorithm of IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks at Run time By Jayapaul K. The primary medium access control (MAC) technique of IEEE 802.11 is called distributed coordination function (DCF) . The default DCF is a carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) scheme with binary slotted exponential backoff. Some of the limitations of this scheme are a). It is independent of the network state, i.e. whether the medium is busy or idle. b). The contention window size is reset to extreme values, either doubled or CWmin. The proposed scheme periodically tunes the CW size based on the number of successful acknowledgements sent. There by it considers the state of the network, before modifying the CW. And it is modeled based on an user defined value like +/- 5, this approach is quite defensive and would stabilize the network operation w.r.t. QoS parameters.

Enhanced RTS/CTS Scheme for IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks based on Retransmissions By Ch. Swathi IEEE 802.11 based wireless networks use the RTS/CTS handshake to combat interference and hidden node problem, both happening frequently in wireless networks leading to frame collisions. As per the RTS/CTS scheme, RTS and CTS frames are exchanged between sender and receiver, respectively before transmission of DATA frame. The RTS/CTS mechanism is controlled by setting the “RTS threshold” value.We propose a new enhanced RTS/CTS scheme. As per the proposed scheme, we intend to vary the use of RTS/CTS exchange depending on the traffic type. The first proposed scheme ensures to get a network feedback in order to use the RTS/CTS mechanism. Every application has a different requirement for QoS delivery and therefore the same scheme might not be effective if it is not application dependent. Therefore the second proposed scheme makes the network application dependent and varies accordingly the RTS threshold for different types of tra traffic. Dynamic and Differentiated Retry mechanism for IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks By Srinivas Kraleti Unlike Ethernet, wireless networks are more prone to losses and have an inbuilt mechanism for retransmissions called retry mechanism. Retry Mechanism ensures successful data transmission in wireless networks based on IEEE 802.11 Std. According to retry mechanism whenever there is a failure of RTS or DATA frame, that particular frame will be retransmitted. The threshold for number of retransmission attempts is called “retry limit”. So, retransmissions occur till this threshold in case of RTS or DATA frames. The default scheme is not application dependent and it is not dynamic for retry mechanism which means retry limit is fixed for complete network operation. Hence a new scheme is proposed which modifies the retry limit at RetransmitRTS and RetransmitDATA. Additionally this scheme is made to behave in accordance with application type there by introducing the differentiated QOS service.

Differentiated Contention Window Scheme for IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks By Nagireddy A new contention window scheme is proposed to incorporate the application dependency. In default scheme the contention window change is similar for all applications, it is not application dependent. The basic idea of the proposed mechanism is that the change in contention window size is different for Real time applications and data traffic applications. The proposed mechanism improves the quality in terms of delay, jitter, and loss. The performance of the new scheme is also discussed with simulation results.

Awareness about awareness Necessity is said to be the mother of Invention. What about ‘Discovery’? How do you discover anything? Learning is in fact discovering. When a baby leans to walk it discovers what its legs are capable of. To learn to swim one seeks guidance from trainers. For some, it is as easy as walking and they tell you to jump into water and you’ll start swimming as to save your life and that’s how you learn how to swim. The principle applies to everyone. Not everyone is capable of learning by themselves; they need a teacher or a guide. Discovery can happen only when you are aware of the world around you. Knowledge is attained by learning. But how do you attain awareness. How can anyone be aware of what is outside their domain. A medium or guide is important and necessary for awareness. One can know about an exam notification through the medium of advertising. But how does one know about the exam in the first place? He/she needs a guide/mentor to tell him so. People of the higher class usually are aware of any kind of education. And they can provide the best of education for their children. But as we go down the classes of economy, the realm of awareness decreases. I belong to the middle class and I discovered the existence of an education called MBA in my first year of engineering. I learned about the existence of IIMs in the third year. For introverts like me the world is small. Many, who have always been asked to keep their mouth shut all the time and keep away from anything, have a problem in discovering the reality. “Nobody told me” is their usual answer. For people, who have some basic curiosity or the natural ability to wander off in to the unknown and discover things, awareness is no big deal. They can’t imagine people without it. “How could you not know?” is their common question. When people are not aware of opportunities they believe there is no hope. A suicidal person who is unaware of a way out of his/her situation believes that his/her fate is sealed. They believe they have no way out and the only way they know of getting out is getting out of their body. And this is because nobody showed them how the world is full of opportunities. A girl fails in love and she believes the world has come to an end. A boy gets ragged in college and he believes he cannot survive another minute. These are people who need people to make them discover the value of life. For everyone it is important to discover the world and the immense scope it gives, so that they understand how simple their world actually is.

Let’s Pledge Not very long ago, when I was doing my MS in IT at IIIT, went out with my friends to watch a movie. After the movie, we retired to eat the most cheapest (now I say economic), greasiest and of course the delicious food at Hyderabad House. While we were hogging our way to eternity one among us started a conversation about how every sucks at Counter Strike except him. And obviously it led to an interesting argument… it generated a heat in the argument… the ragging masalas cooking our livers for their appetites lead to a kick in our heads and we took a pledge to burry our challengers alive (of course in the game). We took out our bikes, started racing on the streets of Hyderabad from Mehadipatnam to IIIT. Screams of pillion riders for their life didn’t stop us from raising the accelerators. They screamed and we raced. One won the race and rest lost it. But two were yet to complete the race. We waited for them for say 10 minutes. As the masalas ravages our senses one among us picked up his mobile, calls one of the missing guys

and yells, “Where the hell are you guys?” to find out that they met with an accident. Not because some one came in between or the breaks failed, only because of the excitement. I never raced after that, but after that I met 6 accidents, playing it safe. So, moral of the story is? Driving with absolute irresponsibility and just with the gut feeling is the safest way to ride the bike? Of course not. Moral of the story is that when you try to do things the right way you will always be discouraged by something or the other. But did that put me to a stop? No I still don’t race. I drive 6 times more carefully on the streets. I am a better judge of traffic now. No matter whom we become tomorrow or what we are today, just try to remember all the time that positive attitude takes us to better places. And whenever you set yourself out to do the right things there are always obstacles. It’s always tempting to download a movie on to your laptop and watch it. It’s always tempting to jump the signal when you find that there is no harm in doing it. It’s easy to leave the food when it’s not tasty or if you feel that you had enough. It’s always easy to bribe someone and get things done. It’s always easy to honk our way out in the traffic. It’s always easy to say, “I don’t think it’s actually working out”. It’s always a comfortable to do things tomorrow. It’s always exciting to spend today. It’s easy to blame it on someone else. I take this opportunity to make an effort to put things in the right direction. I really don’t intend to change all of you who read this article. I consider myself successful if I can make a difference. If any one of you can think for once before taking any easy step. Please pledge along with me for a better future: 1. I’ll pay the fine rather than bribing. 2. I’ll watch the movies only in the theater and buy the audio tracks to listen to them. 3. I’ll finish up my entire meal and if I feel its access then I’ll pack it and give it to someone who needs it. 4. I’ll try to talk things out instead of raising my hand. 5. I’ll abide by traffic rules and never jump a signal. 6. I’ll not honk on the streets; I’ll understand the use of a horn and use it responsibly. 7. I’ll turn off my vehicle on the signals. 8. I’ll always respect elders. Instead of raising my voice I’ll try to reason with them. I try until I succeed. 9. I’ll stop donating money to less privileged on the street. I’ll be strong and act responsible. 10. I’ll try not to avoid paying my taxes and I’ll vote. Raghu Ram MSIT Alumni.

Beauty of Nature

What according to you is beauty of nature? Is it the clean and green environment, the hills and mountains around us? They are just a part of the beautiful nature and beauty of nature is not exactly this it is something more than this. Beauty unlike love, success or anything else has its own forte. A poet said “never anyone can bring beauty into existence”, but that is not true and this piece of writing is all about how you can bring the beauty into existence. God has mingled beauty in all the things created by him right from inert substances to living creatures and also to our words. We are responsible to find out the beauty in all things in and around us. Beauty of nature lies in every single moment of life which we live and few examples could be a blind woman feeding her baby, a handicapped elderly man carrying his son on his shoulders, a small kid trying to stand on his own, a soldier sacrificing his life for others to survive, an animal trying to become one among the members of a family, and I can go on giving you countless examples of the inexplicable beauty. The beauty of nature always lies in us and we can bring it into our world with our nature, and attitude towards others. Joy of life is nature’s beauty so preserve it as much as you can. Never give up in life, enjoy life as it comes. Things are worse for others and are a lot better for us. There are many things which catch our eye but only a few can touch our heart- pursue those and always be happy. Ekta Agarwal MSIT, JNTU 1st Year. Sun Tech Days

New Labs at MSIT IIIT-H