Mohammed Alani

Launching a new adventure called Certifications.Reviews

Posted on October 7, 2015 by My Rants

Its been a long time since I worked on a new personal project. I created RouterGeek.net back in 2005 and it had hit success a few months later. I worked on updating it for a few years, then I got busy with my PhD. and ended up turning the website into a small book that was published by Springer in 2012. Since then, I have been busy moving around from one country to another (one of the byproducts of being Iraqi).

A few weeks ago, the idea hit me. What is my favorite thing? Teaching, and passing knowledge to other people. Most of my academic interests are too complicated and might not be interesting to a large audience. I decided to go to a non-academic knowledge passing; certifications. Industrial certifications in the field of Information Technology are growing into a necessity for professionals and job seekers. So, my question was “How can I help?”.

I decided to create a website that talks to certification seekers in a simple way, explaining to them what the exam is all about. Not only by my own words, but using their own words. Eliminating all the big terms and complexity of exam description by experts. The idea is simple. Hear what other people think about the certification exam. What is this exam about? How did others achieve their goals? How did the exam change their lives? What is next?

When you, as a certification seeker, hear these words coming from the mouth of a fellow regular person in a simple language, it takes away your fear and clarifies ambiguities of this exam. I thought that this is a good idea and for me as person who had many certification exams, I believed that this can help me a lot.

So, I started a website called Certifications.Reviews. The website is designed to serve as a platform for certifications takers and seekers to exchange important information and tips.

After settling on the main idea, I was thinking that I should spice up the idea a little. I kept thinking, as a certification seeker, what do I need? The answer was a time table!

So, I sat down and developed a simple algorithm to create time tables on-demand. I put together a small application and a server to host it. The application lets you select the certification vendor, certification, the book that you are using, and the number of hours you plan to study per day. Voala..a time table is generated. I kept adding books to the time table database which now carries 30+ books in different specializations.

So many more ideas are going to be added to the site gradually. Joggling an academic job with a new project is not that easy, apparently. Stay tuned! there is much more to come!

Paper: MANET Security: A Survey

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Publications

ABSTRACT

Mobile Ad hoc Networks are being adopted in more and more applications in our daily life. Mobile computing and mobile ad hoc networks in particular have become a daily need. As mobile ad hoc networks have been target for many attacks, the security of these networks has become an essential part of their existence. This paper provides a review of the current threats and how these threats are mitigated. The paper also discusses common attacks on mobile ad hoc networks and classifies these attacks in various classification types. The paper also discusses various countermeasures to mitigate the risks of attacks.

 

Citation Info:

Mohammed M. Alani, MANET Security: A Survey, published in the 4th IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing, and Engineering, Penang, Malaysia, November 2014.

Full text available on IEEE Xplore on this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICCSCE.2014.7072781

How to export Gantt chart from MS-Project 2010

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Course Information and Resources

I am not a “MS-Project” expert of any kind. Its just that a lot of my students need this, so I thought I would put it on the web for them as well as anyone else. Without wasting more time, here are the steps:

1. Mark all the rows in the WBS in MS-Project by clicking on the numbers on the side and sliding the pointer to the last row of project tasks.

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2. Click on the small arrow next to “Copy” in the toolbar.

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3. Click on “Copy Picture” from the small drop-down menu.

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4. In the new window that is shown do the following:

a. Select “To GIF image file”

b. Select the location and the file name

c. Select “Selected Rows”

d. Select the proper dates for the start and end of your project. It is very important to select the correct dates that are used in the list or your Gantt Chart would not be complete.

e. Click on “OK”.

The file is now saved and can be easily added to your Word document.

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Paper: Securing the Cloud against Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: A Review

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Publications

ABSTRACT

Distributed denial of service attacks are becoming a serious threat that no business involved in providing services over the Internet can ignore. The rapidly growing frequency and magnitude in which these attacks are occurring is an alarming indicator. As cloud services are being adopted by many enterprises, the cloud infrastructure resilience to such attacks becomes a growing concern. In this paper, we discuss the types and possible impacts of DDoS attacks on cloud computing and the suggested mitigation techniques. These attacks were categorized into three categories; external, internal, and cloud-to-outside attacks.

 

Published in the Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Applied Information and Communication Technology, Muscat, Oman. 28-29 April, 2014.

Book: Guide to OSI and TCP/IP Models

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Publications
  • Provides a simplified introduction to computer networks
  • Requires no prior background in the field
  • Discusses the fundamentals of the network, transport and application layers
This work opens with an accessible introduction to computer networks, providing general definitions of commonly used terms in networking. This is followed by a detailed description of the OSI model, including the concepts of connection-oriented and connectionless communications. The text carefully elaborates the specific functions of each layer, along with what is expected of protocols operating at each layer. Next, the journey of a single packet, from source to destination, is described in detail. The final chapter is devoted to the TCP/IP model, beginning with a discussion of IP protocols and the supporting ARP, RARP, and InARP protocols. The work also discusses the TCP and UDP protocols operating at the transport layer, and the application layer protocols HTTP, DNS, FTP, TFTP, SMTP, POP3, and Telnet. Important facts and definitions are highlighted in gray boxes found throughout the text.
Published: March, 2014 by Springer.
Guide to OSI and TCP/IP Model

Guide to OSI and TCP/IP Model

Develop research culture in the Arab Middle East

Posted on March 4, 2014 by My Rants

I wrote a letter to the Editor of the Communications of the ACM that was published in Issue 3/Vol 57 (March, 2014).

It was only 2002 when I first knew ACM even existed. I was preparing my master’s thesis in computer engineering in Iraq. I was so amazed I thought of ACM members as movie stars. Due to many circumstances, I did not have the honor of joining as a member until 2010. Having received my bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. in the Middle East, I have always seen a gap, a large one, between the way research is conducted there on one side and in Europe and the U.S. on the other. This feeling has been enforced whenever I get a rejection letter for a paper sent to a big computer science conference or journal. Sometimes, unfortunately, reviewers have mocked and even ridiculed instead of provided a constructive review. This happened in the early stages of my own research, and, as I learned later, to many of my colleagues as well. In most cases, when I look at Arab scientists who have published in reputable conferences and journals, I see author names of those who have either studied abroad or are working abroad, many very successful with outstanding research records. What does this say?

The Arab Middle East needs a cultural revolution in terms of research, especially in computer science. The research mentality here is quite different from other areas of the world. This is not to say it is not scientifically valid, just that research here is conducted in a different way that needs to be formalized to conform to international standards. Many researchers in the Arab world have amazing potential. Unfortunately, that potential is not being unleashed until they go abroad.

I sincerely hope ACM takes the initiative in helping spread a valid and concrete academic research culture in the Arab world. We all aim for the same thing—improving the quality of life for ourselves and for the coming generations. The lack of tools and research culture should not prevent Arab computer scientists from contributing to the development of all humanity.

The letter can be found in here.

All feedback is welcomed.

Paper: Mathematical Approximation of Delay in Voice over IP

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Publications 0

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces a novel method of approximate calculation of delay in voice over IP systems. The proposed method relies on mathematical operations like interpolation and integration to produce a continuous function. This continuous function shows the delay in different times. The paper shows a detailed example of applying this method successfully to a sample call. The resulting delay function can help in better understanding of the variations of delay in different times and how it is affected by network load.

Download

Citation Information:

Mohammed M. Alani, Mathematical Approximation of Delay in Voice over IP, International Journal of Computer and Information Technology (IJCIT), ISSN: 2279-0764, Vol. 3, Issue 1, pp. 78-82, January 2014.