It’s been a while since I last posted here, the reason being that I had a lot of work to do : deadlines were thee almost daily. I was basically modifying and adding code to a Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) network simulator.
The RPR standard was standardized in 2004 but the equipment is being deployed nowdays (there is a present project on making a 40Gbps backbone using an RPR network). The only thing is that since it is a new standard, there aren’t many people who, given the requirements, can tell what equipment/capacity would be required. Hence the need for a simulator.
The simulator I was working on was initially developed by Simula Labs. It had about 5000 or so lines of code, to which I added another 3000 lines in the past month, which made it more configurable and easy to use and make sense of results.
I had my mid-internship presentation on the 14th of this month. It went well. My primary mentor works here itself in Bell Labs Bangalore. The other person with whom I was working is at Bell Labs, Murray Hill (in New Jersey), so he demonstrated the simulator to the Lucent Business unit there yesterday (who will eventually be using it to show demonstrations to customers).
So far the work has been an interesting experience. Juggling with 8000 lines of code is very much different from juggling with a few hundred lines of code, since if there is a bug somewhere, it takes a long time to find and fix it and often if it takes a long time to find the bug, you feel like chucking all the 8000 lines of code into the bin. Just for the record : before this I had never written more than 1000 lines for code in a single project.
For me this problem was compounded by the fact that I hadn’t done a networks course, leave alone the fact that I didn’t know the RPR standard that well. But in the end, it went fine and my mentors are happy. So now I can safely drink as much tea and chocolate as I want from the office pantry without worrying.
Anyway, so after a week of deadlines et al, this weekend should be enjoyable. The company is organizing a parasailing trip tomorrow morning. I’ll probably spend the rest of the weekend going around Bangalore and watching movies. Next weekend, I’ll be going to Kerala.
I usually spend the evenings in the malls, looking for things to buy. Unfortunately I don’t have enough cash to buy most of the things I “want”, though I have enough to buy whay I “need”. I was chatting with my Mom the other day and she asked me if I had enough money. I said no. Then she asked me why I didn’t ask my dad for money if I was short of it. I told her I didn’t since I wanted to be independent. I didn’t expect her to take this ‘independence thing’ well, since in the past my parents generally have been a bit protective of me, to the extent that I sometimes felt they thought I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself. But I guess things have changed. Mom actually seemed to be happy that I wanted to be independent (this time, financially).
On the whole I guess coming here for the internship, instead of doing a project at IITK was a good idea (though not necessarily better). There are various day to day problems that I face here, starting from with financial problems to problems with the auto-rikshaw guy to some problems associated with office environments. I guess it’s good because next time I face them, I will be more prepared.
Anyway. that’s it for now. I’m off to drink some iced tea.
The RPR standard was standardized in 2004 but the equipment is being deployed nowdays (there is a present project on making a 40Gbps backbone using an RPR network). The only thing is that since it is a new standard, there aren’t many people who, given the requirements, can tell what equipment/capacity would be required. Hence the need for a simulator.
The simulator I was working on was initially developed by Simula Labs. It had about 5000 or so lines of code, to which I added another 3000 lines in the past month, which made it more configurable and easy to use and make sense of results.
I had my mid-internship presentation on the 14th of this month. It went well. My primary mentor works here itself in Bell Labs Bangalore. The other person with whom I was working is at Bell Labs, Murray Hill (in New Jersey), so he demonstrated the simulator to the Lucent Business unit there yesterday (who will eventually be using it to show demonstrations to customers).
So far the work has been an interesting experience. Juggling with 8000 lines of code is very much different from juggling with a few hundred lines of code, since if there is a bug somewhere, it takes a long time to find and fix it and often if it takes a long time to find the bug, you feel like chucking all the 8000 lines of code into the bin. Just for the record : before this I had never written more than 1000 lines for code in a single project.
For me this problem was compounded by the fact that I hadn’t done a networks course, leave alone the fact that I didn’t know the RPR standard that well. But in the end, it went fine and my mentors are happy. So now I can safely drink as much tea and chocolate as I want from the office pantry without worrying.
Anyway, so after a week of deadlines et al, this weekend should be enjoyable. The company is organizing a parasailing trip tomorrow morning. I’ll probably spend the rest of the weekend going around Bangalore and watching movies. Next weekend, I’ll be going to Kerala.
I usually spend the evenings in the malls, looking for things to buy. Unfortunately I don’t have enough cash to buy most of the things I “want”, though I have enough to buy whay I “need”. I was chatting with my Mom the other day and she asked me if I had enough money. I said no. Then she asked me why I didn’t ask my dad for money if I was short of it. I told her I didn’t since I wanted to be independent. I didn’t expect her to take this ‘independence thing’ well, since in the past my parents generally have been a bit protective of me, to the extent that I sometimes felt they thought I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself. But I guess things have changed. Mom actually seemed to be happy that I wanted to be independent (this time, financially).
On the whole I guess coming here for the internship, instead of doing a project at IITK was a good idea (though not necessarily better). There are various day to day problems that I face here, starting from with financial problems to problems with the auto-rikshaw guy to some problems associated with office environments. I guess it’s good because next time I face them, I will be more prepared.
Anyway. that’s it for now. I’m off to drink some iced tea.
posted by Unknown at 9:19 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home