UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE: EEE DEPARTMENTAL SEMINAR by Prof. Krzysztof Pawlikowski, 6 February 2002

["K. Pawlikowski" <krys@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>]

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UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, EEE DEPARTMENTAL SEMINAR
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Dear All,

On Wednesday 6 February, Professor Pawlikowski
will give a departmental seminar. Details follow:

TIME: 6 February, 3.00pm.

PLACE: Greenwood LT (Level 1 EEE Building)

SPEAKER: Krzysztof  Pawlikowski, Associate Professor
  Department of Computer Science
  University of Canterbury,
  Christchurch, New Zealand


TITLE: CREDIBILITY OF SIMULATION STUDIES OF THE INTERNET AND OTHER 
TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORKS

ABSRACT: In many other areas of science and engineering, proliferation
of 
computers as research tools has resulted in the
adoption of computer simulation as the most commonly used paradigm of 
scientific investigations. This, together with a plethora of
existing simulation languages and packages, has created a popular
opinion 
that simulation is mainly an exercise in computer programming. In new 
computing environments programming can be minimised, or even fully 
replaced, by manipulation of icons (representing pre-built
programming objects with basic functional blocks of simulated systems)
on a 
computer monitor. One can say that we have witnessed another success of 
modern science and technology: an emergence of wonderful and powerful
tools 
for exploring and predicting behaviour of such complex, stochastic
dynamic 
systems as the Internet and related computer networks.

However this enthusiasm is not shared by all researchers in this area.
An 
opinion is spreading that one cannot rely on the  majority of the
published 
simulation-based results on performance evaluation studies of 
telecommunication networks, including  the Internet in particular, since 
they lack credibility. Some are talking about a deep credibility 
crisis. 
This opinion can be supported, for example, by the results of a survey
of 
over 2200 publications on the Internet and other telecommunication
networks 
in recent proceedings of the INFOCOM (an annual IEEE Int. Conference on 
Computer Communications), ACM/IEEE Trans. on Networking, IEEE Trans. on 
Communications, and Int. J. on Performance Evaluation .

We will discuss the main issues that influence the credibility 
of  performance evaluation studies based on computer simulation,
focusing 
on the quality of pseudo-random number generators and statistical
accuracy 
of the final results. Finally, we will formulate guidelines that, if 
observed, could help to assure a basic level of credibility of
simulation 
studies of telecommunication networks and, of course, any other
stochastic 
dynamic system.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY:
KRZYSZTOF PAWLIKOWSKI (PhD degree in Computer  Engineering from the TU
of 
Gdansk, Poland).
Currently: an Associate Professor (Reader) in Computer Science at 
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

The author of over 100 research papers and four books, has given invited 
lectures at over 100 universities and research institutes in Asia, 
Australia, Europe and North America.  His research interests include 
stochastic simulation, distributed processing, performance modelling of 
telecommunication  networks (including Internet, ATM, optical and
wireless 
technology) and teletraffic modelling.
Senior member of IEEE. Research Fellow of Humboldt Foundation (Germany)
in 
1983-4, and in 1999.  Member of technical committees of such
international 
conferences as IEEE INFOCOM, ACM SIGCOM and others.
See www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~krys for more information.


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Arnaud Doucet, Departmental Seminar Coordinator
e-mail: a.doucet@ee.mu.oz.au
phone:  +61 3 8344 0310
fax:    +61 3 8344 6678