In the file sharing ecosystem, One-Click File Hosting Services (FHS) such as Rapidgator and Uploaded, the previously Rapidshare and Megaupload, provide a platform for users to share copyrighted content. We present a publisher-side analysis of FHS file sharing dynamics through data collected from active measurement by crawling Warez-BB. The website is essentially a forum where publishers can share links to content they have uploaded on file hosting services. Consumers can use the website to gain access to content shared on the website, often free of charge. We primarily analyse various characteristics of file sharing with respect to view count as the evaluation metric.

This paper aims to develop a real-time Plant Environment Simulator (PES), which simulates a corrugated plant effectively and realistically. The resultant solution of this work can be used to provide factory workers or new developers with a responsive, simulated learning environment on teaching how to use existing software correctly. The work is carried out for a large cardbox maker that can be used to test new prototypes without using the actual plant facilities, so it will economically and efficiently contribute to the creation of new robust software products for the corrugated plant.

Cultural venues like museums increasingly seek to harness the value of data analytics to make data driven decisions related to exhibitions duration, marketing campaigns, resource planning, and revenue optimization. One key priority is the need to understand the influencing factors behind visitor attendance. Using data collected from a large museum, we investigated whether the weather has a significant impact on visitor attendance or that other factors are more important. We applied the Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) methodology to perform the research, developed and built four different types of regression models using R and its machine learning packages to model visitor attendance. The models were trained and evaluated. Predictions of visitor attendance were then generated from each of the four models and forecast accuracy was measured. The extreme gradient boost model was the best model with the highest average forecast accuracy of 93% and lowest forecast variability when benchmarked against the actual visitor attendance from the test data set. The weather was not considered to be as significant in predicting visitor trends and numbers to the museum compared to factors like time of the day, day of the week and school holidays. However, it was still measured to have a slight impact as excluding weather variables resulted in a model with a poorer fit. Weather can potentially have a more marked impact on cultural attractions in more extreme weather environments and outdoor venues.

Pornography can be distributed in multiple forms on the Internet. Online pornography forms a non-negligible fraction of the total Internet traffic, with adult video streaming gaining significant traction among the most visited global websites. Similar to the rise of User Generated Content (UGC) on general Web 2.0 services, adult video service providers have also promoted social interaction and UGC in what is called 'Porn 2.0'. Discovering the characteristics of Porn 2.0 allows for better understanding of both Internet traffic in general and specifically UGC services. In this paper, using trace-driven analysis, we examined the characteristics of one of the most well-known Porn 2.0 service providers, XHamster. We found that a large proportion of the currently available videos were uploaded in recent years and this has coincided with a rapid growth in the use of video categories. Compared to non-adult UGC services, we found user interaction on XHamster to revolve more strongly around ratings than comments and the average duration and views per video were higher.

Internet piracy is a significant ongoing problem for content producers and rights holders. Estimates of the cost of copyright infringement to the film and music industries range in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars every year. The vast majority of this illegal content is shared using three key technologies: peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols such as BitTorrent, illegal file streaming, and one-click file hosting services (OCHs). The current dominant analogy for file- sharing, promoted by copyright holders and industry lobby groups, is one of 'copyright theft'; with content uploaders predominantly depicted as opportunists motivated by financial gain. Recently, academics from various disciplines have begun to question this narrative, proposing alternative models for understanding piracy based on the concept of the social or 'altruistic' sharer. In this paper, two OCH indexes were studied for insights into uploader dynamics. Results suggest that traditional understandings of Internet piracy are significantly limited in their ability to explain a number of aspects of the current OCH ecosystem. A significant number of uploaders are found to be behaving in ways that do not fit the traditional economic narrative; large numbers of users are making negligible money, and aggregate figures show a significant amount of uploaders are failing to take actions to appropriately maximise their hypothetical earnings.

Adult video content is considered to be responsible for a major portion of the Internet traffic. We present a preliminary characterization study of one of the largest and popular adult streaming service, xHamster. While there have been extensive analysis of mainstream user generated content sharing services such as YouTube, adult streaming services have been an underappreciated field of study for researchers. Using metadata of over 1.8 million videos we studied the video characteristics, user interaction, and popularity dynamics of xHamster. We observe that adult services garner more views per video than YouTube. Adult streaming sites tend to have longer videos compared to mainstream streaming sites. In adult streaming services it is common for videos to be assigned multiple categories.

Internet piracy is a significant ongoing problem for content producers and rights holders. Estimates of the cost of copyright infringement to the film and music industries range in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars every year. The vast majority of this illegal content is shared using three key technologies: peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols such as BitTorrent, illegal file streaming, and one-click file hosting services (OCHs). In this paper, two OCH indexes were studied for insights into uploader dynamics. Results suggest that traditional understandings of internet piracy are significantly limited in their ability to explain a number of aspects of the current OCH ecosystem. A significant number of uploaders are found to be behaving in ways that do not fit the traditional economic narrative.

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of an energy-efficient handover algorithm for the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that are the main building block in the creation of the Internet of Things (IoT). Our low-power handover design is based on a careful breakdown and analysis of the potential power consumption of different components of the handover process. With the scanning part of the process being identified as the main drain of energy, the algorithm is designed to place the majority of the scanning responsibility on the mains powered access points, rather than on the low-power mobile nodes. The proposed algorithm has been implemented and its functionality and low power consumption have been empirically evaluated. We show that the design can reduce the energy consumption by several orders of magnitude compared to existing handover algorithms for WSNs. These reductions substantially extend the lifetime of low-power IoT devices with fixed battery capacity and reduce their battery requirements of other IoT devices.

Measuring quality of Internet access is important because it provides rich information on capability of Internet services and user experience. As Internet services actively evolve, users tend to spend more time and require more network capacity over time. To meet the needs of consumers, there is a wide mix of ISPs and access technologies offered in New Zealand. Benchmarking ISPs in New Zealand for their quality of service enables us to predict what users may experience among different ISPs. In this paper, we present a study of broadband service performance in New Zealand ISPs. Our results will provide accurate information on the quality of service users experience from New Zealand ISPs and helps both ISPs and Government to understand current Internet service market.

Scheduling decisions can have a pronounced impact on the performance of multi-radio wireless systems. In this paper, we study the effects of dispatch policies and queue scheduling strategies on the user-perceived performance for Internet traffic flows in a multi-channel WLAN. Our work is carried out using simulation and an empirical Web workload trace, with mean response time as the primary performance metric. The simulation results demonstrate the good/bad combination of the dispatch policy with queue scheduling strategy, the advantages of deferred dispatch over immediate dispatch, and the sensitivity of dispatch policies to heavy-tailed workload characteristics. The results also highlight the pros and cons of a simple lookahead scheduling policy, particularly in the presence of high variability workloads on a heterogeneous multi-channel system with random losses. Our results provide insights into efficient and robust scheduling policies for multi-channel WLANs.