Nanyang Optical Company Strategy

Nanyang Optical Company Strategy Overview Nanyang Optical is a well established company in Singapore, with more than 30 years of experience in retail, wholesale and manufacturing in the eyewear industry. They are one of Singapores largest optical retail chains with more than 20 outlets operating in Singapore, Indonesia and China. The reason why Nanyang Optical is able to get to where it is today is because of the product design and development strategies they have adopted throughout the years. Nanyang Optical uses both the market pull and technology push strategy to attract new customers and retain old customers. The managing director of Nanyang Optical, Mr Yang Wah Kiang, is a man with foresight. He was able to see opportunities in coming up with innovative eyewear designs, which eventually gave them an edge over competitors. His entrepreneurial abilities, together with his creativity as a product designer, led to successful creations of award winning eyewear. This included the Urband design, which product development process will look studied in this paper. Background Eyeglasses were created in the 13th century with the sole purpose of aiding the user to read and write [1]. Developments in the eyeglasses were in the functional aspect rather than on the â€Å"fashion† aspect. It was not until the 1980s that customers insist on having eyeglass frames as both a functional equipment and fashion accessory. Since then, design of eyewear began to pick off with many clothing designers diversifying their resources in designing high-end mainstream frames [2]. Companies around the world, in Japan, China, Europe, are designing eyewear for the mass market. Both their frames, similar looking within their classes, vary only in colors and/or materials. Niche designers such as Alain Milki and Toki specialized in unique and more expensive frames with great customer appeal. However, customers have to pay a premium for such products. Nanyang Optical took advantage of the situation to come up with innovative eyewear that has its own identity and character. Mr Yang came up with simple yet strong frames which were aesthetically pleasant. This move, together with some marketing strategies, gave Nanyang Optical a competitive advantage over other retailers. Scope In chapter 2, the general strategies adopted by Nanyang Optical, such as the market pull and technology push factors will be presented. In Chapter 3, the product development process of a particular eyewear, Urband will be studied. This will be followed by an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the development process in Chapter 4. The Nanyang Optical Strategy Product differentiation is imperative as customers hunt for the cheaper alternative between two similar products [3]. Nanyang Optical was able to identify opportunities [4] in the fashion eyewear industry, designing high differentiated frames that are functionally superior, specifically for the mass market who desire niche designs and high-end market, with affordable prices relative to clothing designers eyewear. Nanyang Optical adopted both market pull and technology push approaches in their eyewear designs, with a customer focused competitive strategy. Market Pull Strategy Flexis, Urband And Link frames The Flexis, Urband and Link â€Å"innovation eyewear† are shining examples of new platform, market pull products. These frames are marketed to anyone of any age, even old people who feel they are â€Å"young at heart†. Flexis appeals to customers who desire a full rim frame that is lightweight, comfortable and has minimal visual obstruction [5]. The Urband frame attracts the masses with its innovative design of a light, modern, almost indestructible frame that is aesthetically superior. Its titanium frame variant offers a sleek, urban style whereas its acetate counterpart portrays a more youthful look with its thicker, hipper build. With all these features, it is priced lower than luxury brands. Link frames are catered for the niche segment of mass market with its simple design and its wide variety of shapes, colors and styles for the front piece. Customers are given a special casing, shaped as an oval with a center cut out for attaching to their bags to create a fashion statement. Link spectacles can be easily accessed and stowed without the hassle of removing the case. Urband and Link were chosen as winners of the 2006 iF material award, a valuable award viewed by many designers. Although Nanyang Opticals competitors were able to design such frames, they required special tools for assembly and disassembly, causing inconvenience to retailers and customers. Nanyang Optical was first to develop fuss-free innovative eyewear in the market, leading other competitors who claimed to sell â€Å"innovative eyewear† with Prada, Channel or Gucci logos on their frames or sold innovative design frames at twice to four times the price. Japanese innovative eyewear company Toki, the closest competitor to Nanyang Optical, is unable to offer attractive prices as a result of high manufacturing costs in Japan [6]. Excellent Customer Service And Boutique Stalls As part of its corporate values, Nanyang Optical ensures that customers receive the best service and shopping experience, adopting a more expensive channel contact in the form of branches to educate customers about its differentiated and innovative products. The result would be customer loyalty and greater value. Customers contribute feedback on the quality of the products and obtain rapid response in form of improved products and services. Nanyang Optical founded the Alexis Eyewear Boutiques in 1988, which house high-end exclusive eyewear in prime city locations. These outlets target local customers and tourists, providing them with premium services. Winning the Best Eyewear category for three consecutive years was a testimony to their services and excellent customer relationship management [7]. Technology Push Strategy Customers demand corporate social responsibility, causing a paradigm shift from â€Å"less pollution† to â€Å"carbon negative products that have a positive effect on the environment†. Companies have to balance the triangle of sustainability, competitiveness and innovation to ensure future success [8]. Nanyang Optical has embarked on changing their stores and products to â€Å"Green† products, utilizing a full circle recycling system based on recycled materials [9]. Despite having the constraints and limitations of using recycled materials, Nanyang Optical was able to go one step further to create a fundamentally new product that is international award winning, eco-friendly and eco-iconic design such as LinkSkin, made out of recycled materials. Other models including Eyelet used 70% recycled materials with no soldering in its construction, a process that could add emissions of CO2. The award-winning Urband design used no springs, screws or soldering, yet having a stronger structure compared to its competitor models. With its strong design team from Eye-biz, French fashion designers, good quality manufacturers from China and a top management team focused on innovation, eco-design, Nanyang Optical will continue to stay ahead of its competitors in providing a wide range of compelling products to pull the markets, gain customer loyalty and value and innovate new technology products for the benefits of customers and the company. Product Development Process Of Urband In this chapter, the focus will be on the resources and time taken for the development of Urband frames. Urband frame was a brand new concept which uses S-clip to replace the usual springs and screws. Nanyang Optical divided the product development process into three interconnected parts: product function design, product fashion design, and manufacture, with the latter two parts being outsourced to its partners. This method makes good use of all the resources and adopts suitable product design strategy like concurrent engineering to optimize its product design process and handle the new technology requirements and fashion trends. In most cases of eyewear design companies, it takes two to three years to finish the design process of a new product. Therefore, it is vital to arrange the product process properly and gather all the available resources to minimize the cost. Product Function Design This part covers the whole product developing process. It usually lasts for 18 to 36 months depending on the type of products. Nanyang Optical is mainly responsible for the technical improvement and feature development of its new products. In order to take advantage of the low manpower cost in China, Nanyang Optical owns a 1,000-square-foot RD center in Shenzhen. This center houses 10 senior local Chinese research and development professionals and product designers whose main focus is on the technical issues, such material and new frame design concepts. Developing new products is a tedious and time consuming process that involves significant investments and endless obstacles. When Nanyang Optical first came up with the new S-clip design for the frame, it took nearly three years and several iterations to perfect the design, choose the proper material and settle on the final models. Though this design was harder to manufacture in comparison with more conventional designs, these evolutionary new frames were without any springs, screws or soldering and hence they made eyewear stronger and eliminated the age-old problem caused by screws loosing. [10] This new design helped Nanyang Optical to steadily rise among the western rivals. In recent years, Nanyang Optical was quick to respond to customers inclination towards a greener environment. Together with its powerful product design team, Nanyang acted on its social responsibility and began its product development towards eco-friendly and reusable eyewear. Product Fashion Design In this area, Nanyang Optical partnered three French fashion eyewear designers who have experiences with top brand company as well as a sharp trend sense in eyewear fashion. As soon as the prototypes of Urband frames from the China development center were ready, the three designers would be responsible for creating contemporary styles, branding and packaging for Nanyang Optical to enhance the product appeal. The designers will also assemble the product with their French taste of beauty and handle the delicate marketing push sales, hence retaining the high-end frames and attracting more customers. This process usually takes about 6 months. Nanyang Optical believes that French fashion is perceived to be the best and consumers would tend to buy and pay more to purchase French brand, which would allow them â€Å"to have a much better chance of succeeding internationally† than a Asian or an American brands [2]. Manufacture This part will begin after the fashion design is completed. If the manufacturing went smoothly, the latest product could be finished in 1 month. In order to concentrate on the development of eyewear, Nanyang Optical does not operate a factory, which would cost too much effort to deal with the detail fairs. In fact, they outsource their frame production to a Shenzhen company, which is located in a well-developed place with eyewear production facilities. This allows them to lower the manufacture costs. As the unique design like Urband or Link from Nanyang Optical has high failure rates and high production cost, the product development center would send one team to stay with the production company to deal with the production problems as well as inspect the quality, and report the manufacture burden to the development center in time. [2,10] Other Resources Nanyang Optical also cooperates with SIMTech, one of A*STARs center in sustainable manufacturing technologies, to assess the life cycle of its business operations and identify potential areas for improving sustainability. SIMTech has also aided Nanyang Optical in making industrial polymer waste into fashionable eyewear frames by cutting the recycled pellets. This product is not only eco-friendly, but it also helps Nanyang Optical in saving its production cost. [11] Analysis Of Product Development Process In this chapter, the steps taken for the product development process will be evaluated for their strengths and weaknesses. Design In coming up with new eyewear design, the managing director, Mr. Yang, assembled a team of ten research design professionals and trained product designers. The professionals were hand-picked and paid competitively. Having a dedicated product development team allows them to focus intensively on research into facial contours, fashion trends and optical technicalities. For example, it was discovered that titanium could not be used for the S-clips because friction caused titanium to discolor from grey to black. Stainless steel was subsequently adopted for the S-clips. Hence, teams dedicated to their own specific areas allow them to have more time and concentration to do what they are good at, in order to recognise problems and overcome obstacles more easily. Partnership The forming of partnerships with the 3 French designers allowed Mr Yang to leverage on his partners expertise and gave himself more time to focus on issues that were better suited to his own skill set. This allows product development to work concurrently and at the same time give the French designers full responsibilities to work on fashion design, packaging, branding and marketing aspects. The combined product design and fashion efforts were successful when Urband and Linkskin were selected as winners of 2006 iF (International Forum) material award and a 2007 Red Dot award. The Dulles, Va.-based Industrial Designers Society of America named Linkskin a finalist for its 2008 International Design Excellence Awards [12]. More recently, Urband Origami collection had got another two design awards, Red Dot Design Award winner 2009 and 2009 iF material award gold [13]. While Linkskin won 2009 International Forum Design Award Gold. Branding And Marketing Launched of Urband at the SILMO (an essential trade show for professionals in the optics/eyewear sector) industry fair in Paris in October 2005 was very successful as the French national newspaper Le Figaro chose the titanium Urband as the industrys #1 new design and the acetate Urband as #3. Apart from the additional media coverage, one publication even placed Urband alongside mega-brand Oakley in its reviews. The positive reviews and media coverage puts the product in a good position for sales in the market. This showed how important going for the right kind of media coverage is. Mr Yang was smart to launch the eyewear at Europe as he wanted the brand to be identified as European in order to have high prestige and greater pricing power. He also chose the correct fair to launch his eyewear as the fair was a stylish affair, thus giving his eyewear a positive outlook. Manufacturing Outsourcing of the manufacturing aspects allowed Mr Yang to gather all his resources to focus on creativity and improvement on the design of the frame. However, the initial outcome in search for outsourcing to factories was disappointing even though China was responsible for much of the worlds eyewear frame output. Few factory managers were willing to manufacture Urband or Link frames because of their unusual designs. The problem Nanyang Optical faced was that most work has to be performed by hand. This was made more challenging with the many variations between styles and colors. Another problem was that employees have to be given special training and with the high turnover rate, training for new employees has to be carried out frequently. These led to quality control problems, more rework and low yields. 10,000 titanium Urband frames were produced in China in a test run. The components had been outsourced to several factories and the frames had been assembled by hand by Eye-Biz employees. The production was considered a failure because Mr Yang had ordered enough components for 4,000 frames, but only 1,300 assembled frames passed the quality inspection. He had to order more parts and eventually 10,000 finished frames were assembled and approved. â€Å"It was a production nightmare† said Mr Yang. Therefore, when outsourcing is used, the disadvantage would be having the need to work closely with the factories, provide technical support and oversee quality control. Feedbacks The 10,000 frames were distributed in Europe to gather consumer feedbacks and generate industry buzz. The frames manage to sell well, but some consumers later return them to retailers as the color painted onto the titanium faded after several months. Mr Yang resolves this issue with a better color plating technique. Hence, we see how feedbacks will encourage continuous improvement in on-going product development and enhance the brands reputation as a reliable and fashionable product. Conclusion In this paper, we have seen how Nanyang Optical was able to identify the correct opportunities and come up with the right kind of eyewear designs at the appropriate time. They brought in a new kind of innovative eyewear for the mass who wanted niche designs at affordable pricing. These designs were able to cater to customers of all ages, hence attracting many customers. Besides this, Nanyang Optical was responsive towards customers feedback by improving their products and services. This was helpful in building customer loyalty. When there was a move towards a greener environment, Nanyang Optical was also quick to start coming up with eco-friendly products made out of recycled materials. Their sensitivity towards market needs and technology direction allow Nanyang Optical to succeed and maintain its own pool of customers, attracting more potential ones at the same time. In the process of product development, Nanyang Optical was able to take advantage of the low labour cost in China, as well as leverage on the creativity of its French fashion designers. The French designers were able to give a French outlook to the new eyewear, hence increasing the chances of the eyewear in succeeding internationally. Nanyang Optical also practiced concurrent engineering whereby prototypes of new designs were made as early as possible in order to discover any problems in the early stages. Outsourcing certain parts of the development process was a good option for Nanyang Optical as it not only allows them to be able to focus on what they are good at, but also allows them to achieve higher standards in areas they are not experts at. Nanyang Optical was careful in marketing their products. They chose to launch their new eyewear at a prestigious European fair, thus raising their own standards and allowing them to price the products at a higher range. However, not everything was smooth sailing for Nanyang Optical. The biggest obstacle they faced was the challenge in manufacturing the unusual eyewear. This was because most work was to be performed by hand, hence making the process very labor intensive. Training of employees needed to be carried out frequently due to high turnover rates, aggravating the quality control problems and lowering the yields. Every product development process has its own unique set of problems. The company must be prepared and well-equipped to handle all kinds of situations in order to stay competitive. The distribution of workload among partners is also very important as this will contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire product development process. Every stage in the development of a new product, from the initial design stage to the final launch stage must be planned with care to maximize the chances of success. References [1] Glasses (2009). Retrieved September 21, 2009, from Wikipedia Web site, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasses [2] Wee Beng Geok and Nigel Goodwin, Nanyang Optical: beyond production design from idea to launch, The Asia Business Case study, September 21, 2006 [3] Timothy C.G.Fisher and Robert G.Waschik. (2002). Managerial Economics: A game theoretic approach. New York: Routledge. [4] Leong Kah Fai. (2009). Chapter one: Introduction to Product Design. NTU. Singapore. [powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from Nanyang Technological University Blackboard. Site: http://edventure.ntu.edu.sg/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_317678_1%26url% [5] Singapores First eco-friendly Eyewear Store. (2009). Retrieved September 24, 2009, from Nanyang Optical Web site, http://www.nanyang.com.sg/products.html [6] Toki. (2006). Retrieved September 24, 2009, from Toki Web site, http://tokieyewear.com/index.php [7] Chen Chun-Hsien. (2009). Chapter seven: CRM and Mass Customization. NTU. Singapore. [powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from Nanyang Technological University Blackboard. Site: http://edventure.ntu.edu.sg/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_317678_1%26url%3d [8] Eco-innovative Design. (1997). Retrieved September 18, 2009, from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Web site, http://www.oecd.org/home/ [9] Singapores First eco-friendly Eyewear Store. (2009). Retrieved September 19, 2009, from Nanyang Optical Web site, http://www.nanyang.com.sg/eco.html [10] Robert Grace, Designer eyeglasses fit eco-friendly niche, Plastics News, September 8, 2008 [11]Singapore and US Institutes Collaborate in Environmentally Impactful Sustainable Manufacturing Technologies, ACN Newswire, April 12, 2009 [12]Welcome to LinkSkin eco-friendly eyewear world. (2009) Retrieved September 18, 2009, from LinkSkin web site, http://www.linkskin.com/ [13] Urband: designer of light and comfortable contemporary eyeglasses. (2009). Retrieved September 21, 2009, from Urband Web site, http://www.urband.com/

Novel Approaches to DoS Impact Measurement

Novel Approaches to DoS Impact Measurement J.Anto Sylverster Jeyaraj, C.Suriya, R.Sudha Abstract Over the past few years Denial of service (DoS) Attacks have emerged as serious vulnerability for almost every internet Services. Existing approach to DoS impact measurement in Deter Testbeds equate service denial with slow communication low throughput, high resource utilization, and high loss rate. These approaches are not versatile, not quantitative, not accurate because they fail to specify exact ranges of parameter values that correspond to good or poor service quality and they were not proven to correspond to human perception service denial. We propose Novel approaches to DoS impact that measure the quality of service experienced by users during an attack. Our novel approaches are quantitative, Versatile, accurate because they map QoS requirements for several applications into measurable traffic parameters with acceptable, scientifically determined thresholds, they apply to a wide range of attack scenarios, which we demonstrate via Deter testbed experiments Keywords Communication/network, Measurement techniques, performance of system, Network security 1. INTRODUCTION Denial of service (DoS) is a major threat. DoS severely disrupts legitimate communication by exhausting some critical limited resource via packet floods or by sending malformed packets that cause network elements to crash. The large number of devices, applications, and resources involved in communication offers a wide variety of mechanisms to deny service. Effects of DoS attacks are experienced by users as a server slowdown, service quality degradation, service degradation. DoS attacks have been studied through testbed experiments. Accurately measuring the impairment of service quality perceived by human clients during an attack is essential for evaluation and comparison of potential DoS defenses, and for study of novel attacks. Researchers and developers need accurate, quantitative, and versatile. Accurate metrics produce measures of service denial that closely agree with a human’s perception of service impairment in a similar scenario. Quantitative metrics define ranges of parameter values that signify service denial, using scientific guidelines. Versatile metrics apply to many DoS scenarios regardless of the underlying mechanism for service denial, attack dynamics, legitimate traffic mix, or network topology. Existing approaches to DoS impact measurement fall short of these goals. They collect one or several traffic measurements and compare their first-order statistics (e.g., mean, standard deviation, minimum, or maximum) or their distributions in the baseline and the attack case. Frequently used traffic measurements include the legitimate traffic’s request/response delay, legitimate transactions durations, legitimate traffic’s goodput, throughput, or loss, and division of a critical resource between the legitimate and the attack traffic. If a defense is being evaluated, these metrics are also used for its collateral damage. Lack of consensus on which measurements best reflect the DoS impact cause researchers to choose ones they feel are the most relevant. Such metrics are not versatile, since each independent traffic measurement captures only one aspect of service denial. For example, a prolonged request/response time will properly signal DoS for two-way applications such a s Web, FTP, and DNS, but not for media traffic that is sensitive to one-way delay, packet loss, and jitter. The lack of common DoS impact metrics prevents comparison among published work. We further argue that the current measurement approaches are neither quantitative nor accurate. Adhoc comparisons of measurement statistics or distributions only show how network traffic behaves differently under attack, but do not quantify which services have been denied and how severely. To our knowledge, no studies show that existing metrics agree with human perception of service denial. We survey existing DoS impact metrics in Section 2. We propose a novel approach to DoS impact measurement. Our key insight is that DoS always causes degradation of service quality, and a metric that holistically captures a human user’s QoS perception will be applicable to all test scenarios. For each popular application, we specify its QoS requirements, consisting of relevant traffic measurements and corresponding thresholds that define good service ranges. We observe traffic as a collection of high-level tasks called â€Å"transactions† (defined in Section3).Each legitimate transaction is evaluated against its application’s QoS requirements; transactions that do not meet all the requirements are considered â€Å"failed.† We aggregate information about transaction failure into several intuitive qualitative and quantitative composite metrics to expose the precise interaction of the DoS attack with the legitimate traffic. We describe our proposed approaches in Section 3. We demonstrate that our approaches mee t the goals of being accurate, quantitative, and versatile through testbed experiments with multiple DoS scenarios and legitimate traffic mixes. Conclude in Section 5. 2. EXISTING METRICS Prior DoS research has focused on measuring DoS through selected legitimate traffic parameters: Packet loss, Traffic throughput or goodput, Request/response delay, Transaction duration, and Allocation of resources. Researchers have used both simple metrics (single traffic parameter) and combinations of them to report the impact of an attack on the network. All existing metrics are not quantitative because they do not specify ranges of loss, throughput, delay, duration, or resource shares that correspond to service denial. Indeed, such values cannot be specified in general because they highly depend on the type of application whose traffic coexists with the attack: 10 percent loss of VoIP traffic is devastating while 10 percent loss of DNS traffic is merely a glitch. All existing metrics are not versatile and we point out below the cases where they fail to measure service denial. They are inaccurate since they have not been proven to correspond to a human user’s perception of service denial. 3. PROPOSED APPROACHES TO DOS IMPACT EASURMENT 3.3 DoS Metrics We aggregate the transaction success/failure measures into several intuitive composite metrics. Percentage of failed transactions (pft) per application type. This metric directly captures the impact of a DoS attack on network services by quantifying the QoS experienced by users. For each transaction that overlaps with the attack, we evaluate transaction success or failure applying Definition 3. A straightforward approach to the pft calculation is dividing the number of failed transactions by the number of all transactions during the attack. This produces biased results for clients that generate transactions serially. If a client does not generate each request in a dedicated thread, timing of subsequent requests depends on the completion of previous requests. In this case, transaction density during an attack will be lower than without an attack, since transactions overlapping the attack will last longer. This skews the pft calculation because each success or failure has a higher influence on the pft value during an attack than in its absence. In our experiments, IRC and telnet clients suffered from this deficiency. To remedy this problem, we calculate the pft value as the difference between 1 (100 percent) and the ratio of the number of successful transactions divided by the number of all transactions that would have been initiated by a given application during the same time if the attack were not present. The DoS-hist metric shows the histogram of pft measures across applications, and is helpful to understand each application’s resilience to the attack. The DoS-level metric is the weighted average of pft measures for all applications of interest: DoS-level =, where k spans all application categories, and wk is a weight associated with a category k. We introduced this metric because in some experiments it may be useful to produce a single number that describes the DoS impact. But we caution that DoS-level is highly dependent on the chosen application weights and thus can be biased. QoS-ratio is the ratio of the difference between a transaction’s traffic measurement and its corresponding threshold, divided by this threshold. The QoS metric for each successful transaction shows the user-perceived service quality, in the range (0, 1], where higher numbers indicate better quality. It is useful to evaluate service quality degradation during attacks. We compute it by averaging QoS-ratios for all traffic measurements of a given transaction that have defined thresholds. For failed transactions, we compute the related QoS-degrade metric, to quantify severity of service denial. QoS-degrade is the absolute value of QoS-ratio of that transaction’s measurement that exceeded its QoS threshold by the largest margin. This metric is in the range (0,1] .Intuitively, a value N of QoS-degrade means that the service of failed transactions was N times worse than a user could tolerate. While arguably any denial is significant and there is no need to quantify its severity, perception of DoS is highly subjective. Low values of QoS-degrade (e.g., The failure ratio shows the percentage of live transactions in the current (1-second) interval that will fail in the future. The failure ratio is useful for evaluation of DoS defenses, to capture the speed of a defense’s response, and for time-varying attacks . Transactions that are born during the attack are considered live until they complete successfully or fail. Transactions that are born before the attack are considered live after the attack starts. A failed transaction contributes to the failed transaction count in all intervals where it was live. 4. EVALUATION IN TESTBED EXPERIMENTS We first evaluate our metrics in experiments on the DETER testbed [15]. It allows security researchers to evaluate attacks and defences in a controlled environment. Fig. 2 shows our experimental topology. Four legitimate networks and two attack networks are connected via four core routers. Each legitimate network has four server nodes and two client nodes, and is connected to the core via an access router. Links between the access router and the core have 100-Mbps bandwidth and 10-40-ms delay, while other links have 1-Gbps bandwidth and no added delay. The location of bottlenecks is chosen to mimic high-bandwidth local networks that connect over a limited access link to an over provisioned core. Attack networks host two attackers each, and connect directly to core routers Fig.2. Experimental topology. 4.1 Background Traffic Each client generates a mixture of Web, DNS, FTP, IRC, VoIP, ping, and telnet traffic. We used open-source servers and clients when possible to generate realistic traffic at the application, transport, and network level. For example, we used an Apache server and wget client for Web traffic, bind server and dig client for DNS traffic, etc. Telnet, IRC, and VoIP clients and the VoIP server were custom-built in Perl. Clients talk with servers in their own and adjacent networks. Fig. 2 shows the traffic patterns. Traffic patterns for IRC and VoIP differ because those application clients could not support multiple simultaneous connections. All attacks target the Web server in network 4 and cross its bottleneck link, so only this network’s traffic should be impacted by the attacks. Illustrate our metrics in realistic traffic scenarios for various attacks. We modified the topology from [8] to ensure that bottlenecks occur only before the attack target, to create more realistic attack conditions. We used a more artificial traffic mix , with regular service request arrivals and identical file sizes for each application, to clearly isolate and illustrate features of our metrics. Traffic parameters are chosen to produce the same transaction density in each application category (Table 3): roughly 100 transactions for each application during 1,300 seconds, which is the attack duration. All transactions succeed in the absence of the attack. bottleneck links (more frequent variant) and 2) by generating a high packet rate that exhausts the CPU at a router leading to the target. We generate the first attack type: a UDP bandwidth flood. Packet sizes had range [750 bytes,1.25 Kbytes] and total packet rate was 200 Kpps. This generates a volume that is roughly 16 times the bottleneck bandwidth. The expected effect is that access link of network 4 will become congested and traffic between networks 1 and 4, and networks 3 and 4 will be denied service. 5. CONCLUSIONS One cannot understand a complex phenomenon like DoS without being able to measure it in an objective, accurate way. The work described here defines accurate, quantitative, and versatile metrics for measuring effectiveness of DoS attacks and defenses. Our approach is objective, reproducible, and applicable to a wide variety of attack and defense methodologies. Its value has been demonstrated in testbeds environments. Our approaches are usable by other researchers in their own work. They offer the first real opportunity to compare and contrast different DoS attacks and defenses on an objective head-to-head basis. We expect that this work will advance DoS research by providing a clear measure of success for any proposed defense, and helping researchers gain insight into strengths and weaknesses of their solutions. REFERENCES [1] A. Yaar, A. Perrig, and D. Song, â€Å"SIFF: A Stateless Internet Flow Filter to Mitigate DDoS Flooding Attacks,† Proc. IEEE Symp. Security and Privacy (SP), 2004. [2] A. Kuzmanovic and E.W. Knightly, â€Å"Low-Rate TCP-Targeted Denial of Service Attacks (The Shrew versus the Mice and Elephants),† Proc. ACM SIGCOMM ’03, Aug. 2003. [3] CERT Advisory CA-1996-21 TCP SYN Flooding and IP Spoofing Attacks, CERT CC, http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1996-21.html, 1996. [4] R. Mahajan, S.M. Bellovin, S. Floyd, J. Ioannidis, V. Paxson, and S. Shenker, â€Å"Controlling High Bandwidth Aggregates in the Network,† ACM Computer Comm. Rev., July 2001. [5] G. Oikonomou, J. Mirkovic, P. Reiher, and M. Robinson, â€Å"A Framework for Collaborative DDoS Defense,† Proc. 11th Asia-Pacific Computer Systems Architecture Conf. (ACSAC ’06), Dec. 2006. [6] Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, CAIDA Web page,http://www.caida.org, 2008. [7] MAWI Working Group Traffic Archive, WIDE Project, http://tracer.csl.sony.co.jp/mawi/, 2008 [8] â€Å"QoS Performance requirements for UMTS,† The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), Nortel Networks, http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/tsg_sa/WG1_Serv/TSGS1_03-HCourt/Docs/Docs/s1-99362.pdf, 2008. [9] N. Bhatti, A. Bouch, and A. Kuchinsky, â€Å"Quality is in the Eye of the Beholder: Meeting Users’ Requirements for Internet Quality of Service,† Technical Report HPL-2000-4, Hewlett Packard, 2000. [10] L. Yamamoto and J.G. Beerends, â€Å"Impact of Network Performance Parameters on the End-to-End Perceived Speech Quality,† Proc.EXPERT ATM Traffic Symp., Sept. 1997. [11] T. Beigbeder, R. Coughlan, C. Lusher, J. Plunkett, E. Agu, and M. Claypool, â€Å"The Effects of Loss and Latency on User Performance in Unreal Tournament 2003,† Proc. ACM Network and System Support for Games Workshop (NetGames), 2004. [12] N. Sheldon, E. Girard, S. Borg, M. Claypool, and E. Agu, â€Å"The Effect of Latency on User Performance in Warcraft III,† Proc. ACM Network and System Support for Games Workshop (NetGames), 2003. [13] B.N. Chun and D.E. Culler, â€Å"User-Centric Performance Analysis of Market-Based Cluster Batch Schedulers,† Proc. Second IEEE Int’l Symp. Cluster Computing and the GridProc. Second IEEE/ACM Int’l Conf. Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGRID ’02), May 2002. [14] J. Ash, M. Dolly, C. Dvorak, A. Morton, P. Taraporte, and Y.E. Mghazli, Y.1541-QOSM—Y.1541 QoS Model for Networks Using Y.1541 QoS Classes, NSIS Working Group, Internet Draft,work in progress, May 2006. [15] T. Benzel, R. Braden, D. Kim, C. Neuman, A. Joseph, K. Sklower,R. Ostrenga, and S. Schwab, â€Å"Experiences with DETER: A Testbed for Security Research,† Proc. Second Int’l IEEE/Create-Net Conf.Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks and Communities (TridentCOM ’06), Mar. 2006. [16] D.J. Bernstein, TCP 22 Syncookies, http://cr.yp.to/syncookies.html, 2008.

Cystic Fibrosis :: essays research papers

CYSTIC FIBROSIS   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  ONE OUT OF EVERY 2,500 BIRTHS IN THE UNITED STATES WILL BE DIAGNOSED WITH CYSTIC FIBROSIS. THIS FACT MAKES CYSTIC FIBROSIS ONE OF THE MOST COMMON GENETIC DISEASES IN THE NATION. ABOUT 30,000 AMERICANS HAVE THE DISEASE, BUT EVEN THOUGH CYSTIC FIBROSIS IS THE NATIONS MOST COMMON GENETIC DISEASE THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS KNOW LITTLE ABOUT IT. CYSTIC FIBROSIS IS RELATIVELY COMMON IN CALCASTION PEOPLE BUT RARE IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN. THE DISEASE IS VERY UNCOMMON IN MONGOLIANS. FIVE PERCENT OF THE POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES ARE CARRIERS OF THE GENETIC DISEASE.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  CYSTIC FIBROSIS, SOMETIMES CLASSIFIED AS MUCOVISCIDOSIS, IS A DISORDER IN WHICH THE EXCRORINE GLANDS SECRETE ABNORMALLY THICK MUCUS. THIS LEADS TO THE OBSTRUCTION OF THE PANCREAS AND CHRONIC INFECTIONS OF THE LUNGS, WHICH GENERALLY CAUSES DEATH IN CHILDHOOD OR EARLY ADULTHOOD. SOME MILDLY AFFECTED PATIENTS MAY SURVIVE LONGER. PATIENTS WITH PANCREATIC INSUFFICIENCY TAKE PANCREATIC ENZYMES WITH MEALS. THOSE WITH RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS ARE TREATED WITH ANTIBIOTICS, MOSTLY WITH AEROSOLS THAT RELIEVE CONSTRICTION OF THE AIRWAYS. PHYSICAL THERAPY IS USED TO HELP PATIENTS COUGH UP THE OBSTRUCTING MUCUS. INTESTINAL OBSTRUCTION, WHICH OCCURS MOSTLY IN INFANCY, MAY REQUIRE SURGERY.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  IN 1989, RESEARCHERS FOND THE ABNORMAL GENE THAT CAUSES CYSTIC FIBROSIS. THIS GENE IS LOCATED ON CHROMOSOME 7 . A PERSON WHO HAS TWO CYSTIC FIBROSIS GENES HAS THE DISEASE . A PERSON THAT CARRIES ONE OF THE GENES DOES NOT HAVE THE GENETIC DISEASE, BUT IS A CARRIER.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  THE SYMPTOMS OF CYSTIC FIBROSIS SOMETIMES OCCUR IMMEDIATELY AFTER BIRTH. MUCUS SECRETIONS MAY APPEAR IN THE BABY’S INTESTINES, WHICH CAN CAUSE OBSTRUCTION IN THE INTESTINES. IN ALL CASES, THE CHILD WILL GAIN LITTLE WEIGHT RIGHT FROM BIRTH, BECAUSE THE PANCREAS IS NOT PRODUCING ENZYMES. LITTLE TO NO NUTRIENTS ARE ABSORBED IN THE CHILD’S SYSTEM. A CHILD WITH CYSTIC FIBROSIS MAY HAVE REOCCURRING RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS, ALONG WITH COUGH AND FEVER. THIS MAY BE MORE SEVERE AND PERSISTENT THAT NORMAL THIS IS A RESULT OF THE THICK, STICKY MUCUS THAT WILL HOLD AND TRAP GERMS IN THE BRONCHIAL TUBES. IT SHOULD BE TAKEN IN TO CONSIDERATION THAT CHILDREN WITH CYSTIC FIBROSIS HAVE LARGE APPETITES AND EAT A GREAT DEAL. IN SPITE OF THEIR MALNUTRITION, THEY ART NOT IN PAIN AND DO NOT GENERALLY FEEL IT.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  EXTRACTS OF ANIMAL PANCREAS, IN POWDER OR GRANULE FORM, ARE PRESCRIBED TO REPLACE THE MISSING ENZYMES FROM THE PANCREAS, AND THE AMOUNT OF FAT IS DECREASED IN THE CHILD’S DIET. WITH THIS TREATMENT THE CHILD BEGINS TO GAIN

College Students with Disabilities Essay -- ADD ADHD Writing Attention

College Students with Disabilities As societal pressures for higher education increase, more emphasis has been placed on the importance of a minimum of a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university. This has led to the increased enrollment of students with learning disabilities over the past decade. According to a recent survey from the National Clearinghouse on Postsecondary Education for Individuals with Disabilities, one in eleven full-time first-year students entering college in 1998 self-reported a disability. This translates to approximately 154,520 college students, or about 9% of the total number of first-year freshmen, who reported a wide range of disabilities, ranging from attention deficit disorder to writing disabilities (Horn). Attention deficit disorder, with or without hyperactivity, is frequently misunderstood, but it affects college students' academic and social success, as well as their emotional development. Attention deficit disorders are the second most common disability among college students, and it is classified as a psychiatric disorder, rather than a learning disability, in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, DSM-IV. Characterized by attention difficulties, specifically short attention spans, as well as impulsivity, distractibility, and restlessness, attention deficit disorders can adversely affect the performance capabilities of college students. Individuals report "drifting" during classroom lectures or social conversations, as well as difficulties focusing in noisy environments. The Connection Between Learning Disabilities and Attention Deficit Disorders The onset of attention deficit disorder usually occur b... ...A Comprehensive Guide to Attention Deficit Disorder in Adults: Research,Diagnosis, and Treatment.New York: Brunner and Mazel Press, 1995. Sills, Caryl K. "Success for learning disabled writers across the curriculum." College Teaching 43 (Spring 95): 66-72. Smith, Carl B. "Helping Children Overcome Reading Difficulties." ERIC Digest, 1992. ED 344190. Stage, Frances K. et al. "Creating Learning Centered Classrooms: What Does Learning Theory Have to Say?" ERIC Digest, 1998. ED422777. Stein, Marcy and Robert C. Dixon. "Effective writing instruction for diverse learners." School Psychology Review 23 (1994): 392-406. Vogel, S. A. and M. Moran. "Written language disorders in learning disabled college students - a preliminary report." In Coming of Age: The Best of ACLD - 1982. Eds. W. Cruickshank and J. Lerner. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982.

Life in Brave New World and Life in America :: Brave New World

Life in Brave New World and Life in America For more than half a century, science fiction writers have thrilled and challenged readers with visions of the future and future worlds. These authors offered an insight into what they expected man, society, and life to be like at some future time. A society can achieve stability only when everyone is happy, and the brave new world tries hard to ensure that every person is happy. It does its best to eliminate any painful emotion, which means every deep feeling and passion. It uses genetic engineering and conditioning to ensure that everyone is happy with his or her work. Sex is a primary source of happiness. The brave new world basically teaches everyone to be promiscuous. You are allowed to have sex with any partner you want, who wants you, and sooner or later every partner will want you. Children are taught through hypnosis that "everyone belongs to everyone else." In this Utopia, what we think of as true love for one person would lead to a passion for that person and the establishment of family life, both of which would interfere with the community and its stability. Nobody is allowed to become pregnant because nobody is born, everyone is a "test-tube" baby. Many females are born sterile. The ideas and ways of obtaining happiness are not too much different in the brave new world than in our lives here in the United States. The only difference is that these pleasures are looked at in different ways. Sex is a very large part of our society's pleasure and everyone is allowed to have any partner that he/she wants, but this idea is not taught at a young age and everyone in our society does not feel this way towards sex. Our ideas and thoughts on topics of this nature are much more broad, and everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion. Families are established in our culture, which are looked upon as something very good for our society. Women are allowed to become pregnant as freely as they want and the government will even aid them in the process. This is one difference that is totally different from the brave new world. Women were a lot of times not even allowed to have children much less have as many as they so desired. Soma is a drug used by everyone in the brave new world almost everyday It calms people and gets them high at the same time, but without hangovers or nasty side effects. The rulers of the brave new world had put 2000

The al-Qaeda training manual is sobering and provocative

The al-Qaeda training manual is sobering and provocative in terms of what it says, but it is equally enlightening and relevant for what it does not say.The contents of the manual, as well as its omissions, give us a firsthand perspective of the type that has proven so elusive with regard to this particular enemy; the authors of this manual clearly did not intend for it to fall into Western hands, and the manual must be used by the West to revisit and reconsider its counterterrorism strategies, especially as they pertain to the motivations and the tactical capabilities of the enemy.While the majority of the manual focuses on the tactical minutiae of employing political violence, its first pages address the motivations of the authors, articulating their perceived grievances against the West.While the dominant Western paradigm of rational and deterable political actors have led most to focus on specific aspects of Western, and especially American, policies in the Muslim world to hypothe size about the motivations of the enemy, the training manual points more to social forces than to military or economic ones as the foundation of the Islamists’ anger.Al-Qaeda’s authors write in a disconcertingly eloquent way of â€Å"the sister believer whose clothes the criminals have stripped off†.[1]   This is clearly a somewhat overblown metaphor for the secularization of Muslims countries since the time of Ataturk.This point cannot be stressed enough; the word Palestine, that cause cà ©là ¨bre for disaffected Muslims, does not appear in this manual.   Rather they authors see themselves as being at war with the forces of secularization in the Muslim world.This leads us to the second fundamental point of al-Qaeda’s grievances: the focus on the â€Å"near enemy†.   The â€Å"near enemy† is, for al-Qaeda, every government in the Muslim world, save perhaps one or two.   These governments, in eyes of Islamists, have sold out the fai th in the interest of aping the west.This betrayal has extended from banning traditional Muslim dress to forging military and economic alliances with the United States.   The West, in turn, and the United States in particular, is the â€Å"far enemy†.   Al-Qaeda’s paradigm holds that the corrupt and illegitimate rulers of the Arab and Muslim world cling to power only due to the sponsorship of the United States.This claim is not entirely without merit, and is a common claim heard in the Arab world particularly.   To illustrate the depths of the contempt for secular Muslim governments, the manual describes them as being worse than European imperialists, a scathing indictment from such a xenophobic movement.[2]Al-Qaeda initially focused on the near enemy, but after a strategic rift within the group, which was won by Osama bin Laden, the far enemy came into the crosshairs.   The idea was that a catastrophic attack would be easier to organize and execute in an open society and that an attack in the continental United States would bring attention to their cause that they would not gain by bombing all the embassies in Africa.The 9/11 attack was al-Qaeda’s announcement of the shift from targeting the near enemy to targeting the far enemy.   When assessing the tactical details of this manual, we must keep in mind that they are clearly crafted to be implemented in a police state of the type that the near enemy has no shortage of.   We can only conclude that terrorists able to operate in closed societies will be much more capable of operating in an open society.

All Day Kindergarten Essay

After critically analyzing the current kindergarten scheduling trends, there is a shift in many schools from half-day kindergarten programs towards full day kindergarten programs. A full day kindergarten or all day kindergarten program is a program in which pupils attend school each weekday for approximately six hours. The growing number of all day kindergarten programs can be attributed to a change in the American society and education in general. To be specific the growing number can be attributed to the increase in single parents and dual employment households and finally a general belief that all day programs better prepare children for school. There has been a looming legislation, which is going to give powers to the local, state and federal governments to control standards of education. Kindergarten education is targeted by this piece of legislation because it promotes all day kindergarten programs at the expense of half-day programs. I fully support this piece of legislation that promotes all day kindergarten programs because of the benefits that are inherent with the program. It’s my prayers that the legislation is approved so that our schools can start churning out very competitive graduates. I believe all day kindergarten programs are the best because of the following: †¢ A research conducted in 1990s reported a consistent positive academic outcome for all children enrolled in all day kindergarten programs. A subsequent research also showed that children who attended all day kindergarten programs scored higher points on standardized tests than their half day counter parts. Hough and Bryde found out that there is more individualized instruction in all day programs when compared to half-day programs. Individualized training makes it possible for the teacher to understand each and every need of the pupil and therefore attend to them accordingly. A research carried out by Cryan and his friends found out that there was a positive relationship between participation in full day kindergarten program and later academic success. After comparing similar half day and full day programs in a nationwide study, Cryan found out that full day kindergarteners exhibited more independent learning, classroom involvement, and productivity in work with peers and reflectivity than half-day kindergarteners. †¢ Other researches pointed out that there is a clear relationship between the kind of kindergarten program and the children’s behavior. Teachers rated children in all day kindergarten higher. (Cryan et al, 1992). Other researchers who have studied social and behavioral outcomes found out those children in all day kindergarten programs were engaged in child-to-child interactions and this had a positive effect in building their learning, communication and social skills. (Elicker & Mathur, 1997). The full day kindergarteners were more likely to approach the teacher; they expressed less anger, shyness, withdrawal and blaming behavior than half-day kindergarteners. †¢ Both teachers and parents whose children were enrolled in all day kindergarten proved that all day programs better prepared children for their first grade. They also indicated preference for all day kindergarten because of the more relaxed atmosphere, more time for creative activities and more opportunity for students to develop their own interests. The teachers also concluded they had more time to know the children and their families thus enabling them to better meet the children’s specific needs. (Elicker & Mathur, 1997) It’s definite that there are more positives in all day kindergarten programs but it’s important to remember that what the children are doing during the day is more important than the length of the day. Experts are warning administrators and parents against full day kindergarten programs that are academically rather than intellectually engaging in tone. Some of the intellectually engaging activities that should be incorporated in all day kindergarten programs include the following: 1. Programs that emphasize language development. 2. Programs that offer balance of small group, big group and individual activities. 3. Programs that asses pupils’ progress through close teacher observation and examination of pupils’ work. 4. Programs that develop children’s social and interpersonal skills including conflict resolution strategies. 5. Programs that involve children in first hand experience and informal interaction with objects, other children and adults. (Rothenberg, 1995) To successfully implement this project, the government should commence creating space and teacher capacity. It should also set aside enough funds to make sure the schools can afford equipment necessary for all day kindergarten programs. References Cryan, J. R. , Sheehan, R. , Wiechel, J. , & Bandy-Hedden, I. G. (1992). Success outcomes of full-day kindergarten: More positive behavior and increased achievement in the years after. Early childhood research quarterly, 7(2), 187-203. EJ 450 525 Elicker, J. , & Mathur, S. (1997). What do they do all day? Comprehensive evaluation of a full-day kindergarten. Early childhood research quarterly, 12(4), 459-480. EJ 563 073. Hough, D. , & Bryde, S. (1996, April). THE EFFECTS OF FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND AFFECT. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, New York: ED 395 691.