CS 268: Project Suggestions

1. CS 268: Project Suggestions Scott Shenker and Ion Stoica (Fall, 2010)

2. Overview • Will present 19 project suggestions • Legend: based on how well-defined projects are, not necessary how difficult they are • Well-defined projects • Less-defined project • You need to define project • Need to send us a one page proposal by Sep. 22 • Feel free to talk with us beforehand! (in fact, we insist!)

3. Outline • Wireless • Software-Defined Networking • Congestion Control • Security • Economics • Datacenters • Network architectures

4. Wireless

5. Rapidly fluctuating networks • Design a routing algorithm that is targeted at networks where the link quality fluctuates rapidly • Fast compared to global recomputation time • Slow compared to packet transit times • Graph relatively stable (i.e., not about mobile nodes) • Tradeoff between efficiency and performance • Flooding is a baseline: inefficient, but packets arrive! • Are there theoretical limits on performance? • Is there a literature on this problem?

6. Network Coding • How well does it work, and why? • Revisit SIGCOMM 2006 paper on topic • Performance w/ TCP and w/o TCP quite different • Look at different load patterns, identify what conditions make network coding work well

7. Software-Defined Networking

8. NOX at home • Build a simple system that people can use to manage their home network: • Implicit identification • Easy access control • Security measures (identify bots, limit spam, etc.) • Internal debugging • External debugging • Etc. • Not rocket science, but could be widely used!

9. Analysis of SDN • Can one theoretically characterize SDN: • Complexity? • Reliability? • Performance? • Compare to current distributed approaches…

10. Congestion Control

11. Dueling Diatribes • Respond to Bob Briscoe • In public

12. Blending Paradigms • Can one combine the “fairness” religion with the “pay-for-congestion” religion? • One can consider two timescales: • Fairness on short timescales • Payment on longer timescales (for “share”) • Are FQ and Kelly just extremes along a sensible continuum?

13. Datacenter Implosion • Is the problem real? • Come up with another solution to the problem

14. Decongesting the Datacenter • Decongestion: great idea whose time never came • Datacenters: new context where deployment might be possible • Is this a good marriage of opportunity and answer?

15. Security

16. Phinishing Phishing • Simple method to address phishing: • Ask people who they think they are talking to! • Build a prototype system for this • Limit number of user interruptions • Identify what new global services are needed

17. Living with Secure Hypervisors • Assume that every host has a secure hypervisor • What does that mean for security? • Not-a-bot • VDC • What else can we do? • How would this change the world?

18. Living in a Google World • The existence of large-scale infrastructures like Google allows us to assume that there are Internet-scale systems that can deploy new services. • How does this change: • Security? • Deployment of new architectures? • Test case: deployment of flat names

19. Economics

20. Network Neutrality • Is the Google-Verizon pact a good thing? • What does this mean for the future of the Internet? • Can you back this up with a model?

21. Datacenters

22. Comparison of Datacenter Routing Topologies • Many datacenter routing topologies proposed so far • Portland, VL2, BCube, … • Compare these proposals in terms of • Scale and incremental scaling • Number of ports • Wiring • … • Questions • Is there one answer? • If not, when should we use a topology and when should we use another?

23. TCP for Datacenters • TCP not adequate for datacenter environments • Very low latency, high link capacity, low loss rates • Optimize TCP or invent another flow control protocol to • Reduce impact of packet loss • Optimize flow-start • … • You can assume router/switch support • See DCTCP paper at SIGCOMM’10 for related work

24. Cross-Layer Optimization for Datacenters • Widely different workloads • Latency-bounded requests (e.g., search queries) • Large file transfers (e.g., data replication) • How could you optimize the transport protocol if you knew the type of traffic? • E.g., avoid slow-start for short latency bounded-requests • What would be the mechanism to pass application “hints” to transport layer? • [Optional] How would you “protect” the transport layer against misbehaving/malicious applications?

25. QoS in Datacenters • QoS has mainly failed in the Internet • Is there a case for QoS in datacenters? • If yes, what is the service model? • Reservation? • (Weighted) Fair sharing? • Differentiated service? • What are the challenges?

26. Small-Scale Multicast • Data replication: common workload in datacenters • E.g., GFS, HDFS, a block is replicated two or more times • Optimize this communication pattern • Design a multicast solution for a small number of receivers, e.g., no more than 10 • Challenges: • Which layer? • Flow control • Reliability

27. Network architectures

28. Burst Switching • Two main communication models • Datagrams: each packet is individually switched (routed) • Circuits: a circuit is set-up and all packets are forwarded • Hybrid model: burst switching • First packet describes how many packets are in a burst • Router decides whether to forward all packets in the burst or none of them • Research • Design a burst switching protocol and study its trade-offs

29. Caching Everywhere • Assume • There is caching in every router and switch • 90% of traffic will be video by 2013 (CISCO report) • Questions • What is the impact on backbone traffic? • What is the impact on ISP policies? • Study • Assume different video access patterns • See us for possible traces

30. Next Step • You can either choose one of the projects we discussed during this lecture, or come up with your own • Pick your partner, and submit a one page proposal by September 22. The proposal needs to contain: • The problem you are solving • Your plan of attack with milestones and dates • Any special resources you may need