Preparation is key to hosting a successful programming contest. Toph is here to help with the process. In this handbook, we list the elements of the contest environment that are necessary for ensuring the following:
The organizer must implement all the details listed here with an exclamation mark (❗) to ensure that the contest may be conducted in a fair environment.
The contest must not start until each site confirms that all participants have been seated at their allocated computers, the allocated computers are in working condition, and the participants have received their credentials and were able to log in to Toph.
The contest will begin as per the instruction of the chief judge. Until then, contest managers may delay the start time of the contest as they see fit.
The judges must be given sufficient time for them to do any necessary post-contest reviews.
Plagiarism checking will be an important part of these post-contest reviews. This must be conducted before the winners are announced. The judges will report their findings to the chief judge. The chief judge must notify Toph of all of these findings.
Participants from the same institution must be spread as apart as possible throughout the contest sites. If the contest is being hosted in lab rooms, participants from the same institution must be in as many different rooms as possible before spreading them apart within the same room.
Each team must be spaced far enough apart so that neighboring participants do not have each others’ computer screens in their periphery vision and soft discussions within a team cannot be overheard by neighbors. A gap of 4 feet or 1.2 meters is recommended.
The arrangement of participants must be different for every contest.
However, a participant using a computer during a mock contest may be assigned the same computer for the main contest as long as a clean start can be ensured.
Temporary handles and passwords will be different for participants for each contest. Credentials will be distributed to the participants 30 minutes before the start of the contest.
A computer must be allocated for each team. All computers must be equivalent in terms of hardware specification and software configuration.
All external peripherals (keyboards, mice, etc) must be tested ahead of time and confirmed to be in working condition before the contest starts. All keys of the keyboards and mice must be tested using an online peripheral testing tool.
Since not all circumstances can be foreseen, an additional 15-20% of computers must be kept on standby. In situations where one of the allocated computers fails to perform, a team may be reallocated to a different computer from these standby ones.
Spare external peripherals should be kept handy in case one in use stops working for a quick swap.
We recommend going above these minimum requirements as reasonably possible to ensure a pleasant contest experience.
All computers must be initially configured with a clean Windows or Linux (major distribution, LTS) installation.
Both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox must be installed. Either one of them may be set as the default web browser. But, it must be set consistently on each computer for the event. The homepage of both web browsers must be set to the event lander provided by Toph (see Appendix I).
Additional web browsers supported by Toph may also be installed.
Additional integrated development environments (IDEs), compilers, and interpreters must be installed on these computers (see Appendix I for the list). These IDEs must be tested with sample code to ensure they work correctly and fast. Any sample code used to perform these tests must be deleted after the tests are complete.
If any anti-virus or Internet security software is used, it is important to ensure that this software does not interfere with the rest of the setup.
Every computer must be in the same clean state before the start of the contest. The computers must not contain any previous lab task artifacts, mock contest code, etc. In this regard, a clean disk drive is preferred.
Disk freezing solutions may be used to simplify the process of fulfilling this requirement. But caution must be exercised to avoid wiping the contents of the hard drive in the middle of a contest due to accidental restarts.
Each computer must be labeled with the assigned participant’s name on it. The label must be visible clearly from afar.
An important and often missed detail is the date/time configuration of the computer. Please ensure the correct date/time is set as well as the timezone (e.g. Asia/Dhaka for events being organized in Dhaka, Bangladesh).
Computers intended to be used by contestants must have access to Toph only. No other websites or Internet services must be accessible from these computers.
This must be ensured at the network level through firewall configuration.
Please refer to the Internet and Network section for details on which IP addresses must be whitelisted.
All network connectivity between contestant computers must be denied at the firewall level.
Please refer to the Internet and Network section for details on which IP addresses must be whitelisted.
Each computer must have its uninterrupted power supply (UPS), and all computers must collectively be under backup generator (or equivalent) support.
Each UPS must be tested ahead of time to ensure that they can switch over to battery power without interrupting the connected devices and continue to provide power until the backup generator kicks in.
Toph provides a tool to ensure that the computer is configured well, and compatible with Toph’s platform. The tool can be found here: https://toph.co/compatibility.
This tool must be run on every configured contestant computer. In case any of the tests fail with a warning (orange) or an error (red), the configuration of the computer must be checked and corrected.
The tool checks the web browser, the computer’s date/time accuracy, connectivity to Toph’s servers, and the Internet bandwidth.
Please contact Toph Support in case you have any questions regarding this tool and how any of the reported issues can be rectified.
Contest moderators must* have access to computers equivalent to contestant machines with the following differences:
Contest moderators must be reasonably allowed access to all websites and Internet services.
* Some moderators may prefer using their portable computers. For convenience, their devices should be allowed access to the on-site Internet connection and power outlets.
The network at each site must be equipped with a secondary Internet connection that the contest environment can fall back to in case the primary connection goes down.
Toph will configure the contest in a way that only computers from within the on-site networks can access the arena. To do this, Toph must know the Internet IP addresses that will be used by the on-site networks.
Please include the IP addresses of the secondary/fallback Internet connection as well.
Please provide us with these IP addresses 7 days before the first contest.
There are several ways of achieving this. Our recommended way is to configure the network’s firewall.
All of Toph’s public-facing services are available over a set of IP addresses that are A records of balancers-sg.in.net.toph.co.
Rejecting any outgoing packets that are not destined to either of these IP addresses can be an effective way of limiting Internet connectivity to Toph only.
Please consult your network administrator for details on how this can be achieved. These restrictions must be applied to networks that are accessible by the contestants’ computers.
Please contact Toph Support if further guidance is needed in this regard. The organizer-appointed network administrators must still be responsible for implementing these safeguards. We are happy to review and validate the configuration once completed.
Similar to how limited internet connectivity is configured, the same firewall can be used to deny all connectivity between any pair of contestant computers.
Please consult your network administrator for details on how this can be achieved. Please contact Toph Support if further guidance is needed in this regard.
Contestants are allowed to take printouts of their work-in-progress source code.
Since multiple contestants will share a printer, each printed page must be tagged with the participant’s identity that issued the print. A printout must be only handed over to the participant that issued the print.
Deploy Printd to a local Internet-connected computer connected to a printer.
Please get in touch with Toph Support to enable printing features for the contest.
Participants can request prints from within Toph’s contest arena. Printd will process print jobs locally.
A printer must be present for the moderators in their room. This printer must be available exclusively for the moderators and not used for any other purposes.
In each room with contestants and moderators, a projector should be deployed. The contest standings (in kiosk mode) should be displayed through the projector. The kiosk standings will list the top 50 participants, and it will auto-update and auto-scroll.
The kiosk can be accessed by opening the public standings and pressing Shift+K. You can then press F11 to go full screen on the kiosk page.
Please contact Toph Support if you have any questions.
Any site where judges cannot be present must be under electronic surveillance. Such surveillance must include closed-circuit cameras. The cameras must cover every publicly accessible area of the contest site. The cameras must be angled such that each participant can be recognized at their computers as well as their computer screens can be seen. Real-time footage of the cameras must be provided to the judges during the contest.
In case no members of the judging team can be present at a site, all surveillance recordings of that site must be provided to the judges at the end of the contest.
In case of a team contest, a printed copy of the problem set must be provided to each of the team.
In the case of individual contests, it may be more environmentally friendly to not produce and provide printed-out problem sets to the contestants. In such a case, the details of this section may be ignored.
One or more printers must be made available (at least the day before the contest) to contest moderators so that they can print the problem statements. The printers must be capable of producing quality output and be fast such that the necessary number of problem sets can be printed within a reasonable amount of time.
It may be prudent to keep some extra copies of printed problem sets ready as well.
Envelopes and tape/glue must be provided so that problem sets can be packaged and kept sealed until the start of the contest.
Printed problem sets must be stored securely by the organizer until they are distributed to the contestants on the day of the contest.
Contestants must be given a printed copy of the problem set sealed in an envelope before the start of the contest. The envelope must not be opened before the start of the contest.
Contestants must not keep any electronic devices on the person while at the contest site. If a contestant brings any such device, he/she must be able to submit them to the organizer and have them safely returned after the contest.
There should be an arrangement for prayer breaks. Prayer rooms must also be under strict invigilation. No communication must happen between any contestant (even from the same team) while inside the prayer room.
The contest organizer must ensure a healthy and safe environment for the participants, the judges, and everyone else expected to be present in person at the contest sites. All laws, regulations, and social norms surrounding individual health and safety must be followed.
In case any details in this handbook are in contradiction with local laws and regulations, the latter must be honored. Such cases should be reported to Toph as early as possible so that Toph can also prepare accordingly.
Toph is happy and willing to provide top supervision of the setup before and during the event and provide guidance to respective technical teams to aid in the preparation for the event.
Please schedule a day (at least 7 days before the first contest) for us to review the contest environment once everything has been set up. We will check how the environment has been configured and provide any necessary feedback. Representatives of the technical teams must be present on that day during the review.
For any questions, please contact us over the phone (+8801310519655) or by email (support@toph.co).
In case the organizer cannot arrange an opportunity for Toph to review the contest environment for any reason, ensuring the fairness of the contest will be beyond Toph’s ability. And in such a situation, Toph cannot make any remark on whether the contest is being conducted in a fair environment.
Whether such a review happens or not, the organizer is ultimately responsible for ensuring that the contest environment has been prepared according to the best standards and as per the guidelines in the handbook. Toph can only help in the process through advice and guidance.
The contest environment encompasses all the technical elements of the event, including, but not limited to, the computers, the network, Internet connectivity, printers, and projectors.
A site is a contest venue where participants are present and from where they participate in the contest.
Two contest venues are considered two separate sites if they are geographically apart, are not under the management of the same individuals of the organizing team, and it is unreasonable for judges to travel between such venues while the contest is in progress.
As such, it is subjective whether two separate buildings within the same compound may be considered two separate sites. But, contest venues in two separate districts must be considered two separate sites.
A participant is a team (in team contests) or an individual (in individual contests) participating in the contest.
| March 17, 2022 | Added software and hardware testing, printed-out problem set, prayer arrangement, etc details. Thanks @ishtupeed for your feedback. |
| April 03, 2021 | Adapted for multi-site contests. Added health and safety-related details. |
| March 17, 2021 | First version |
https://{contest}.toph.co
* Subdomain contest landers are offered as a part of our Prestige tier contests.
| Website | Additional Plugins | |
|---|---|---|
| CodeBlocks | https://www.codeblocks.org/ | |
| Geany | https://www.geany.org/ | |
| NetBeans | https://netbeans.apache.org/ | |
| Eclipse | https://www.eclipse.org/ide/ | |
| Kotlin for Eclipse | https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin-eclipse | |
| PyDev | https://www.pydev.org/ | |
| IntelliJ IDEA | https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/ | |
| IDLE | https://realpython.com/python-idle/ | |
| PyCharm | https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/ | |
| Sublime Text | https://www.sublimetext.com/ | |
| Visual Studio Code | https://code.visualstudio.com/ |
The IDEs and Code Editors are available for download at their official website (indicated above). Please download them and install them on the computers for the contestants.
When setting up a local environment for contestants, ensure that you provide compiler and interpreter versions as close as possible to those used by Toph. The list of programming languages supported and version of compilers used by Toph is available at https://toph.co/languages.
One or more of the following tools may be used to ensure that the keys of the keyboards and mice work as expected:
| Peripherals | |
|---|---|
| https://keyboardtester.co/ | Keyboard and mouse |
| https://www.keyboardtester.com/ | Keyboard |
| https://devicetests.com/ | Keyboard and mouse |
