text:
Action research/AREOL25

This is intended as a shared workspace for Bob Dick's email course "AREOL" (though it is also open to anyone who finds it!). If you've any questions about this page, or how to use it, please contact me, Cormac Lawler, on my "talk" page. For help on using wikis, please see Introduction or one of the help pages.

Below are some question-headings that I thought might be useful to get us started - please feel free to add, subtract, comment on and/or critique anything on this page, or by leaving comments on its "talk" (or "discussion") page. Perhaps you think that the questions below are too imprecise and you feel like they should be changed. Well, you can do so by editing this page - either by clicking that link, or by clicking the "edit this page" tab at the top of any wiki page...

A draft "charter" for this group is in development on the talk page.

Goals of this project
This is for listing general goals of the project - you can also add your own personal goals in the "Participants" section.

 * To research and produce collaborative definitions of concepts like "Action Research" ...
 * To outline links to theoretical concepts and research topics.

Topics to discuss
Add ideas for topics here - should these be on individual pages?
 * Action research
 * Reflection in Action Research
 * Organisational learning
 * Development
 * Frameworks.
 * Action research/AREOL25/Reflections - reflections of the course's participants

What is Action Research?
Action Research is simply a term used to describe a particular application of research. In fact it is not much different from other forms of social research or indeed any type of research which aims at process-improvement except in that it possesses all of the following characteristics.

Action Research:

 * Aims to drive change as a consequence of research, analysis, planning and implementation

 * Organises reciprocal or alternating episodes of research and action (amongst items that are logically related to each other)

 * Involves stakeholders as participants throughout various phases of the overall process.

There is also considerable emphasis on reflection and progressive adaptation to circumstances as defining characteristics of Action Research. There is probably always going to be some debate about how precisely these matters need to be defined.

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Action_research

203.214.90.70 07:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC) David Don

Is all research Action Research?
Several criterion might be proposed as defining attributes of Action Research. The most obvious of these is a reciprocal relationship between stages of information gathering and steps taken to modify processes and resources to improve or alter outcomes, including unintended consequences for people working 'within' the system. This method of operation involves planning and checking stages too and tends to be repetitive.

 * The PAOR (or PDCA) cycle and variants thereof are essential characteristics of Action Research

 * The purpose of engaging in cycles of Action Research is change.

Interestingly, because the goal of Action Research can be to alter its impact on those who operate within the system and to improve the products and services provided to users, it tends to be assumed that Action Research must be inclusive of all Stakeholders. There are those who argue that it is necessary to involve those who use the outputs of the system or who are subject to them (particularly the later) in order for a project to qualify as an Action Research Project. This is debatable and it is generally held that an essential criterion of Action Research is:

 * That relevant Stakeholders participate in the Action Research project.

Unfortunately, from the definitional point of view, the extent to which Stakeholders need to participate in an Action Research project is not clear cut either. Stakeholders might be involved in the work associated with each stage of the unfolding PAOR cycle but need not participate in all stages and at all times. Similarly, there are no clear cut criteria that we can apply to describe the nature of Stakeholder involvement in a project to use as a guide line for determining whether or not it is Action Research.

We might say that:

 * It is desirable that Stakeholders be involved in the Action Research process as fully as is practicable or as fully as their needs, interest and capacity allow, given the goals of the project overall and its sub-goals at each stage of its unfolding.

This matter needs to be clarified as at 13 March 2007

203.214.54.224 02:31, 14 March 2007 (UTC) David Don

Introduction
Issues around stakeholder participation can be construed as a resource optimisation problem. This note makes some suggestions that may help you to reach well-balanced decisions about the level and type of involvement to aim for with each stakeholder.

Background
It isn't always feasible or even necessarily desirable to involve all stakeholders in all aspects of an action research project. Indeed choices have to be made whenever time, money and/ or other constraints limit the scope and/ or coverage of an Action research project or indeed the methods to be used. There will always be certain people or groups you need to include at some point in the project but using a systematic approach to make decisions about involvement will help to optimise the efficiency and effectiveness of the project, overall.

A definition
Stakeholders comprise those individuals and groups who might be affected by a change to the type, level and/ or combination of resources that are subject to some form of processing or by changes to work-practices and/ or the direct outputs and ‘knock-on’ affects of the system under study.

Trade-offs
After identifying stakeholders the next major decision lies around determining the type and level of involvement of various people in the project. This necessarily involves making ‘trade-off’ decisions even if they are done unwittingly.

Trade-off decisions require us to think in terms of (a) the contribution that each stakeholder might be able to make and (b) the total cost associated with involving each Stakeholder (cost of involvement). The following method of comparing ‘contribution’ and ‘cost’ aims to identify those circumstances where cost might exceed contribution so that they can be flagged for explicit consideration.

Determine where trade-offs can be made
Action research involves many different types of activities and it is open to influences which can affect its processes and outcomes. We can classify these aspects of Action research and use them as a framework to help us make trade-offs.

The first stage in the trade-off process requires thinking about the expected value of contributions in each area of concern. Using a rating scale can help to make it easier to assess the value of involving each stakeholder

Use the following scale to rate each stakeholders’ likely contributions to each aspect of the Action research project: None/ Low/ Medium/ High (or what you prefer).

 * Help to identify and/ or clarify objectives/ help to scope the study

 * Communicate information to stakeholders (pre-project, interim, pre-change, post-change/ address counter-communication)

 * Recipient of communications (pre-project, interim, pre-change, post-change)

 * Provide physical resources

 * Provide skills or tools

 * Facilitate access to informants (e.g. advertise, network, encourage others to participate, provide access to a list)

 * Design the research

 * Interview or otherwise facilitate data collection

 * Provide information to meet the objectives of the study

 * Process data/ transcribe

 * Analyse data

 * Interpret data

 * Assess the implications

 * Plan program changes

 * Design program changes

 * Implement program changes

 * Monitor outcomes once change is implemented.

It may be desirable to add other factors into the assessment (e.g. resistance and source of complaint, political clout).

Now go thought the list for each stakeholder and do your rating of the likely cost of inclusion using the same scale (i.e. None/ Low/ Moderate/ High). Examine all those instances where the cost is high and consider whether or not there is a good reason to include the stakeholder at any point where cost exceeds contribution (this is of course subjective, which leaves you in control).

RULE OF THUMB 1: Never involve a Stakeholder in any aspect of an Action research project where the value of their contribution is zero and there is a significant cost unless there is a very good reason to.

RULE OF THUMB 2: Use your understanding of those circumstances where the cost of involving particular Stakeholders is likely to exceed the benefits to make conscious decisions about their involvement. However, as the costs of involvement are often dependent on the research design (including sampling), it may be necessary to go through several rounds of rating and it may be desirable to gather more information before you finalise a ‘Stakeholder involvement plan’.

This simple method of trade-off analysis is not perfect. Its purpose is to provide a systematic way of helping to decide on the inclusion of stakeholders in various aspects of an Action research project. Its major benefit might in its potential to stimulate us to think carefully about what we are doing and why.

How can Action Research be considered a "metamethodology"?
AR is rather a research strategy of "metamethodology" than a concrete set of rules and methods or a concise, clear-cut approach - e.g. it is neither strictly qualitative nor quantitative but embeds certail principles of stakeholder-participation and matual benefit of research and practice.--Stefanie 07:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Areol participants and contributors
Also refer to the draft Charter for this learning group in the talk page link, noted above.

 * 1) Cormac Lawler: I would like to consolidate the many ideas I read in the lists' emails, and to keep them as interlinking themes within a set of wiki pages (thus reducing the need to trawl through the archives for themes brought up by individual people). I would also like to be able to produce some collaborative definitions of things like "Action Research", "Development", "Reflection" - and have these as things that we have produced through our learning here. I'm also just as interested finding out about how and why people participate here, as I am in those who don't participate - this is a central interest of mine in my PhD - if you've come here and felt like you can't participate, please feel free to email me about this.. Cormaggio beep 12:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Stefanie Panke: I am interested in creating a shared point of reference for discussions which are too far-fetched for the AEROL mailinglist - reacting to Bob's plea to reduce the quanitity of emails. This includes specific topics such as AR & digital artifacts - i.e. wikis, portals, blogs, social bookmarking. Plus, I think the wiki offers us a space to create a collaborative knowledge pool for future work - e.g. literature, definitions, ideas for thesis-projects, articles, etc.
 * 3) Sue Brown:  I am interested in  exploring a range of frameworks that are developed and called Action Research. My historical  Action Research reference is based on Community Development theory and feminist action research methodology which reflects a very particular paradigm. I am really interested ans surprised  in the 'mainstream' frameworks that are reflected in AEROL 25. Not sure the email approach will best meet my needs as I am strongly driven by process issues and I think I can participate more comfortably in this forum. Participation and decision making fascinating.
 * 4) David Don:  I am pretty sure that a lot of the Quality Improvement and Market research work I've done in the Commercial world is close to Action Research. I am interested in formalising my understanding of AR and hope to apply what I learn to a project that will seek to provide on-going personal and career development web-based support for unemployed people who have completed Job Search Training (a requirement, in Australia, associated with receiving unemployment benefits for more than 6 weeks).  Being somewhat superstitious I will say no more until the permission to develop the concept comes through.
 * 5) Helen Phelan: I really like the idea of using a wiki site for discussions - much more akin to a real-life self-directed learning group. I also am not so keen on the stream of emails so this seems a creative solution. I am new to the formal definitions etc of action research and am interested in exploring it as a tool/framework for communicating what I do and to have a formal way of presenting development, be it community,organisational, group or individual. My main approach is based on psychodrama and the work of J L Moreno. The methodology uses a systems perspective and its energy and validity comes from his theory of spontaneity and creativity. Until we have video-conference for everyone, I think wiki is the next best thing.Helen Phelan 02:02, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Sphoenix 14:46, 16 March 2007 (UTC) I am very new to this format but I have managed a chat room for a course I was teaching.  I can't imagine that it's a whole lot different.  When I first piloted the course, I had the idea that it would be a shared learning community so students posted bios, assignments, comments and gave feedback. I suppose it was a kind of Wiki although I had not heard about Wiki.  This is a great way to learn and teach.  I find the emails a bit hard to manage sometimes so this will work quite well.  Not sure how the editing part will work for those not enrolled in areol 25.  It'll be interesting.  Looking forward to seeing and reading more bios. Sphoenix 14:46, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Dionysios (talk), a Particapant in the Wikiversity School of Advanced General Studies, Date: 2007-03-30 (March 30, 2007) Time: 190101 UTC

Useful links
Please add links here as you find them or as you feel appropriate.

 * DARwiki - A wiki about "Distributed Action Research", run by Andy Roberts (see also his blog)

title: Action research/AREOL25


text:
Talk:Action research/AREOL25

Discussion about the page Action research/AREOL25.

Introduction
Areol is an online program for learning about action research. It is offered by Southern Cross University, Australia

Purpose
To establish a forum for discussing matters relevant to the Areol on-line action research program [#25] and for sharing information about action research

Role

 * To identify and examine themes of interest to Areol 25 program participants
 * To provide a shared platform for Areol 25 program participants
 * To share thoughts and understandings about action research and create consensus and personal documents that may interest Areol 25 program participants and others interested in action research.

Membership
The Areol 25 Wiki study group currently consists of:

 * Cormac Lawler [UK]
 * David Don [Au]
 * Helen Phelan []
 * Michael Bourne [Au]
 * Stephanie Panke [Germany]
 * Sue Brown []

All Areol 25 participants are invited to join the Wiki Action Research Study Group (WARSG.

Other contributors are asked to peruse the Areol website before editing these pages: http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/areol/areolhome.html

Reports to

The participants in this program owe a duty of care to the facilitators and participants in Areol 25

Sub groups
Sub groups may be formed to address particular matters as agreed by the participants, e.g. to discuss issues related to the processes of communication between participants in this forum. [Matters related to themes are simply addressed in the pages of the forum]

Virtual meetings
Any member may call for an on-line meeting in a ‘Chat room’ and is responsible for planning the meeting at a time that will give an opportunity for participants from around the world to join in and with consideration for the agenda and roles needed to capture the proceeds of the virtual meeting.

Support
Note that the Wiki Action Research Study Group site evolves continuously as participants post new information and build on earlier posts. Mutual support is required to facilitate the ongoing development and maintenance of this site. [N] dd 23:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the above, David. I think it's good to have a shared sense of purpose and responsibility to each other - however, I'm not comfortable with new members having to ask a convenor. I think people should be allowed join in (as well as leave) as and when they like - AREOL participants or not - in the true spirit of the wiki. This is a space to discuss action research - and why not have it as open as possible? I'm interested in the "meetings" bit - though it isn't something we have discussed here on-wiki or on-list. Should this be coordinated via the list or the wiki? And where would it take place - Skype, MSN, IRC...? Looking forward to hearing yours (and others') thoughts... Cormaggio talk 23:34, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Action research/AREOL25


text:
User:Xineza Loka

Who?
Xineza Loka. It is Portuguese for Crazy Chinese Chick, roughly. Its what I get for being a Chinese who grew up in Brazil.

I was born in 1983, so do the math on how old I am. I graduated in Marketing and International Business, but I do have a passion for technology and learning. I think this is what attracted me to Wiki in the first place.

What do I want?
It would probably be corny to put "world domination" in here, so I will settle for a few of my minor goals.

 * Learn more about Math. I want to create a "Math Learning Project", probably starting out with some basic algebra to dust off, and go into advanced algebra in the end. I know it sounds funny, but I do enjoy math, even though I am not great at it. This is my opportunity to become much better too.
 * I really enjoy languages, and want to help translate as much as I can. I can currently translate Portuguese, English, Spanish, some Mandarin, and a little French.
 * Take a few classes on culinary arts, since I absolutely love cooking. (More of a long term project)

Quem?
Xineza Loka. Fazer o que, nao fui eu quem inventou o apelido.

Nasci em 1983, entao faca a conta pra saber minha idade. Eu me formei em Marketing e Comercio Exterior, mas adoro technologia e aprendizado. Acho que foi isso q me atraiu aos projetos Wiki.

O que eu quero?
Acho que seria muito se eu escrevesse que quero dominar o mundo aqui. Entao comecarei com objetivos menores.

 * Aprender mais sobre Matematica. Eu quero criar um "Projeto de aprendizado de Matematica", comecando com algebra basica para re-lembrar e ir ate algebra avancada. Apesar de estranho, eu gosto de matematica, mesmo que nao seja muito boa de contas. Essa e tambem uma oportunidade pra eu aprender mais.
 * Adoro linguas, e quero ajudar a traduzir um pouco. Por enquanto possoa ajudar em Portugues, Ingles, Espanhol, algum Mandarim, e um pouco de Frances.
 * Aprender um pouco mais sobre as artes culinarias. Adoro fazer bagunca na cozinha, mas isso e mais para o futuro.

Quien?
Xineza Loka. Es Portugues para algo como China Loka.

Naci en 1983, haga la matematica para descobrir quantos anos tengo. Gradue en Marketing y Negocios Internacionales, pero tengo una pasion por la tecnología y aprender. Pienso que esto es lo que atraida me a Wiki en el primer lugar.

Que quiero?
Creo que sea demasiado escribir que quiero dominar el mundo. Logo, aqui estan algunos objetivos mios:

 * Aprender mas matematica. Quiero criar un "Proyecto de Matematica", empezando con algebra basica para la memoria, terminando com le algebra avanzado . Se que es extrano, pero me gusta la matematica, mismo no siendo buena en el. Esa es mi opotunidad de convertirme mejor.
 * Mucho me gusta las lenguas, y quiero ayudar a traducir un poco. Puedo traducis Portugues, Ingles, Espanol, tambien Mandarin y un poco de Frances.
 * Aulas de culinaria, porque simplesmente amo cozinar, pero esto sera un proyecto para el futuro.

title: User:Xineza Loka


text:
User talk:Svch~enwikiversity

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Svch. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Svch~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 00:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:23, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Svch~enwikiversity


text:
User:Oddity~enwikiversity

me

title: User:Oddity~enwikiversity


text: File:ScreenshotOpenOfficeBaseRelationdesign.png


text:
Talk:Science Fiction Challenge/Mnemtronium

That is a great video! --Remi 07:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


text:
User:Mayank Abhishek

About Me

 * A Movie freak,
 * A Perfectionist,
 * An Open Source evangelist,
 * An Undergrad Student at Birla Institute of Technology & Science,
 * A College Junior,
 * A Vegetarian,
 * An Animal Lover,
 * A Fan of Amrita Rao,
 * A Small-time blogger; blogging at my blog,
 * A WikiImp

title: User:Mayank Abhishek


text:
Teletraffic engineering/Trunking

Author: Michel Le Vieux

Module 22 of the Teletraffic Hyperlinked Textbook

Summary
In telecommunications systems, trunking is the aggregation of multiple user circuits into a single channel. The aggregation is achieved using some form of multiplexing. Trunking theory was developed by Agner Krarup Erlang, Erlang based his studies of the statistical nature of the arrival and the length of calls. The Erlang B formula allows for the calculation of the number of circuits required in a trunk based on the Grade of Service and the amount of traffic in Erlangs the trunk needs cater for.

Definition
In order to provide connectivity between all users on the network one solution is to build a full mesh network between all endpoints. A full mesh solution is however impractical, a far better approach is to provide a pool of resources that end points can make use of in order to connect to foreign exchanges. The diagram below illustrates the where in a telecommunication network trunks are used.

Erlang and Trunking Theory
The Danish mathematician Agner Krarup Erlang is the founder of teletraffic engineering. Erlang developed the fundamentals of trunking theory while investigating how a large population can be serviced by a limited number of servers. Trunking theory leverages off the statistical behaviour of users accessing the network, these characteristics discussed in the assumptions of the Erlang B equation.

Grade of Service is a measure of the probability that a user may not be able to access an available circuit because of congestion. The busy hour is the time when the network is the most busy and is dependent on the users. The highest traffic may not occur at the same time every day so the concept of time consistant busy hour is defined, TCBH, as those 60 minutes (within 15 minute accuracy) that has the highest traffic. Business users may have their busy hour between 8:30am and 9:30am while residential users may have their busy hour between 6:00pm and 7:00pm.

Erlang B formula

 * $$GoS = \frac{\frac{A^C}{C!}}{\sum_{i=0}^{C}{\frac{A^i}{i!}}}$$                [5]

where:

 * GoS Grade of Service is the probability of blocking during the busy hour
 * C is the number of resources such as servers or circuits in a group
 * A = λh is the total amount of traffic offered in Erlangs

and based on the following assumptions, taken from Kennedy 2007.

 * 1) The assumption of pure-chance traffic means that call arrivals and terminations are independent, identically distributed random events. The number of call arrivals in a given time also has a Poisson distribution.
 * 2) Statistical equilibrium assumes that the probabilities do not change with time.
 * 3) Full availability means an arriving call can be connected to any free outgoing circuit. If switches make the connection from incoming calls to outgoing, each switch must have sufficient outlets to provide connection to every outgoing circuit.
 * 4) Any attempted call that encounters congestion is lost because the derivation assumed lost-calls. If this congestion did occur, the customer is likely to make another attempt in a short while, thus increasing the traffic offered when there is congestion.

Multiplexing
In order to have multiple communication channels use the same medium some form of multiplexing needs to be used. The two main types of multiplexing are;

The two main types of multiplexing are: -

 * Time Division Multiplexing
 * Multiple channels are combined onto a single medium for transmission. The channels are separated in the medium by their time slot.
 * Frequency Division Multiplexing
 * Multiple channels are combined onto a single medium for transmission. The channels are separated in the medium by their frequency.

Example
Assume a fictitious residential telephone network with 10 users connected to Local Exchange A and 10 users connected to Local Exchange B. If we would like 10 users on LE A to connect to 10 users on LE B a proposed architecture might use a connection between the two exchanges with 10 circuits. If the circuits were to be investigated it would be seen that there utilisations would in fact be very low. The low usage of the circuits in this scenario leads us to look at Trunking theory.

Looking at the assumptions made by the Erlang B equations we have:

 * 1) Pure-chance traffic - A user may make a call at any time of the day
 * 2) Statistical equilibrium - A user may or may not make a call directly after a previous call
 * 3) Full availability - If there is a circuit on the trunk availiable an incoming call may make use of it
 * 4) Calls which encounter congestion are lost - If there were no available circuits on the trunk the call will be lost and the user will recieve a busy tone

Investigations have also indicated that a residential user generates 0.02 erlangs of traffic and if a Grade or Service of 0.001 (1 in a thousand calls will be lost) is selected.

Applying this information into the the Erlang B equation above

A = 0.2 (10 x 0.02 Erlangs)

GoS = 0.001

We can calculate that the actual number of circuits required between LE A and LE B is 4. Trunking theory has been a major driver in making communication networks economically viable and affordable to service providers and users.

Exercises
The management of a fixed line voice operator would like to try a decrease costs, they have suggested reducing the Grade of Service on their E1, E3, T1, T3 and STM-1 trunk circuits.

(a)	Calculate and graph the efficiency per circuit of each of the carrier’s trunks with the following GoS 0.001, 0.002 and 0.005. You may make use of the following Erlang-B calculator (b)	Does reducing the grade of service significantly increase circuit efficiency? Could you suggest a better way of reducing costs?

(a)	The table below summaries the results and the graph below illustrates the increase in the amount of traffic a circuit may carry for different Grades of Service.

Table 1: - TABLE OF THE LINK EFFICIENCY PER CIRCUIT WITH DECREASING GRADES OF SERVICE

Graph 1: - GRAPH OF THE LINK EFFICIENCY PER CIRCUIT WITH DECREASING GRADES OF SERVICE

(b)	Dropping the Grade of Service on a trunk does not seem to significantly increase the efficiency per circuit. If you do not change the Grade of Service but compare the link efficiencies of larger trunks. A better way to reduce cost would to be aggregate smaller circuits into larger circuits as close to the edge of the network as possible. Simply aggregating multiple E1's into an E3 significantly increase link efficiency so by reducing the amount of circuits required and ultimately reducing costs, this illustates the importance of design in order to make networks efficient.

Graph 2: - GRAPH OF THE LINK EFFICIENCY PER CIRCUIT WITH INCREASING CIRCUIT SIZES

title: Teletraffic engineering/Trunking


text:
Anthropomorphic Robotics Project

The goals of this project are to learn about systems that could possibly be integrated into a robotic system that can complete a variety of tasks.

Process and other subpages
🇨🇴
 * /Brainstorming/
 * Basic functions
 * Visual systems
 * Physical systems
 * Logic systems
 * Human interaction

 * /External links/

🇨🇴

Project news
March 8, 2007 - Project started.

Interested users

 * Domokato
 * Projekt ANA

Academic papers

 * Soft material for soft actuators

title: Anthropomorphic Robotics Project


text:
Teletraffic engineering/What is queueing

Summary
Queues of some sort are central in the majority of models of computer and other communications systems because they represent contention for resources. The servers associated with queues correspond to resources and the customers that enter queues correspond to tasks, jobs, messages or packets that constitute the workload of the physical system.[2] Queues appear in many areas of life hence their understanding is important.

Definition
In the context of Teletraffic, a queue is said to be formed when service requests arrive at a service point or facility and are forced to wait while the server is busy working on other requests[1]. The phenomenon of queueing arises whenever a shared facility needs to be accessed for service by a large number of entities needing the services offered by the facility.

Why Study Queues?
When the nummber of service request on a system start increasing, the systems begins to get congested and the service delay in the system increases. A good understanding of the relationship between congestion and delay is essential for designing effective congestion control algorithms. In PSTNs for eaxample the use of queueing allows the systems to queue their customer's requests until free resources become available. This means that if traffic intensity levels exceed available capacity, customer’s calls are no longer lost; they instead wait until they can be served.[4] This method is used in queueing customers for the next available operator.

Queuing theory provides the tools that are needed for analyzing queues.

Queueing theory
Any queue consists of three components: an arrival process which determines when cutomers arrive at the queue and what there characterisc are; a buffer (also referred to as the queue itself) where customers wait to be served and a service time requirement for each customer at the server serving the queue.

By convention, the term queue length includes the customer currently being served, if any. Thus for an empty queue, the server is idle. Customer's service time is determined by the demand of the customer expressed in units of work and the service rate of the server specified by work units performed in unit time. Service time is then the demand divided by the rate.[2]

Queues are classified according to Kendalls notation which in its original form defines the class A/S/m as follows:

 * A describes the nature of the arrival process. If for example the arrival process is Poisson, A=M for Markovian or memoryless. If the inter-arrival times are constant,A=D for deterministic. For a general inter-arrival rate A=G. The arrival rate is conventionally denoted by λ which is the reciprical of the mean inter-arrival time. In general λ may depend on the number of customers in the queue

 * S denotes the service time distribution. We could have S=M for Markovian service time, i.e. one with exponential distribution, S=D for deterministic or constant service times.

 * m denotes the number of servers available to give service to the customers in the queue.

The Queueing discipline describes how the server decides which customer in the queue to pick next for service. Common disciplines are:

 * First in first out FIFO in which customers are served in strict order of arrival.

 * Last in first out LIFO under which the most recent arrival is served first.

Kendall's notation has been extended to include two additional fields that define the capacity of the buffer/waiting room, c, and the population of the customer pool, i.e. the maximum number of customers, p. The queue is then specified as A?S/m/c/p. If c and p are unspecified they are assumed to be infinite.

 * Little's Theorem
 * The average number of customers L in the system can be determined from the following equation:
 * L = λW

 * where λ is the mean arrival rate of tasks/customers; W is the mean time spent by a task/customer in the system.[2]

 * Figure 1: A simple queueing system

The proof of Little's theorem is presented in [2].

In a Telecommunications network, queueing is handled by control processes within exchanges, which can be modelled using state equations. Queueing systems use a particular form of state equations known as Markov chains which model the system in each state. Incoming traffic to these systems is modelled via a Poisson distribution and is subject to Erlang’s queueing theory assumptions[4]:

 * Pure-Chance Traffic – Call arrivals and departures are random and independent events.
 * Statistical Equilibrium – Probabilities within the system do not change.
 * Full Availability – All incoming traffic can be routed to any other customer within the network.
 * Congestion is cleared as soon as servers are free.

To derive a queueing model that represents a real-life system, we prefer a form that is simple or tractable, but require that it be sufficiently realistic. For queueing theory, it has been found convenient to work with probability distributions which exhibit the memoryless property, as this commonly simplifies the mathematics involved. As a result, queuing models are frequently modeled as Poisson processes.[5]

Example
A router in a computer network is able to service any ip packet in an average time of 0.1 seconds. Suppose the traffic intensity intensity is 100 packets/second, what is the mean number of of packets in the queued in the router?

Using Little's theorem,
 * Number of packets in queue = 100*0.1 = 10 packets

Exercise
Using Kendall's notation, describe a queue with a single server, a Markovian inter-arrival process with a constant service time.

For a single server m=1. Since the service time is constant S = D showing that it is deterministic. The inter-arrival process is Markovian hence A = M. By Kendall's notation, the queue is described as
 * M/D/1


text:
Teletraffic engineering/Flow Control Telecoms

Author: Michel Le Vieux

Module 5 of the Teletraffic Hyperlinked Textbook

Summary
In communication networks new equipment is continually being developed and introduced into the environment. An artifact of this interconnectivity is that devices with different capabilities need to communicate, this presents a problem when the sending device is sending faster than the receiving device can receive. Flow Control is the process used to resolve these issues.

Definition
Flow control is used a variety of places in a network, the diagram below highlights the basic theory of flow control. The sending device on the left has the capability to send at a certain rate. The recieving device on the right however only has the ability to process the recieved data at a rate lower than the sender is sending. If the sending device sent at it maximun rate data would be lost at the receiver. Flow control is used to determine which rate the sender needs to send at.

Figure 1: - Theorectical representation illustrating the need for flow control

Congestion control is not the same as flow control, congestion occurs as congestion occurs and actions are taken to alleviate the congestion and prevent it from collapsing the network.

The majority of networks current being deployed are packet switched networks including the internet. Packet switched network leverage of the benefits of bandwidth multiplexing. An important aspect of packet network multiplexing is the importance of buffers, the buffers are used to create queues and flow control mechanisms are used to prevent the overflow of these buffers.

TCP and flow control on the Internet
Flow control of Internet Protocol (IP) is done in the transport layer of the OSI model. The most commonly used transport layer protocol on the Internet is TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). TCP has the following features; automatic packet retransmission, reordering, transmission error detection, appropriate packet size discovery and flow control. TCP makes use of a flow control algorithm in which a number of packets are sent through the network without acknowledgement this is call the window size. The intial TCP window size is set to be the minimum of the sender's currently computed congestion window (CWND) and the receivers advertised window (AWND). The two main alogorithms are slow start and congestion avoidance. Slow start exponentially increases the transmission rates until there until a buffer overflow somewhere in the network and packet loss is detected at which point TCP swaps to the congestion avoidance algorithm which increase traffic flow linearly. The next point at which packet loss is detect TCP will reduce its transmission rate by 50%. The continual increase and drop-off of transmission rates creates a commonly observed “sawtooth” throughput graph.

Current work on Flow Control
At present there is a move towards Next Generation Networks. NGN’s seeks to provide multiple services over a single integrated network. Nodes in these networks will be processing multiple data streams. Flow control becomes important in that adequate resources need allocated to high priority traffic. Voice over IP (VoIP) or IP TV streams should be processed ahead of web browsing or email traffic. Quality of service (QoS) in a network controls the allocation of resources to traffic flows, real time applications have very strict QoS requirements where any delay or packet loss can severely impede the service. The diagram below illustrates the different traffic flow characteristics of end user applications.

Figure 1: - Bandwidth needs for different classes of applications. (a) Elastic.(b) Real-time. (c) Rate-adaptive. (d) Stepwise.

The diagram above illustrates 4 different types of applications bandwidth requirements

(a) Elastic - Traditional data applications such as FTP, Web browsing or Email, these applications makes use techniques such as the TCP sliding windows to utilise more bandwidth.

(b) Real-time - Real time applications such as VoIP have defined bandwitdth requirements and so demand for bandwidth is rapid if not instantaneous as in the dashed line.

(c) Rate-adaptive - Some types of real time applications have the ability to adjust their transmissions rates depending on network congestion.

(d) Stepwise - There are video and audio delivery systems that make use of a layered encoding and transmission model allowing a stepwise approach to the bandwidth demand.

QoS and the Internet
In order to provision for the flow control services that are required by applications over the Internet where there can be instances of congestion and packet loss two QoS service mechanisms. The two mechanisms are INTSERV and DIFFSERV.

THE INTEGRATED SERVICE MODEL
The Intserv model was proposed support real-time applications. INTSERV provides some control over the end-to-end packet delays in order to meet the real-time QoS. The main requirement of the Intserv model is that resources (e.g., bandwidth and buffer) must be control for each realtime application at every hop along the path. This requires a router to reserve resources in order to provide specific QoS for packet streams, or flows, which in turn requires flow-specific state in the router. The control of the resources on each routers along the path is done with Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP).

THE IETF DIFFERENTIATED SERVICES FRAMEWORK
IN the Diffserv architecture traffic entering a network is classified at the boundaries of the network and identified and marked with a single Diffserv codepoint (DSCP). Users request a specific performance level on per packet basis, by marking the Diffserv field of each packet with a specific value. This value specifies the per-hop behavior (PHB) to be allotted to the packet within the provider’s network. Within the core of the network, packets are forwarded according to the PHB associated with the DSCP.

Exercises
(1) Why does VoIP not make use of the existing flow control mechanisms of IP?

(2) Why don't Realtime applications use TCP?

/Solutions


text:
Database challenges

The following database challenges are designed to flex your database skills, giving you a chance to apply what you learn. The idea is simple: use your favourite database application (Microsoft Access, or OpenOffice Base) to design and create the database described in each challenge. As each challenge will not necessarily give you step-by-step instructions, it will be useful to work together with others and discuss your solutions together.

Note: You can right-click on any image and open it up in a separate window to see a larger version. If you then want to print the image you can then click on the "Download high resolution version" link on that page.

Challenge 1: Recording your customer payments
Your friend owns a small mail-order business and, up until this point, has used a simple spreadsheet to record her customer details. She's asked you if you could create a small database for her to allow her to:
 * 1) Enter customer details
 * 2) For each customer, add payment details when necessary.

Laura doesn't need you to create fancy forms or anything else (yet), but would just like the two related tables as shown in the diagram, with the following data. Note - it will be important to look at the data before you design your tables, as it will help you decide what type of fields to use.

Payments
Notes:
 * Make sure you understand from the data above which payment corresponds to which customer.
 * Experiment with the different types of fields for your data, and debate your choice with the people around you!
 * For help creating tables and relationships, check out the Roadmap to Access 2003 Training from Microsoft

title: Database challenges


text:
Teletraffic engineering/Teletraffic grading

Summary
Grading is the limiting of the number of outlets that in incoming call (into an exchange) can be switched to. Grading only occurs in exchanges setup for Limited Availability.

Background
In order to understand the concept of Grading some background is required. Grading is utilized in PSTNPSTN] networks, which are circuit-switched networks. For large PSTN networks (exchanges) the question of availability becomes an issue.

Availability in the context of TeleTraffic Engineering is the ability of an exchange to switch incoming calls (or lines) onto outgoing lines. This lead to the notion of all outgoing lines being available for switching (Full Availability) or a limit on which in coming lines may be switched to which outgoing lines (Limited Availability). Exchanges are limited due to older electromechanical switches not being able to switch large numbers of lines, greatly increasing the expense of making large exchanges fully available.

Definition
Grading is the technique of limiting the available outgoing lines that the incoming lines can switch to in an exchange. This technique was once a major statistical endeavor undertaken for almost all exchanges; advancements in technology however have started to make the use of grading obsolete, due to modern technology allowing for all exchanges to be fully available. The simple examples following demonstrate the concept of grading.

Example 1:
Figure 1 shows a simplified exchange in a fully available configuration. Note that incoming lines A-D can connect to all four of the outgoing lines 1-4.

Figure 1

In Figure 2 however this is not the case; only three of the four outgoing lines is available to each of the four incoming lines. For example, incoming line A can access outgoing lines 1-3, but if those lines are occupied by incoming lines B-

Example 2:
An alternative method a looking at the concept of grading is shown in Figure 3 below. In the example there are 8 inlets and 15 outlets. The circuits are divided into grading groups, made up of 8 individuals, 4 pairs, 2, quads and 1 common. It should be note that multiple calls can come in on a particular inlet, but due to the switching of the calls, only one outlet per call may be used. If an incoming call on one of the 8 inlets comes in and the individual is occupied, then the call is passed to the right (to the specified pair) unless that outlet is itself occupied. Incoming calls can be passed to the right 4 times (including the original individual), resulting in a grading of 4.


text:
User talk:Stefanie~enwikiversity

Hello - is this Stefanie from the AREOL course? Whether it is or not, welcome to Wikiversity! I'm adding some general links below which might be useful - please feel free to ask anything on my talk page. Cheers! Cormaggio beep 12:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Good to see it's you - and you seem to be getting the hang of the MediaWiki syntax very well! (Are you sure you haven't used it before? :-)) Cormaggio beep 21:13, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Ok, cool - I just looked at your initial edits and saw what looked like complete proficiency. :-) I suppose our learning in different technological environments can equate with each other quite well (though not to all - and there will always be unique idiosyncracities). One way I've learnt loads in Mediawiki is by looking at pages or parts of pages that I want to emulate, going into edit mode, and seeing how it's done, and then replicating that elsewhere. Copy, paste, and adapt works too! Talk soon... Cormaggio talk 23:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problems

 * Your currently affected uploads are listed below. For each, please provide a license template and source. Thanks .– Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 23:40, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

 * 2007-03-08 14:47, Stefanie: Stefanie.jpg: untagged! ; 0 (0)
 * 2007-03-08 14:54, Stefanie: Stefanie Panke.jpg: untagged! ; 1 (0)
 * 2007-03-08 14:55, Stefanie: Stefanie lecture.jpg: untagged! ; 0 (0)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Stefanie. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Stefanie~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:44, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:23, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Stefanie~enwikiversity


text: User talk:Kevin Bloor

title: User talk:Kevin Bloor


text:
User talk:Chilekwab

Welcome to Wikiversity
Hi and welcome to Wikiversity. We welcome your contributions.

I wanted to touch base and find out a little about your course and teacher, so that we could better facilitate and co-ordinate efforts.

Please leave me a note letting me know where you are located (country), and contact info for your teacher here. If he's not on our wiki, and you don't want to make his e-mail public, you can click on "E-mail this user" from that page.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy your time at Wikiversity! Historybuff 03:44, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problems

 * Your currently affected uploads are listed below. For each, please provide a license template and source. Thanks. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 23:42, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

 * 2007-03-12 15:33, Chilekwab: CircuitSwitchedMSC.JPG: untagged! ; 1 (1)
 * 2007-03-12 15:39, Chilekwab: PacketSwitchedMSC.JPG: untagged! ; 1 (1)
 * 2007-03-21 13:21, Chilekwab: Whatisqueueing.JPG: untagged! ; 1 (1)

title: User talk:Chilekwab


text:
User talk:Mlevieux

Welcome!
If you need any help in trunking, let me know, I'm taking a class on it right now.--Rayc 22:41, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much Michel Le Vieux 09:45, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Mlevieux


text:
User:Stefanie~enwikiversity

Reasons to be here
I am a participant of the AEROL25 course on Action Research. I'll be using this page as a playground to get familiar with mediawiki-syntax.

Current Position
since 2003: Research Assistant at the Knowledge Media Research Centre (KMRC), Tübingen

since 2005: Part-Time Lecturer at the University of Applied Science of Neu-Um (Subject: Media Psychology)

Interests
Hobbies (or a thousand reasons not to get the thesis done...): Literature (current favorite: Mark Haddon "A spot of bother"), Sports (skiing, jogging, climbing, kayaking - with varying talent & success...), Travelling & connected to the latter: Photography

Languages: Native German, English more or less fluent, broken French...

Research Interests: Activity Theory, Qualitative Research Methodology, HCI, ...--Stefanie 13:49, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

title: User:Stefanie~enwikiversity


text:
System administration

School:Information Technology → System administration

System administration is the field of work in which someone manages one or more systems, be they software, hardware, servers or workstations. Its goal is ensuring the systems are running efficiently and effectively.

Typical usage
System administration is typically done by information technology experts for or within an organization. Their job is to ensure that all related computer systems and services keep working.

A system administrator, or sysadmin, is a person responsible to maintain and operate a computer system or network for a company or other organization. System administrators are often members of an information technology department.

The duties of a system administrator are wide-ranging, and vary from one organization to another. System administrators are usually charged with installing, supporting, and maintaining servers or other computer systems, and planning for and responding to service outages and other problems. Other duties may include scripting or light programming, project management for systems-related projects, supervising or training computer operators, and being the equivalent of a handyman for computer problems beyond the knowledge of technical support staff.

It is common for systems administrators and systems analysts charged with developing and maintaining computer processes to identify operational and developmental systems. This is done to provide maximum reliability and availability on mission-critical systems used within the organization's processes by generic users to accomplish routine work while providing developmental resources to computer process development or research teams augmenting existing or developing new processes for the organization.

Related fields
Many organizations staff other jobs related to systems administration. In a larger company, these may all be separate positions within a computer support or Information Services (IS) department. In a smaller group they may be shared by a few sysadmins, or even a single person.

 * A database administrator (DBA) maintains a database system, and is responsible for the integrity of the data and the efficiency and performance of the system.
 * A network administrator maintains network infrastructure such as switches and routers, and diagnoses problems with these or with the behavior of network-attached computers.
 * A security administrator is a specialist in computer and network security, including the administration of security devices such as firewalls, as well as consulting on general security measures.
 * Technical support staff respond to individual users' difficulties with computer systems, provide instructions and sometimes training, and diagnose and solve common problems.
 * A computer operator performs routine maintenance and upkeep, such as changing backup tapes or replacing failed drives in a RAID array. Such tasks usually require physical presence in the room with the computer; and while less skilled than sysadmin tasks require a similar level of trust, since the operator has access to possibly sensitive data.
 * A systems analyst documents, trouble shoots, and develops existing and new computer and work processes and systems.

In some organizations, a person may begin as a member of technical support staff or a computer operator, then gain experience on the job to be promoted to a sysadmin position and afterwards an IT Manager.

Duties of a system administrator
A system administrator's responsibilities typically include:

 * Morning checks of systems/software.
 * Performing backups of data.
 * Applying operating system updates, and configuration changes.
 * Installing and configuring new hardware/software.
 * Adding/deleting/creating/modifying user account information, resetting passwords, etc.
 * Answering technical queries.
 * Responsibility for security.
 * Responsibility for documenting the configuration of the system.
 * Troubleshooting any reported problem or reported problems.
 * System performance tuning.
 * Keeping the network up and running.

In larger organizations, some tasks listed above may be divided among different system administrators or members of different organizational groups. For example, a dedicated individual may apply all system upgrades, a Quality Assurance (QA) team may perform testing and validation, and one or more technical writers may be responsible for all technical documentation written for a company.

In smaller organizations, a system administrator can also perform any number of duties elsewhere associated with other fields like:

 * Technical support
 * Database administration (DBA)
 * Network administration/analyst and specialist
 * Application analyst
 * Security administration
 * Programming

System administrators, in larger organizations, also tend not to be system architects, system engineers, or system designers, however, like many roles in this field, demarcations between systems administration and these other roles are often not well defined in smaller organizations. However, even in larger organizations, senior systems administrators often have skills in these other areas as a result of their working experience.

In smaller organizations, IT/computing specialties are less often discerned in detail, and the term "system administrator" is used in a rather generic way — they are the people who know how the computer systems work and can respond when something fails.

Being an administrator
The primary goal of being a system administrator is to be as lazy as possible. Not lazy in the sense that you do no work, but lazy in the sense that you get the computer to do the hard and repetitive jobs, and you do the thinking jobs.

The next goal of system administration is customer satisfaction. While "having a warm and fuzzy feeling" is a laudable goal, we want to fulfill measurable goals. Measuring things like server availability, time to problem resolution, network availability and error rates will help to measure satisfaction.

Remember there are at least two customer types in any sys admins job -- other employees, who are consuming the computer/server/network services, and the management (one of whom is the sys admins boss), who are paying the system administrator to steer their computer resources in a reliable and trouble free direction. Balancing and satisfying both customers is important in the long term. Most important, of course, is consistently providing product to end-users.

Resolving problems and troubleshooting
A large part of a sys admins job involves troubleshooting and problem solving. Many problems are user driven, and different users have different levels of competency and understanding of technology. Users are often frustrated over the problem, and sometimes need to vent. But the user is often the best source of information on the cause of an issue.

While there isn't a simple guide to every situation, there are a few steps which can help. NOTE: Don't make assumptions.
 * Isolate the problem as much as possible.
 * Look for recent changes
 * Check all of the obvious things (cables plugged in and so on)
 * Ensure each piece of equipment is working before moving on to the next.
 * Develop detailed specific information to communicate to specialized troubleshooters brought to assist with specific repairs or system augmentations.

/Detailed Computer Configuration Troubleshooting Guides

Planning and Routines
Establish a routine and try to stick to it. If you schedule deliveries of new computer equipment only on Tuesday, then you don't have to worry about matching equipment to orders while trying to get the mail server that failed over the weekend back up. Estimate how long tasks will take and measure how long they actually do. (Document them both in terms of "hours of actual work" and "clock time". It might take only 20 minutes to get a new machine set up in terms of "actual work", but it may take the better part of a day for all of the hardware and software to get installed.)

Manage and fulfill expectations
People want to know when they are going to see results, so try and think in terms of what your clients are seeing. If the server will arrive in 5 days, but it will take 2 days of setup and 2 days of testing, that is approx. 2 weeks of work, if all goes according to schedule. Don't say "it'll be here in a week", because your client will expect it to be working in 1 week and 1 day then.

Don't tell people what you think they want to hear. Be realistic and honest in your estimates, but under-promise and over-delivery. There are always a couple of things that are unforseen, and underpromising allows you real time to work on those items. Over-delivering means either be dead on, or early in completing tasks. If you are early, make sure you explain that you had some good luck (and avoided those couple unforeseen issues) and were able to deliver faster than you expected.

Larger projects - Blocking your time
There are always a few projects that will take either most of a day or even a few days, but they need concentration and few interruptions to complete in the best way possible. What do you do if your job is to answer end-user questions when they happen, and they usually happen a few times an hour? The best way is to block your time. Most sys admins work in teams, and this is the best way to block your time. Simply ask your team mate to take over all of the interruption type questions you usually deal with for the time you need, and you will do the same for him/her when they need to do a larger project.

Create a process and stick to it
Many companies have support hotlines and e-mail areas where users can get support for their questions. Often, however, sys admins complain that users ask them questions in person or call them directly to get around these processes. If you have a formal system, first make sure it's integrated. That means that any question, be it e-mail, phone or in person has to be "entered" into the system. No one should get answers without a ticket number, which should be used by both your users and your sys admins to refer to a request. Each request should be triaged, and the requestor should get an estimated time to resolve.

The system shouldn't build a moat around the sys-admins, though. The idea is that formal questions go through a formal process, and if this is stuck to, then all users should recieve a consistent answer in a timely manner. It should also dissuade "queue jumpers" from phoning certain people direct to work around the process.

These types of processes exist in guidelines such as ITIL. It can be difficult, especially in smaller companies, to convince end users of the benefits of calling a hotline, when they have to wait for the actual sysadmins to respond, instead of calling them directly.

Document, Document, Document
In real estate, it's location location location. In system administration, it's important to create a documentation trail so you know what was done, when, and by whom. This can be something as simple as short log entries (date-time/username/action), or formal guides. It is especially critical when you are debugging or doing emergency troubleshooting to keep these entries, as changes can affect security, stability or availability of resources.

The best system is one that collects configuration changes made into a central location. Often a version tracking tool, such as CVS or SVN can be used to accomplish this, with the added benefit that you get automatic backups of any such configuration.

Topic considerations

 * Sandbox Server
 * MediaWiki Engine
 * Linux Server Administration
 * FreeBSD Server Administration
 * Topic:Apache -> Apache webserver administration, Using Modperl, LAMP, WAMP, etc...
 * Install-script (example)
 * Logon-scipt (example)
 * BIOS - Troubleshooting (POST codes, example) and accessing (example)
 * Regression testing or planning. New systems should meet all old requirements which remain current while adding new capabilities.
 * Systems analysis or designing system augmentation or modifications.
 * ...brainstorm...

Off-topic considerations

 * Homeschool
 * ...brainstorm...
 * ...brainstorm...

Software
Both the client and server software that a system administrator uses is very important for every system administrator. Proper software can save a system administrator lots of time and money. It can also be a huge benefit if the source code is available for the software, in the event that a bug is found and the provider is too expensive/slow to fix it and/or come up with workarounds.

Availability and Performance Monitoring Software

 * Montastic - a free online website monitoring service
 * mon.itor.us - Monitor Websites, Servers, Visitors and more
 * up.time - server monitoring and capacity planning software. Free 14-day Enterprise trial available.
 * Nagios - One of the best open source monitoring applications in existance. Start with the base, then get some fantastic plugins.
 * /Grafana/ - analytics, monitoring and dashboards written in Go.
 * Linux server administration/Zabbix
 * Graphite

Archiving software

 * 7-zip - Open source (LGPL) archiving program for windows, which supports most formats (see the website for a full list)

Audio/video

 * VLC Media player - Open source cross-platform audio/video player (can save all files and streams that it can open)
 * PiTiVi - Open source video editor for Linux
 * Audacity - Open source cross-platform audio editor (works alot like the old cool edit)
 * Mediacoder - Adware/nagware audio/video conversion for Windows using open source tools
 * VirtualDub - Open source video editor for Windows
 * Avidemux - Open source cross-platform video editor
 * Kino - Easy, simple and powerful open source video editor for Linux
 * SUPER - Freeware windows front-end to various open source encoding tools (includes the tools and codecs)

Backup
See Synchronization

CAD

 * Autodesk DWG TrueView - Autodesk's own freeware program to open DWG files and can save to DWF, which can also convert all DWG formats from AutoCAD Release 14 through AutoCAD 2008
 * Autodesk Design Review - Autodesk's own freeware DWF viewer, which also includes some tools to e.g. measure distance in the DWF file
 * QCAD - An open source/commercial dual-licensed CAD program, which can open and save DXF files (open source version only has binaries for linux)
 * VariCAD - Commercial cross-platform program that can open autocad DWG files (has a cross-platform freeware viewer)

CD/DVD burning software

 * InfraRecorder Open source dvd / cd burning application similar in functionality to nero.
 * ImgBurn Freeware cd / dvd burner which allows the user to burn cd /dvd image files to a disc.
 * List of optical disc authoring software on Wikipedia
 * DVD Flick - an open source Windows program to create video DVD's

Data recovery
See also: Data recovery

 * Ubuntu - a popular Linux distribution which comes with a live CD with a complete Ubuntu Linux operating system, that can e.g. read from and write to your NTFS or FAT harddisk partitions (some info and links on the sysadmin wiki, should be included here)
 * Finnix - a Linux live CD with no GUI and all sorts of good command-line sysadmin utilities
 * Knoppix - a Linux live CD with powerful GUI and command line utilities
 * Slax - small sized Linux live CD with GUI capable to run from small sized (200 MB) CD, USB Flash Key, MP3 Player or other similar devices

E-mail application

 * Outlook - Microsoft's proprietary e-mail client (well integrated with exchange)
 * Mozilla Thunderbird - Open source e-mail client with some exchange capabilities and with RSS functionality (some info and links on the sysadmin wiki, should be included here)
 * Evolution - An open source e-mail application that can communicate with exchange (Also has a windows port)

Firewall

 * Untangle - very easy-to-setup firewall distribution

Hotkey/macro utility

 * AutoHotkey - Open source hotkey utility, with a programming interface
 * HotkeyP - Open source hotkey utility, with a GUI interface
 * Wizard's apprentice - Open source utility to create a GUI from a batch file
 * AutoIt - Powerful Freeware hotkey utility, with a GUI interface
 * Freeware rename program - Freeware Mass rename program that can rename alot of files with a few clicks

Mindmapping

 * Freemind - Open source mindmapping software

Office solution

 * OpenOffice.Org - Open source office solution
 * Lotus Symphony - Free Office Suite by IBM
 * Texmaker - Open source LaTeX editor
 * LaTeXEditor - Freeware LaTeX editor
 * ODF converter - Open source ODF converter for MS Office (has slightly annoying requirements and opens/saves documents through separate menu elements in the file menu)
 * Sun ODF plugin - Sun's freeware ODF converter for MS Office (integrates nicely into MS Office)

PDF creator/viewer

 * PDFCreator - Open source printer driver for windows, which saves to PDF (version 0.9.5 with basic Vista support is out)
 * Sumatra PDF - Open source PDF viewer for windows (smaller, faster and open source) - the 0.5 version can print PDFs that have disallowed printing
 * Adobe Reader - The original, but sometimes slow, PDF viewer
 * Foxit PDF Editor - PDF editor for Windows, free trial for 6 months
 * PDF Editor - Open source PDF editor for Linux
 * PDF Split and Merge (pdfsam) - Open source PDF split and merge tool

Project management

 * GanttProject - Open source project management that can import/export Microsoft Project files

Remote control

 * VNC - Open source cross-platform GUI remote control (some info and links on the sysadmin wiki, should be included here)
 * SSH - Encrypted command-line remote control (windows version available, somewhere)
 * PuTTY - Windows SSH Client (Several other tools available for SCP, SFTP, etc. available)
 * Omnitty - A linux SSH multiplexer (give commands to several SSH sessions simultaneously)
 * winexe (part of the wmi-client package on ubuntu) - Open source tool to remotely control windows computers through a linux terminal (same functionality as psexec)

Security/encryption

 * TrueCrypt - Open source cross-platform encryption program (can encrypt whole partitions and even boot-partitions)

Synchronization

 * BackupPC - Open source backup solution (the backup server pulls the files and stores them very efficiently)
 * File synchronization on Wikipedia
 * rsync - Open source synchronization software, which has been ported to Windows (some info and links on the sysadmin wiki)

Virtual machine

 * VirtualBox - An open source virtual machine (paid version available)
 * Vmware - A freeware virtual machine (there are links and info on the sysadmin wiki)

Web/database server

 * XAMPP - A Linux distribution setup to use Linux Apache Mysql and PHP (LAMP) Perl, FTP and PHPmyAdmin
 * MySQL - A popular database program.
 * WAMP Server - Installs Apache, MySQL and PHP and Perl on a Windows Machine

Misc

 * GRAPHsql - Allows user to generate code for MySQL using a graphical interface.
 * Scalable Cluster Environment - A set of tools to assist users in building clusters of servers.
 * MyServer
 * Curl loader - Load generator written in C, used for testing

BIOS
The BIOS has different POST codes, which can give indications to problems with a computer. Wikipedia has an article on the POST, including some of the codes it can give.

How to enter the BIOS
Different models of computers have different key combinations for entering the BIOS. They can be very handy to use if you need to guide a non-technical user over the phone.

The majority of computers use F2 or Del to enter the BIOS on boot-up but other keys are sometimes used, including alphanumeric keys.

Other options on boot-up include F12 to show the boot order and F8 (on Windows) to open the boot menu. Safe-mode can be booted from this menu.

BIOS Brands
Award Modular BIOS' use Del to enter setup.

IBM BIOS' ("300" series PCs) use F1 to enter setup. If you get a restricted menu, you'll have to switch off and on.

SCSI BIOS
Some servers come installed with two SCSI BIOS.

IBM eSeries (P3s) Ctrl-A for Adaptec, Ctrl-I for IBM.

Dell PERC Controllers Ctrl-M up to 4 series or Ctrl-C for 5 and later

Acer

 * TravelMate 3220 - F2 for setup, F12 for boot order

Dell
Most Dell computers - F2 for setup, F12 for boot order

HP
Some HP computers use F1 to both enter boot order and BIOS setup.

Pavillion dv6824eo

 * Esc to enable startup message
 * F1 to enter system information
 * F2 to startup check
 * F9 to change boot device order
 * Which also gives the option to enter the BIOS setup
 * F10 to enter setup
 * F11 to system recovery

ProLiant ML110

 * Esc - Summary and boot progress
 * F2 - Setup
 * F4 - Boot menu
 * F12 - Network boot

/ProLiant/ DL380 G5

 * F9 - Setup. See also iLO.

IBM
Older IBM computers (P2s and P3s of the "300" series) - F1 for setup

A few may require power Off and On, otherwise you'll get a minimal BIOS menu.

On some IBM computers, press the blue ThinkVantage button to get a menu where you can select the BIOS, which device to boot from, etc. You can also press F12 for the boot menu.

RM
RM notebooks use F2 to enter BIOS

Samsung
Samsung notebooks use F2 to enter BIOS

Stone Computers
Stone Computers notebooks and desktop machines use F2 to enter BIOS

VMWare
VMWare guests use F2 to enter setup, F12 for network boot and ESC for boot menu

0x7b
See this guide from "the SBS team".

title: System administration


text: User talk:Bethzr

title: User talk:Bethzr


text:
Creative Commons

Creative Commons provide an increasingly popular form of open licensing options. From CreativeCommons.org:
 * Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved".

Share, reuse, and remix — legally
This unit is here to explore Creative Commons licensing and its implications for academic and educational use. Copyright (or copyleft) aspects apply to many activities such as original research, composition, photography, cartography, musical works and many other endeavors that need to be "protected" in some way. We shall use this resource to explore and discuss the various types and kinds of CC licenses and research and compare them with other copyright and copyleft devices. We may also explore the technical and social ramifications of the introduction of the Commons mindset to the Internet world.

Explanations of the licenses

 * Creative Commons Spectrum of Rights

Licenses
The following licenses have been offered and used:
 * Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
 * This is the least restrictive license. It allows unrestricted commercial, remixing, and all other permissive uses as long as licensing terms are complied. A CC BY material can be adapted into other materials that would be subject to additional copyright restrictions.
 * Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)
 * Same purpose as CC BY. However, the license requires a licensee to use the same license or a compatible one to adapt a material into others. Moreover, it forbids a licensee from adding one's own copyright restrictions without permission for an adaptation of the licensed content.
 * Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND)
 * Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
 * Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)
 * Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)
 * This is the most restrictive license. It allows neither commercial use nor derivatives without the copyright holder's permission.
 * Creative Commons Zero
 * This license automatically waives all rights of a copyright holder and releases a work into the public domain worldwide.

Wikimedia projects accept CC BY and CC BY-SA because they are considered free licenses under the definition of Free Cultural Works. Other CC licenses are considered non-free; text content licensed under one of the "non-free" CC licenses cannot be imported into one of Wikimedia projects, so they may be suitable elsewhere. However, images licensed under one of the "non-free" CC licenses are acceptable only if they are also concurrently licensed under a free license, like CC BY. Otherwise, images licensed under only one "non-free" CC license are unacceptable.

Current Wikiversity license(s)
Wikiversity now uses the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license which is very similar to the GFDL. Both licenses allow re-use of a work as long as attribution is given to the author(s) and as long as derivative works are also licensed copyleft.

Reasons for switching from the GFDL to a CC license
The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license is better suited for wikis; the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) was designed for software manuals. Furthermore, you can use CC-BY-SA works as part of other works with various licenses; you cannot do the same thing with GFDL works.

In addition, Wikivoyage doesn't use GFDL but instead uses solely CC BY-SA for similar reasons.

In 2018, the Wikimedia Commons community decided to restrict usage of GFDL for non-software works. While such works licensed under GFDL before 15 October 2018 still remain, the ones licensed under only GFDL on or after that date are no longer accepted. Instead, if GFDL is to be used for non-software works, such work must be also licensed under a free license, like CC BY-SA.

Reasons for using CC BY-SA instead of CC BY
While CC BY is the least restrictive CC license, any content remixing or adapting the CC BY material would be subject to additional copyright restrictions and/or be claimed as the adapter's own exclusive work, especially if Wikipedia were to use CC BY. Moreover, as long as the adapter follows the licensing terms, a case of copyright infringement would be impossible. Furthermore, if Wikipedia would use CC BY, other editors would face difficulties on using the more-restricted material adapted from Wikipedia content. "ShareAlike" license allows reuse of free content but also requires licensees to use the same license or a more compatible one. It also is used by most Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia, to limit how the content can be adapted into other materials and to make content stay free and easier to reuse. A CC BY material can be adapted into a CC BY-SA material. However, CC BY is incompatible with CC BY-SA, so either the same author must switch from CC BY-SA to CC BY to re-license the same work, or a CC BY-SA material cannot be adapted into a CC BY material.

On the contrary, Wikinews uses CC BY 2.5 Generic, and Wikidata uses CC Zero, which are allowed as "exceptions" under WMF's Terms of use.

License Versions
Licenses in versions before the version 4.0 International are less clear and not as international-friendly as the latest version. Indeed, the terms and conditions of the international (Generic/Unported) licenses of the previous versions are in mind based on the law of the United States. The pre-4.0 versions contain localized ports for specific jurisdictions, like Germany. However, the latest version, 4.0 International, lacks ports; the International edition is intended for multiple jurisdictions. Some official translations for the licenses in the latest version are available.

Moral rights
Previous versions before version 3.0 do not address those rights. They are addressed in some ports of the version 3.0 and in version 4.0. Creative Commons does not license those rights, but the licenses in the version 4.0 asks a Licensor to agree to waive and/or not assert those rights "to the limited extent necessary to allow You to exercise the Licensed Rights, but not otherwise."

However, some ports of version 3.0 say that moral/personality rights would remain unaffected, like Hong Kong and Germany.

Plans to transition from CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0
According to a footnote from w:Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright, "CC BY-SA 4.0 is not backwards compatible with CC BY-SA 3.0. Therefore, mixing text licenses under 3.0 and 4.0 would be problematic." However, transition from Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International was proposed and then discussed, especially at meta:Talk:Terms of use/Creative Commons 4.0. No official progress to upgrade the CC BY-SA license has been made yet. As of now, the current licenses for text content at Wikimedia project are CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported and GFDL.
 * meta:Terms of use/Creative Commons 4.0
 * File:WMF Legal Team October 2017 Quarterly Check-In.pdf (page 38)

Commentary articles

 * "The Commons: The Commons as an Idea - Ideas as a Commons" -(article by David M. Berry about the commons and ideas)
 * "BBC to Open Content Floodgates The BBC's Creative Archive project" -(article in Wired magazine on the BBC's use of Creative Commons licenses)
 * "Creative Commons: Let’s be creative together" -(from "Framasoft")
 * "Take My Music ... Please" -(a Newsweek article about Creative Commons by Brian Braiker)
 * "Creative Commons Humbug" -(critical article in PC Magazine by John C. Dvorak)
 * "Creative Humbug" -(critical article by Péter Benjamin Tóth)
 * "Creative Humbug? Bah the humbug, let’s get creative!" -(response to Tóth's criticism by Mia Garlick)
 * Berry, D. M. & Moss, G. (2005). On the “Creative Commons”: a critique of the commons without commonalty. Free Software Magazine. No. 5.
 * Berry, D. M & Moss, G. (2005). Libre Commons = Libre Culture + Radical Democracy. Noema. No. 44.
 * Fitzgerald, Michael (2005), Copyleft hits a Snag. Technology Review
 * Hill, Benjamin Mako. (2005). Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement.
 * Nimmer, Raymond (2005). Open source license proliferation, a broader view
 * Orlowski, Andrew (2005). On Creativity, Computers and Copyright. The Register
 * Tóth, Péter Benjamin. (2005). Creative Humbug: Personal feelings about the Creative Commons licenses
 * Richard Stallman explains his disagreement with Creative Commons
 * A Debian Developer gives his summary of problems discussed on the debian-legal mailing list (note that this comments on the outdated 2.0 versions of the licenses)
 * "Why the BBS Documentary is Creative Commons" by Jason Scott
 * Greentown article Overview of copyright history from 1556 leading to Creative
 * Möller, Erik (2006). The Case for Free Use: Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons NC License. Open Source Jahrbuch 2006.

title: Creative Commons


text:
User talk:BlueDolphin

Welcome to Wikiversity
Thanks for your comment on the Colloquium. I will leave a response there, but your question is better directed at the Computer Science department. What specific area interests you about Networks? Hardware, Software, physical transport, logical layers? Historybuff 14:38, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:BlueDolphin