There is an emerging requirement for real-time flow-based traffic monitoring, which is vital to detecting and/or tracing DoS attacks as well as troubleshooting and traffic engineering in the ISP networks. We propose the architecture for a scalable real-time flow measurement tool in order to allow operators to flexibly define "the targeted flows" on-demand, to obtain various statistics on those flows, and to visualize them in a real-time manner. A traffic distribution device and multiple traffic capture devices processing packets in parallel are included in the architecture, in which the former device copies traffic and distributes it to the latter devices. We evaluate the performance of a proto-type implementation on PC-UNIX in testbed experiments to demonstrate the scalability of our architecture. The evaluation shows that the performance increases in proportion to the number of the capture devices and the maximum performance reaches 80 K pps with six capture devices. Finally we also show applications of our tool, which indicate the advantage of flexible fine-grained flow measurements.

The three dimensional (3D) packing problem is to arrange given rectangular boxes in a rectangular box of the minimum volume without overlapping each other. As an approach, this paper introduces the system of three sequences of the box labels, the sequence-triple, to encode the topology of the 3D-packing. The topology is the system of relative relations in pairs of boxes such as right-of, above, front-of, etc. It will be proved that the sequence-triple represents the topology of the tractable 3D-packings which is a 3D-packing such that there is an order of the boxes along which all the boxes are extracted one by one in a certain fixed direction without disturbing other remaining boxes. The idea is extended to the system of five ordered sequences, the sequence-quintuple. A decoding rule is given by which any 3D-packing is represented. These coding systems are applied to design heuristic algorithms by simulated annealing which search the codes for better 3D-packings. Experimental results were very convincing its usefulness as automated packing algorithms.

In this paper, we have reported the development of a snowblower support system which can safely navigate snowblowers, even during a whiteout, with the combination of a very accurate GPS system, so called RTK-GPS, and a unique and highly accurate map of roadsides and obstacles on roads. Particularly emphasized new techniques in this paper are ways to detect accurate geographical positions of roadsides and obstacles by utilizing and analyzing 3D laser scanned data, whose data has become available in recent days. The experiment has shown that the map created by the methods and RTK-GPS can sufficiently navigate snowblowers, whereby a secure and pleasant social environment can be archived in snow areas of Japan. In addition, proposed methods are expected to be useful for other systems such as a quick development of a highly accurate road map, a safely navigation of a wheeled chair, and so on.

The 6to4 method enables separate IPv6 sites to connect to the IPv6 Internet via a 6to4 relay router without an explicit IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnel setup. There are about a dozen open 6to4 relay routers worldwide but none of these have been installed in Japan. We therefore decided to evaluate the 6to4 mechanism and set ourselves the goal of improving the 6to4 operation within Japan. To accomplish this, in March 2002, we installed an open 6to4 relay router in Japan with the cooperation of the WIDE project and started this experiment. This paper describes our experiment and analysis of IPv6 traffic through our 6to4 relay router, as well as considerations derived from our experiment.

As the number of Internet applications in critical situations increases, the quality assurance of the network infrastructure becomes more and more important. The operators of such networks have to maintain the network as reliable and available with sufficient performance. Measurement technology is the key to maintaining the network condition and provides the network as being the important infrastructure of the network society. To meet these requirements, a high-speed and accurate IP meter, HIM, has been developed. Specific hardware has been made to realize the necessary specifications that enable data capturing with 20-µsecond order timing information from a gigabit class network. The experimental results with HIM show that: 1) software-based equipment cannot handle 100-µsecond order timing information, 2) the current computer system can transmit a high-speed (30 Mpbs) multimedia stream in accurate timing (jitter less than 20 µseconds) with UDP, 3) but TCP's retransmission mechanism makes the jitter worse (up to 264 mil seconds) and, 4) WAN's one-way traffic exhibits some strange behavior, which requires further investigation.

We propose a device called the Waveguide width abruptly EXpanded Spot-Size-Converter integrated Laser Diode (WEX-SSC-LD) that has been designed to improve lasing characteristics by achieving a steep photoluminescence wavelength change along the cavity. The waveguide parameter was optimized by a three-dimensional beam propagation method to reduce mode conversion and absorption losses. The WEX-SSC-LD's showed superior lasing characteristics such as threshold currents of 5.8 mA at 25C and 19 mA at 85C and operation current of 57.5 mA at an output power of 10 mW for 85C. These excellent lasing characteristics were achieved due to the steeper bandgap-energy shift in the SSC section near the LD section side by introducing the WEX-SSC structure as well as the high-quality MQW active layer grown by selective MOVPE and the precisely controlled pn-pn current blocking structure. The coupling loss to normal single-mode fiber was as low as 1.8 dB while maintaining a large coupling tolerance of 1.8 µm. These excellent coupling characteristics are very promising for passively aligned optical modules.

Network management is an important issue in maintaining the Internet as an important social infrastructure. Finding excessive consumption of network bandwidth caused by P2P mass flows is especially important. Finding Internet viruses is also an important security issue. Although stream mining techniques seem to be promising techniques to find P2P and Internet viruses, vast network flows prevent the simple application of such techniques. A mining technique which works well with extremely limited memory is required. Also it should have a real-time analysis capability. In this paper, we propose a cache based mining method to realize such a technique. By analyzing the characteristics of the proposed method with real Internet backbone flow data, we show the advantages of the proposed method, i.e. less memory consumption while realizing real-time analysis capability. We also show the fact that we can use the proposed method to find mass flow information from Internet backbone flow data.

In parallel computing systems using the master/worker model for distributed grid computing, as the size of handling data grows, the increase in the data transmission time degrades the performance. For divisible workload applications, therefore, multiple-round scheduling algorithms have been being developed to mitigate the adverse effect of longer data transmission time by dividing the data into chunks to be sent out in multiple rounds, thus overlapping the times required for computation and transmission. However, a standard multiple-round scheduling algorithm, Uniform Multi-Round (UMR), adopts a sequential transmission model where the master communicates with one worker at a time, thus the transmission capacity of the link attached to the master cannot be fully utilized due to the limits of worker-side capacity. In the present study, a Parallel Transferable Uniform Multi-Round algorithm (PTUMR) is proposed. It efficiently utilizes the data transmission capacity of network links by allowing chunks to be transmitted in parallel to workers. This algorithm divides workers into groups in a way that fully uses the link bandwidth of the master under some constraints and considers each group of workers as one virtual worker. In particular, introducing a Grouping Threshold effectively deals with very heterogeneous workers in both data transmission and computation capacities. Then, the master schedules sequential data transmissions to the virtual workers in an optimal way like in UMR. The performance evaluations show that the proposed algorithm achieves significantly shorter turnaround times (i.e., makespan) compared with UMR regardless of heterogeneity of workers, which are close to the theoretical lower limits.

The Hyper Hospital" is a novel medical care system which will be constructed on an electronic information network. The human interface of the Hyper Hospital based on the modern virtual reality technology is expected to enhance patients' ability to heal by providing computer-supported on-line visual consultations. In order to investigate the effects and features of on-line visual consultations in the Hyper Hospital, we conducted an experiment to clarify the influence of electronic interviews on the talking behavior of interviewees in the context of simulated doctor-patient interactions. Four types of distant-confrontation interviews were made with voluntary subjects and their verbal and non-verbal responses were analyzed from the behavioral point of view. The types of interviews included three types of electronic media-mediated interviews and one of a live face to face interview. There was a tendency in the media-mediated interviews that both the latency and the duration of interviewees' utterances in answering questions increased when they were compared with those of live face to face interviews. These results suggest that the interviewee became more verbose or talkative in the media-mediated interviews than in the live interviews. However, the interviewee's psychological tension was generally augmented in the media-mediated interviews, which was suggested by the delay of the initiation of conversations as compared to the conventional face-to-face interviews. We also discuss the applicability of media-mediated interviews by an electronic doctor which we are studying as a functional unit of our Hyper Hospital, a network based virtual reality space for medical care.

In the modern hospital, the physical or chemical therapeutic procedure is regarded as paramount and psychological or spiritual care is quite frequently put aside. The goal of the Hyper Hospital" is to correct this. The Hyper Hospital is constructed in the computer based electronic network using an alternate reality system, such as the virtual reality system, as the human-machine-human interface. The nodes of the Hyper Hospital belong to a patient and also to a variety of medical care facilities; for example, the out patient office, the nursing care center, the medical examination unit, the operating theater, etc. The Hyper Hospital space consists of various kind of spaces including the alternate reality space owned and exclusively controlled by the patient himself or herself, and even the real space as well. Most of the physical contact, such as the visit to the out patient office by the patient, is actualized by the electronic connection of the patient private space and the public space of the hospital system. Prescription drugs, special care, and even the admission to the ward will be integrated into the distributed electronic network. To realize such a system, we need to solve many problems, such as the research on the network oriented architecture of the alternate reality, the development of human-machine interface particularly fitted to various disabilites, the study of the behavior of normal and diseased people, etc. The concept of the Hyper Hospital we are proposing is believed to be a new paradigm of the next generation of medical care.

The volume of mass unsolicited electronic mail, often known as spam, has recently increased enormously and has become a serious threat not only to the Internet but also to society. This paper proposes a new spam detection method which uses document space density information. Although the proposed method requires extensive e-mail traffic to acquire the necessary information, it can achieve perfect detection (i.e., both recall and precision is 100%) under practical conditions. A direct-mapped cache method contributes to the handling of over 13,000 e-mail messages per second. Experimental results, which were conducted using over 50 million actual e-mail messages, are also reported in this paper.

This paper deals with methods for interconnection between two local private networks that are geographically separated. A scheme is first presented to chain low bit-rate physical circuits into one logical circuit, over which ATM cells are transmitted as if there is one circuit with a high bit-rate capacity. In particular, use of existing low bit-rate circuits, e.g., 384/1536 kbit/s PDH leased line services and N-ISDN switched channels, is considered. The paper discusses two methods to permit chaining of physical circuits, and identifies their advantages and applications. By using the ATM-based circuit-chaining method, dynamic capacity control of the interconnection is then introduced with the use of an ATM-based rate adaptation. This is intended to provide a flexible and cost-effective capacity control compared to the existing TDM-based control. It is also possible to realize non-stop operation of changing capacity by establishment and release of chained circuits, which will lead to high reliability and robustness of private networks. Finally, delay characteristics introduced by the method are evaluated based on a computer simulation which gives a short and acceptable delay.

The monitoring of performance in VoIP traffic has become vital because users generally expect VoIP service quality that is as high as that of PSTN services. A lightweight method of processing by extracting VoIP flows from Internet traffics is proposed in this paper. Estimating delay variations and the packet loss ratio using knowledge about specific features and the characteristics of VoIP flows, i.e., the inter-packet gap (IPG) which is constant in VoIP flows, is also proposed. Simulation with actual traffic trace is used to evaluate the method, and this revealed that delay variations (IPG variance) can be accurately estimated by monitoring only a few percentage of all flows. The proposed method can be used as a first-alert tool to monitor large amounts of flows to detect signs of degradation in VoIP flows. The method can be used by ISPs to estimate whether VoIP flow performance is adequate within their networks and at ingress from other ISPs.

We have proposed a tunable laser with silica-waveguide ring resonators. In this tunable laser, a semiconductor optical amplifier was passively aligned and mounted onto a silica-waveguide substrate. The ring resonators can be tuned by controlling their temperatures using the thermo optic heaters formed on them, and there are no mechanically moving parts. Thus, they are sufficiently stable and reliable for practical use. Our tunable laser exhibits a high fiber-output power of more than 15 dBm and a wide tunable range of 60 nm (L-band, 50 GHz spacing, 147 channels). Moreover, a tunable laser with a much wider tunable range of 96 nm using 100-GHz-FSR ring resonators is also reported.

It becomes so important to observe a wild life for obtaining not only knowledge of its biological behaviors but also interactions with human beings in terms of geoenvironmental investigation and assessment. A sensor network is considered to be a suitable and powerful tool to monitor and observe a wild life in fields. In order to monitor/observe seabirds, a sensor network is deployed in Awashima island, Japan. A sensor platform is useful for early and quick deployment in fields. Atlas, a server-client type sensor platform, is used with several sensors, i.e., infrared sensors, thermometers within a nest and a sound sensor. The experimental results and the first outcome of observation have been reported. Particularly emphasized is that an infrared sensor has detected a leaving and returning of seabirds, and has identified that a leaving and returning is affected by sunrises and sunsets. An infrared sensed data has also shown a chick's practice before flying to the south. These facts and knowledge have not been clearly obtained by observation of human beings, so have demonstrated the usefulness of sensor networking for ecology observations.

This paper presents the basic design and principles of an FQDN-based Internet Architecture, where a host is identified in the Internet only by its FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name). The address shortage problem for the IPv4 paradigm has been marginally solved by introducing private addresses within the intranet and also by DHCP for public Internet access services. These two approaches have been independently developed. Considering more elaborate peer-to-peer communications such as voice over IP (VoIP) in the future Internet, the shortage of address space will become a serious problem for a call or session to be established. To alleviate this, this paper proposes an FQDN-based Internet architecture, assuming that a global endpoint identifier (EID) in the network is FQDN instead of an IP address. Since a countably infinite number of addresses can be logically produced by FQDN, this system resolves the address shortage problem assuming a caller uses the FQDN of the called terminal or host. This requires a dynamic address loading system from the FQDN of the called terminal into one of the available public IP addresses. After proposing a possible address loading system, some mathematical results on the required number of public addresses for VoIP traffic, the address space size of the derived Internet, etc. are also presented.

Because large earthquakes have repeatedly occurred in subduction zones, it is important to observe seismic activities on the sea floor. An ocean bottom cabled seismometers (OBCS) system is the most suitable tool for this purpose since data can be obtained in real-time. Although the existing OBCS systems are useful for the study of seismic activities, the number of stations is limited due to their cost. Therefore, lower cost in both production and installation is desired. We have developed a new OBCS system utilizing IP technologies. IP technologies yield the new OBCS system that are more compact and less expensive, while a large amount of complex hardware is used in the existing OBCS system. System reliability is ensured by using IP network technologies that provide redundancy. The new OBCS system was first installed to observe the Niigata-Kobe tectonic zone in the Japan Sea on September 2010. Although this first OBCS system has a total length of 25 km, it has been proven that seismic data can be successfully obtained and that the new OBCS system is effective and useful for the dense observation of seismogenic activities on the sea floor around Japan.

As Internet access had spread, it has become an important potential means of lifeline communication. The Internet can fulfill a role in the everyday life of citizens by offering lifeline communication services such as the police, ambulance, gas, electricity, and water services when an emergency occurs. In these lifeline communications, a caller needs to be able to communicate with the nearby lifeline service in the same manner as on a PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Networks) without being consciously aware of the path the caller's message is taking. Moreover, the lifeline service agency must be able to acquire the caller's location and identity. However, it is very difficult to transfer these essential functions from the PSTN to the Internet without making significant changes, because of large differences between the PSTN and the Internet. In this paper, we discuss how to obtain these functions for lifeline communications in the Internet. We further propose a model and implement a lifeline communication system on the Internet.

We are studying a novel concept of the on-line hospital system using a virtual environment called Hyper Hospital," the Hyper Hospital" is a medical care system which is constructed in a distributed manner to the electronic information network using virtual reality (VR) as a human interface. In the present report, we studied the physiological and psychological responses of healthy subjects induced by the usage of the VR in terms of fatigue. Twenty healthy young male subjects were exposed to the virtual reality system and they performed some psychological tasks with a virtual nurse for 30 minutes. Several parameters of physiological, psychological, and subjective fatigue were measured. None of the physiological or psychological parameters such as urinary catecholamine release, ECG, etc. showed significant fatigue induced by our VR system. However, by using a standard questionnaire, some kinds of subjective fatigue were noted and they were thought to be indicating a direction of improvement for our VR system.