Research Interests & Projects

My research is centered on the design of networked systems. It includes new uses and applications, measurement and operational support, and robustness and security. It uses empirical studies to better understand problems and opportunities, and prototypes to evaluate improvements. My present focus is on wireless systems at the edge of the Internet, and specifically these projects:

• Trustworthy Wireless, for mobile, wireless systems that meet the reasonable privacy expectations of their users. We are exploring user perceptions and the current state of privacy, link-layer protocols that preserve greater privacy (SlyFi), tracking the personal information exposed by applications, and privacy at the wireless layer by shaping RF regions. See the TW page.
• Wireless LAN Design, to construct effective 802.11-style networks from modern MIMO/OFDM building blocks for communications links. We are using instrumented Intel 802.11 a/g/n NICs and USRPs to measure the low-level PHY and MAC behavior of wireless LANs and to inform designs that provide predictable and high-quality service. This grows out of our earlier work on interference cancellation, empirical models for delivery under interference, and 802.11 studies. 
• RFID Sensor Networks, a combination of RFID technology and sensor networks to help realize computing applications that are woven into the fabric of everyday life. See the WISP and an introductory talk on RSNs.

Much of my research has focused on Internet architecture and protocols, and in particular these three thrusts:

• Measurement, to assess how the Internet is structured and how well it is operating. My work here includes Rocketfuel and detailed, reverse-engineered ISP maps (paper), along with a larger body of work on Internet measurement and mapping and tools for measuring paths (Tulip).
• Robustness, to tolerate a range of faults from link cuts to malicious attacks, implementation bugs and greedy behavior. My efforts here range from defenses against DDOS attacks (capabilities, traceback) to robust protocols for congestion signaling (ECN nonces) and routing, to studies of routing misconfiguration (paper).
• Flexibility, to more gracefully evolve the continually changing network. My research here includes helping to pioneer active networks and systems such as ANTS for active networks (paper), STP for extensible transports (paper), and Scriptroute for extensible measurement (paper).

For more information see my publications and research pages for UW/CSE Systems, Networks and Security and Intel Research Seattle.