Dear TC6 colleagues,
I send you a short report prepared by the IFIP secretariat related to
the main events during the IFIP Council meeting.
Best regards
Augusto Casaca
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
x x
x XX XX X-BONE Overlay System x
x X X x
x XX Software Release x
x X X x
x XX XX March 2000 x
x x
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The X-Bone system for automated deployment of VPN / overlay networks
is now publicly available. This is the first major public release, v1.2.
X-Bone dynamically deploys and manages Internet overlays to reduce
configuration effort and increase network component sharing. X-Bone
discovers, configures, and monitors network resources to create
overlays over existing IP networks.
The X-Bone is implemented in Perl, and open source is provided.
The X-Bone can be used for:
- deploying VPNs
- sharing lab or wide-area networks
for multiple, concurrent projects
for testing protocols and apps on new topologies
X-Bone uses two-layer IP in IP tunneled overlays and supports existing
applications and unmodified routing, multicast, and DNS services.
X-Bone also support IPSec within overlays. Applications can use the
X-Bone without modification or recompilation.
The X-Bone is available for the following operating systems:
- FreeBSD
CAIRN 2.5, 3.*, 3.* + KAME IPsec patches
- Linux RedHat
6.0, 6.0 + NIST Cerberus IPsec patches, 6.1
The FreeBSD port and Linux RPM have been submitted to the FreeBSD
ports and RedHat Linux RPMs sites; further information and details and
the port and RPM files are currently available at:
http://www.isi.edu/xbone/
- Joe Touch
Project Leader, X-Bone group, USC/ISI
touch(a)isi.edu
http://www.isi.edu/touch
+1 (310) 448-9151
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Dear Colleagues,
I have just received a call for papers of the conference
"European Wireless 2000" (togethe with 7th European Conference
on Fixed Radio Systems and Neworks"
to be held Sept. 12-14, 2000, Dresden (Germany).
Organisor: IEEE-COMSOC (among others)
Our TC6 event "IFIP Conference on Personal Wirelss Communications"
is scheduled for Sept. 14-15, 2000 in Gdansk (Poland).
Whereas Gdansk is relatively near to Dresden there is littlehope that
many delegates will attend both conferences.
Of course, we cannot change anything any more but it is not the bst
situation.
Best regards
Otto
Dear Sir,
Thanks for your comments on the reviewing procedure. In fact, to identify the subjects of each paper and distribute them to relevant experts might be the most difficult task for conference organization. Because we have receive most paper in the last days, we did not have sufficient time to preview all 473 papers and make proper divsion of them. Furthermore, we are not familier to the special fields of many TPC members. That's why we listed all the papers to you for your choice. Acturally, what we expected was that you may select some papers (say 10-20) to review and inform us about your choices, so that we may distribute the remainders to other reviewers. As matter of fact, we were working very hard to preview the papers in the meanwhile, contact authors for different kinds of problems, such as the error in opening the files, lack of figures or pages, viruses in files, etc.; answer various questions to authors; and so forth. Nevertheless, we've asked some professors to preview the papers and to divide the papers into certain categories.
Up to now,
(1) we have got elctronic files for most of the papers, which were prevously only have hard copies, but there're still some papers do not have E-file yet.
(2) most of the papers have been asigned to at least two reviewers, but we still need the third reviewer.
And,
We'd like to ask TC6 to help us to be informed about TC6 members special fields, so taht we may distribute some papers for them to review. WE DO NEED THE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM TC6. For this purpose, I need your earliest reply.
We're going to have a meeting on March 25 with TCP members who are able to come, to determine which papers will be accepted.
Because we are not experienced in organizing such conference, we would be very grateful to your suggestions and helps.
Here are anwers to some of your questions:
> - a lot of manuscripts are available only as hardcopy version and could
> be requested by regular mail from the organisors (less than three
> weeks before the end of the evaluation deadline)
We may send them by EMS if required. Please indicate which ones you'd like to have. Also we may send them by fax.
> - the attempt to get at a least one of the electronically submitted
> papers fails due to continuous timeout
We've made some efforts to have a Web-site for you to read the papers, but I am reported there're some administration problem. Anyway, we'll try out best to solve the access problems. In fact, we may send compressed files to you according your requiste. Have you the list of paper's titles? Would you make a selection from the topics and indicates the relevant numbers?
> - apparently no PC member knows which paper should be reviewed by whom
> and how many papers should be reviewed per PC member;
> it might be that 342 papers would not get a single review whereas
> 51 manuscripts would get more than ten reviews, who knows???
We invited some experts to do the review tasks, now we have already asigned more than 400 papers to more than 50 experts (including TPC members), each have got 10-20 papers, and most papers have got two reviewers.
Yours sincerely
GONG Ke
Tsinghua University
Beijing 100084 China
Dear Sir,
Thanks for your mail, which Prof. Hu forwarded to me. As you mentioned, it is very difficult task for us to distribute the papers to TPC members according to the specific field of each papers, especially, we are not familier with the TPC members' special fields. Furthermore, we've got most papers in the last days, so that we do have enough time to pre-review the papers for proper distribution. That's why we listed all the papers for your own choice, and we'd like to be informed about your choice (the papers you selected to review) and that would help us to distribute the papers. In fact, in the mean time, we were working hard to divide those papers to some categeries and distrubrited to relevant members, until now almost every paper have got two reviewers, but we still need the third one. Could you please indicate your special fields or interests so that we may distribute some papres for your reviewing. Finally, we are going to have a meeting on March 25 with TPC members, who are able to attend, to determine which papers will be accepted.
For we are not experienced to organize such conference indeed, we are very grateful to your suggestions and comments.
Yours Sincerely
GONG Ke
Tsinghua University
Beijing 100084
China
=================================================================================
> Dear friends,
> I have received the message form Otto Spaniol concerning the review
> process of ICCT'2000.
> I fully agree in most of his comments. My only difference is that I have
> been luckier tha him; I have succeeded to retrive at least one paper
> (while I was witting this message the second one is arrived) (I continue
> to be lucky; the third one is arrived).
> I have been chariman of several programme committees and one of the
> hardest taks is to distribute the papers among the program committee
> members trying to balance the workload of each of them and respecting
> theis expertise domains.
> In this conference, belonging to the IFIP World Congress, this trask has
> not been done. From the review form, apparently, we should review all
> the papers. Otherwise the papers will cover in a random way a sample of
> the papers, allowing the chairman to decide the accepted papers
> practically just in his own opinion. And this is not fair. If this is
> the process, I do not play this role.
> Best regards to all of you, but specially to those belonging to this
> extrange program committee
> Ramon
> ================================================================================
>
> Ramon Puigjaner Universitat de les Illes Balears
> Phone: +34-971173288 Departament de Ciencies Matematiques i
> Informatica
> +34-971173401 Carretera de Valldemossa km 7.5
> Fax: +34-971173003 07071 PALMA
> e-mail: putxi(a)uib.es Spain
> ================================================================================
Dear colleagues,
For those of you involved in the ICCT paper reviewing process this is
the mail I got from Prof. Gong Ke. In the meantime I asked for a Web
access to the papers. I am still waiting for an answer.
Best regards
Augusto Casaca
Dear colleagues,
the organisation of TC6 events is sometimes not so easy. Here is another
example:
A programme committee of a large event in August 2000 is composed of
- 13 TC6 delegates (I'm one of those guys)
- 18 other members (according to the email address list).
The committee members received for reviewing purpose:
- an impressive list of 473 submissions which was shortened to 'only'
455 submissions by removing the submissions which delivered not more
than an abstract
- a request to produce a grade (for all 455 papers???)
by a number 5 (strongly accept) or 4 or 3 or 2 or 1 (strongly reject);
an explanation of the grade would be possible but is not required.
So far so good but:
- a lot of manuscripts are available only as hardcopy version and could
be requested by regular mail from the organisors (less than three
weeks before the end of the evaluation deadline)
- the attempt to get at a least one of the electronically submitted
papers fails due to continuous timeout
- apparently no PC member knows which paper should be reviewed by whom
and how many papers should be reviewed per PC member;
it might be that 342 papers would not get a single review whereas
51 manuscripts would get more than ten reviews, who knows???
But in this case it is probably the safer alternative no to do any
review at all (which is apparently the strategy of all or
almost all TC6 PC members)
- and the (desired?) outcome will very probably be:
- that the PC chairman will fix the whole programme alone
- and that he will correctly state that TC6 was not helpful at all
for the reviewing procedure.
I don't know whether this is the intention of TC6 when we organize an event.
Best regards
Otto
***********************************************************************
SPANIOL Otto, Prof. Dr. Tel.: +49-241-80 21400/401
Aachen University of Technology Home: +49-241-57 45 90
Computer Science Department FAX: +49-241-8888 220
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Office address: spaniol(a)informatik.rwth-aachen.de
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