President Presents Commander-In-Chief's Trophy to Navy Football VIDEO

President Bush Presents Commander-In-Chief's Trophy to the United States Naval Academy Football Team Rose Garden. 1:16 P.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Welcome to the Rose Garden. Of course, this is an old habit for a lot of the players standing behind me.

After all, this is the fifth year in a row that the mighty Navy football team won the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy. And we're here to congratulate them on that amazing achievement. As a matter of fact, coming to the Rose Garden is as familiar a place as Bancroft Hall. (Laughter.)

We welcome you here and we congratulate you. Coach, thanks for coming. Proud you're here. This team has had an historic season. For the third year in a row, had the most rushing yards in the nation, as well as the nation's highest graduation rate. (Applause.) You went to your fifth straight bowl game, and of course you accomplished your most important goal: You beat Army. (Applause.)

I want to thank the House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, strong supporter of the Naval Academy, for joining us. Congressman Hoyer, thanks for being here. Secretary Don Winter, Secretary of the Navy, and Linda. John Dalton, former Secretary of the Navy and a fine Texan, as well as Margaret. Thanks for coming. Vice Admiral Jeff Fowler, thanks for being here, sir. Proud you're here. Coach -- just Coach. (Laughter.) Like, you call me George, I'll call you Ken. (Laughter.) Glad you all are here. (Laughter.)

This team set a school record by scoring 511 points. And with your sixth straight win over Army, you established the longest winning streak against Army in history. You beat Notre Dame for the first time since 1963. (Applause.) I'm probably not going to spend much time talking to the Pope about it. (Laughter.)

You had an interesting game in the great state of Texas against North Texas, when you won 74 to 62 -- 136 combined points were the most scored in a regulation game in the history of NCAA's top division. You earned an invitation to play in the Poinsettia Bowl -- forget the score. (Laughter.) But you made an exciting finish. In other words, you brought great credit to a fabulous place of higher institute -- of learning. And I want to thank your head coach and welcome him. He's been a big part of the success over the past six years, and no doubt in my mind -- more importantly no doubt in the superintendent's mind -- that he's going to be a fabulous head coach for years to come. Congratulations. (Applause.)

I've been reading about some of the standout performers on the team, starting with slot back Reggie Campbell, team captain. On offense, he holds -- he owns eight school records. He was the MVP of the Army-Navy game. Linebacker Irv Spencer, team captain on defense. He led the team with 95 tackles. Adam Ballard -- Texan. (Laughter.) Lewisville, Texas. He came back from a broken leg in 2006 to score Navy's first touchdown of the season; he's a bruiser. Cornerback Ketric Buffin, Rowlett, Texas. You think I only talk about Texas, don't you? (Laughter.) Had an interception in each of the first four games. He's the first player in school history to accomplish that feat. Zerbin Singleton. Now there's an inspirational story for all. He faced great challenges growing up, he overcame injuries from a car accident to make it to the Naval Academy, and during the season he received the Disney Wide World of Sports Spirit Award as college football's most inspirational figure. He's the brigade commander of all 4,200 midshipmen at the Naval Academy. He'll soon begin flight training as a Marine aviator.

Proud to welcome all the individual stars here. But no question this team played well because you played as a unit. I want to thank every football player for agreeing to put on the uniform of the finest military ever. You signed up after 9/11. You knew the stakes involved in the war against extremists and radicals. You knew that your country depended on you. And you didn't hesitate to wear the uniform.

I welcome you as stars on the football field, and I welcome you as soon-to-be sailors and Marines who have a major responsibility to protect the United States from harm and spread the great blessings of liberty so we can have peace.

I cannot wait to be able to say to you someday, I'm proud to be your Commander-in-Chief. And so I welcome you to the Rose Garden. I congratulate you on being fine football players. More importantly, I congratulate you on being patriotic Americans. May God bless you. (Applause.)

END 1:22 P.M. EDT

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary April 14, 2008

Tags: President Bush and Naval Academy Football Team or Commander-In-Chief's Trophy

Hubble maps the changing constellation of Internet 'black holes'

You're trying to log on to a Web site and it's not working. You try again and again. But persistence doesn't pay off. The site you want is inexplicably, frustratingly, out of reach. The other computer might just be turned off, but the causes could be more mysterious. At any given moment,

a proportion of computer traffic ends up being routed into information black holes. These are situations where a path between two computers does exist, but messages – a request to visit a Web site, an outgoing e-mail – get lost along the way.

A University of Washington system named Hubble looks for these black holes and maps them on a Web site, providing an ever-changing constellation of the Internet's weak points. The Hubble map is posted at hubble.cs.washington.edu/, where visitors can view a map of problems worldwide or type in a specific Web page or network address to check its status. The work is being presented next week in San Francisco at the Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation.

"There's an assumption that if you have a working Internet connection then you have access to the entire Internet," said Ethan Katz-Bassett, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering. "We found that's not the case."

The project is named for the Hubble Space Telescope, which can observe black holes in deep space, because the UW tool performs a similar function for the maze of routers and fiber-optic cables that make up the Internet. In fact, research on the Internet's structure and performance is sometimes described as Internet astronomy.

"It's the idea of peering into the depths of something and trying to figure out what's going on, without having direct access," Katz-Bassett said.

The UW researchers send test messages around the world to look for computers that can be reached from some but not all of the Internet, a situation known as partial reachability. Short communication blips are ignored; a problem has to register in two consecutive 15-minute trials to appear on the site. A test last fall found that more than 7 percent of computers worldwide experienced this type of error at least once during a three-week period.

"When we started this project, we really didn’t expect to find so many problems," said Arvind Krishnamurthy, a UW research assistant professor of computer science and engineering and Katz-Bassett's doctoral adviser. "We were very surprised by the results we got."

Now the team has created an online global map, updated every 15 minutes, showing locations currently experiencing problems. Hubble shows a flag on the area that's experiencing problems and lists the numerical address for the group of computers affected. Each address typically describes a few hundred to a few thousand individual computers. Hubble also reports what percentage of test probes was successful, and how long each problem has persisted.

Clicking a flag reveals which locations were and were not able to reach that machine. Future versions of Hubble will try to pinpoint the cause of each black hole.

Hubble's virtual eye on the Internet is made possible by PlanetLab, a shared worldwide network of academic, industrial and government computers. The UW researchers use about 100 PlanetLab computers in about 40 countries to send virtual probes to computers around the globe. Hubble monitors about 90 percent of the Internet, researchers said.

The new map can satisfy a frustrated user's idle curiosity about why a Web site is not loading. But the tool promises to be especially useful to professional network operators who keep the Internet running smoothly. Right now, when a computer network experiences a problem the administrator typically turns to online discussion boards.

"You would think that the network operators of Internet service providers would have access to better data," said Katz-Bassett. "That's not the case. The general approach has been to mail something out to a listserv and say, 'Hey, can you try this and see if you have a problem"'"

In a world that relies increasingly on online communication for e-mail, banking, television, phone calls, medical information and emergency communications, researchers want to make the overall network more transparent and more reliable.

"We want to give operators a way to tell what's going on quicker, catch problems quicker and solve them quicker," Krishnamurthy said. ###

This research received funding from the National Science Foundation. For more information, contact Katz-Bassett at (413) 320-6485 or ethan@cs.washington.edu and Krishnamurthy at (206) 616-0957 or arvind@cs.washington.edu.

Contact: Hannah Hickey hickeyh@u.washington.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington

Tags: University of Washington and Internet black holes or computer traffic