New Directions in Networked Systems Design – Session 2

October 31, 2012
Emin Gun Sirer, Mohammad Alizadeh, Nathan Farrington, Bruce Maggs, Vyas Sekar, and Brighten Godfrey | Cornell University, Stanford University, University of California San Diego, Duke University, State University of New York Stony Brook, University of Illinois Urbana

Speaker 1 – Copper is Dead — and what that means for computer science

Nathan Farrington, University of California San Diego

Abstract: In this talk, you will learn why copper electrical wiring can never effectively be used to build high-speed data center networks at 40G and up, and no matter how much as computer scientists we kick and scream, we will be forced to learn to stop worrying and love optical communications.

Speaker 2 – Transport in Future Warehouse-Scale Computers

Mohammad Alizadeh, Stanford University

Abstract: The datacenter increasingly resembles a warehouse-scale computer: a large collection of computing and networking resources that work in concert to efficiently deliver superior performance. For this vision to fully materialize, transport in the datacenter (the plumbing) needs to vastly improve. I will discuss some of the opportunities and challenges in this space and recent research that aims to address them.

Speaker 3 – Going from BASE towards ACID with NoSQL

Emin Gun Sirer, Cornell University

Abstract: You’ve heard of the NoSQL revolution and the CAP Theorem. In this talk, I will tell you why CAP is not what it’s cracked up to be and describe a revolutionary new architecture for NoSQL data stores that are consistent, available in the presence of partitions that affect up to a threshold of nodes, scalable, and above all, fast.

Speaker 5 – The Middlebox Manifesto

Prof.Vyas Sekar, State University of New York Stony Brook

Abstract: Middleboxes (firewalls, IDSes, proxies, WAN optimizers, and the like) have long been an integral part of operational networks, but have traditionally been treated as second-class citizens in the research community. There is growing recognition of the need to bridge this disconnect in both camps. I will describe my recent research related to the design, implementation, and management of middle-boxes and discuss some challenges and opportunities in integrating middleboxes with SDN mechanisms

Speaker 6 – Verifying the Data Plane

Prof. Brighten Gdfrey, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Abstract: The increasing complexity of modern computer networks has far outpaced the development of tools to manage their operation. We are developing tools which simplify network security and management by formally reasoning about network-wide forwarding behavior. Our first data plane verification system, Anteater [SIGCOMM’11], revealed multiple real-world bugs in a large university network, including forwarding loops and stale ACL rules. VeriFlow [HotSDN’12] checks network-wide invariants in real time as each forwarding rule is inserted, optionally blocking vulnerabilities from being introduced into the network. Our current OpenFlow-based implementation can perform rigorous checking within hundreds of microseconds per rule insertion. This talk presents work with Ahmed Khurshid, Haohui Mai, Kelvin Zou, Wenxuan Zhou, Rachit Agarwal, Matthew Caesar, and Sam King.

Speaker Details

My research spans operating systems, networking and distributed systems. My current projects involve a novel secure operating system and system infrastructure for high-performance cloud computing applications. I like building things, especially systems that have some principled reason for why they should work

Mohammad Alizadeh is a Ph.D. student in the Electrical Engineering department at Stanford University, working with Prof. Balaji Prabhakar. His research interests are broadly in network algorithms and systems. In particular, he is focused on designing high performance packet transport mechanisms for data center networks. Before joining Stanford in 2006, he completed his Bachelor’s degree at Sharif University of Technology, in Tehran, Iran.

My research is focused on improving the cost, performance, power efficiency, scalability, and manageability of data center networks. My advisor is Amin Vahdat and I am part of the sysnet research group

Bruce Maggs received the S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985, 1986, and 1989, respectively. His advisor was Charles Leiserson. After spending one year as a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT, he worked as a Research Scientist at NEC Research Institute in Princeton from 1990 to 1993. In 1994, he moved to Carnegie Mellon, where he stayed until joining Duke University in 2009 as a Professor in the Department of Computer Science. While on a two-year leave-of-absence from Carnegie Mellon, Maggs helped to launch Akamai Technologies, serving as its Vice President for Research and Development, before returning to Carnegie Mellon. He retains a part-time role at Akamai as Vice President for Research.

Maggs’s research focuses on networks for parallel and distributed computing systems. In 1986, he became the first winner (with Charles Leiserson) of the Daniel L. Slotnick Award for Most Original Paper at the International Conference on Parallel Processing, and in 1994 he received an NSF National Young Investigator Award. He was co-chair of the 1993-1994 DIMACS Special Year on Massively Parallel Computation and has served on the steering committees for the ACM Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA) and ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), and on the program committees of numerous ACM conferences including STOC, SODA, PODC, NSDI, and SIGCOMM.

I am broadly interested in the design, implementation, and analysis of networked systems. Before joining Stony Brook, I graduated with a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University and was a research scientist at Intel Labs

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I completed my Ph.D. in May 2009, advised by Ion Stoica at UC Berkeley (which means this is something of a coincidence). From February to July 2009, I was a visiting researcher at Intel Labs Berkeley.

I am seeking strong graduate students to work on challenging problems in building, analyzing, and understanding networks and systems.