TULIP wins First Prize in All Asia Softec 2007

TULIP ,a project developed by MAGGIE presented at the All Asia Software Competition (SOFTEC-2007, May 5-6) by Mr. Faran Javed, a senior from NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (NUST-SEECS) won the prize of the 'best software' in the category of 'International Software Competition' and a cash award of US$1000.

This was the third all Asia and 12th all Pakistan event. The software competition had entries from all over Asia . TULIP competed with 50 short listed projects. Of these, 14 entries made it to the second round. After which seven selected projects were evaluated through a final presentation.

TULIP is a network monitoring software developed by MAGGIE at National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), NUST-SEECS campus along with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) under the Internet End-to-end Performance Monitoring (IEPM) project.

The purpose of the software is to geo-locate (determine the physical location - latitude, longitude - in the world) a specified target host (identified by the IP address or a fully qualified domain name) using Round Trip Time (RTT) delay measurements from reference landmark hosts whose positions are known in advance. Knowing the speed of light in fiber or copper (roughly 0.6*c), the minimum ping RTT measurement from each landmark site gives an approximate estimate of the fiber and copper cable distance of the landmark from the target host. A set of algorithms are thus applied to accurately estimate the distance measure. Lateration is applied on these distance estimates to determine the position of the specified host on the globe.

TULIP competed with several innovative and interesting endeavors. Among them was "magic wand'; software that enabled reactions based on motion sensing. Others included software which determined the correctness of a bowling action by analyzing the video. A competitor from India presented software that allowed recording of lectures. The interesting feature was the ability of the camera to adjust itself with the motion of the lecturer so as to keep him/her in view.

The title of developing the best software after competing in the all Asia SOFTEC (2007) competition is certainly a highly prestigious award for NUST-SEECS. Indeed much of the credit for this success goes to Dr Arshad Ali. It was his vision and motivation that inspired students such as Mr. Faran Javed to take up this challenging research project. Dr. Les Cottrell (SLAC) and Mr Umar Kalim (NUST-SEECS) provided the technical guidance and support while keeping the morale of team-MAGGIE high.

This enviable attainment gives MAGGIE team a new fillip to gear it efforts for still greater accomplishments in the future.