BCNETwork News

June 2007

Simon Fraser University Undergrads Take Top Broadband Innovation Challenge Prize

by Cynthia Potvin

BCNET’s annual Broadband Innovation Challenge awards top honors and a $4,000 cash prize to Simon Fraser University computer science undergraduates, Leung Hoang, Graham Laverty and Samuel Wong, for their Aladdin Project.

The Aladdin Project is a unique technology that is designed to improve the Apple end user’s experience. By architecting a distributed file system that organizes large amounts of “soft computing resources” such as fonts, audio files, clip-art and office suites, Aladdin provides an effortless and seamless access to online files. Appearing to have these computing resources stored locally on their hard drive, the Mac user will no longer need to search and install applications from the World Wide Web. This right to use online resources will enable new Apple computer users with an out-of-the-box experience.

Leung Hoang, this year’s winner stated, “The most rewarding aspect of the Broadband Challenge was having our project embraced by the BCNET community. BCNET has organized great opportunities for students to publicize their work and further their research. We expect that some of our future successes will be a result of contacts we made at the BCNET 2007 Conference.”

Leveraging Super Broadband

One of the key characteristics of the Broadband Innovation Challenge is to demonstrate how the proposed project will make effective use of advanced networks. The Aladdin project utilizes high-performance networks to supply clients with on-demand resources. Servers with high-bandwidth connectivity will facilitate the expansion and operation of the application.

Second and third place awards go to University of British Columbia masters student, Michael Wood, for SymTrack: A Packet Symmetry, and undergraduates Patrick Colp, Kyle Porter and Afton Lewis, for Whiteboarding in Style, respectively.

Wood’s project, a proposed packet symmetry monitor and firewall designed for small businesses and end users who normally don’t have the capital to invest in high security IT infrastructure, takes home a cool $3,000 cash prize. This application will prevent denial of service (DoS) attacks over the Internet.

Wood says of his win, “I hope to make use of the exposure given to our project in order to get our solution more widely deployed.”

In third place, taking a $2,000 cash prize, is a network application centered on a whiteboard, which allows distributed access from remote users to interactively create drawings and diagrams.

After its fourth year, the Broadband Innovation Challenge (formerly the Coolest Applications Contest), is becoming an exciting part of the BCNET Annual Conference. It provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to showcase their talents and presentation skills, learn the value of advanced networks and the commercialization potential of application design. Participation in the contest has many benefits, “The BCNET conference and competition definitely facilitated an environment conducive to networking and allowed our group to meet individuals who have an interest in helping Alladin grow” says Leung Hoang, first prize winner.

The adjudication committee for the competition, made up of academic members, government and industry corporate partners, judged each project on merits of presentation, commercialization potential, high bandwidth requirements, innovation, technical difficulty and collaboration.

"During the adjudication process and the poster session, our group received many compelling questions, comments and suggestions. Fom this interaction with the BCNET community, we acquired new perspectives that will help us improve and build upon Aladdin,” comments Hoang.

The Broadband Innovation Challenge was sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Telus, Shaw Business Solutions, Apple, Matrix Video, Juniper Networks, SGI, and Industry Canada. Together they have sponsored cash and prizes totaling $10,000.

BCNET would like to congratulate all of the participants and thank the sponsors. We look forward to seeing the many creative ideas demonstrating the utilization of British Columbia’s super broadband research network next year at the BCNET Broadband Innovation Challenge!