Announcing the Final Examination of Mr. Daniel J. Lacks for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Date: November 8, 2007
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Room: ENG III 202
Dissertation title: Modeling, Design and Evaluation of Networking Systems and Protocols through Simulation

Computer modeling and simulation is a practical way to design and test a system without actually having to build it.  The motivation behind this work is to build a common software framework that can be used to create new networking simulators on top of an HLA-based federation for distributed simulation.  The goal is to reduce the time a developer has to learn the semantics of message passing and time management to free more time for experimentation and data collection and reporting. 

This is accomplished by evolving the simulation engine through three different applications that model three different types of network protocols.  One simulation, the 3DInterconnect simulator, simulates data transmitting through a hardware network interconnect.  The second simulator, Cluster Leader Logic Algorithm Simulator, simulates an ad-hoc wireless routing protocol that uses a data distribution methodology based on the GPS-QHRA routing protocol.  The third simulator simulates a grid resource discovery protocol for helping Virtual Organizations finding resource on a grid network to compute or store data on.  Results are presented for each simulator that shows the feasibility of the k-array n-cube interconnect, CLL algorithm, grid resource discovery protocol, and HLA simulation engine performance.

Outline of Studies:
Major: Computer Engineering

Educational Career:
B.S., 2001 University of Central Florida
M.S., 2002 University of Central Florida

Committee in Charge:
Dr. Taskin Kocak
Dr. Mainak Chatterjee
Dr. Damla Turgut
Dr. Harold Klee
Dr. Necati Catbas

Approved for distribution by Taskin Kocak, Committee Chair, on October 30, 2007.

The public is welcome to attend.