Research
My general research interests are in the area of Computer and
Communication Networks. I am particularly intersted in various aspects
of the Internet infrastructure. A brief summary of the different
areas I have worked on is given below.
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Inter Domain Routing
My thesis deals primarily with the
routing component of the Internet infrastructure. If I were
asked to summarize my thesis in a paragraph, it would be the following
The routing subsystem of the Internet architecture, born circa 1990,
has not kept pace with the explosive growth of the Internet
itself. The Internet, as it looks today (~317 million hosts, ~20k
autonomous systems, messy--not to mention "meshy"--interconnection),
looks very different from the structure that the routing system was
designed to support. In my thesis, I study some significant
shortcomings of BGP, the inter-domain routing protocol of the
Internet, and suggest ways (both protocol-based and operational) in
which it can be changed to better address the requirements of todays'
Internet infrastructure.
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Internet Topology Discovery
There are two distinct modes of interconnection for autonomous
systems. In the first, an AS connects to a neighbor via a dedicated
circuit. A second, more interesting mode is at Internet Exchange
points, which are shared infrastructures. Identifying IXP's and the
ASes that interconnect at them reveals interesting information about
the evolution of the Internet AS graph and varying trends of
interconnection and business arrangements in different parts of the
world.
We developed a methodology based on a combination of active probing,
and archived BGP routing data to infer the existence of IXP's, which
are often not directly observeable, and to identify the various ASes
that interconnect at said IXPs.
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Network Infrastructure Services
The Internet is today, a ubiquitous (information) infrastructure,
playing a critical role in society. However, little has changed since
its inception (architecture-wise), that reflects its pre-eminent role
today. The implication is that the "best-effort" Internet
architecure, which provides a basic connectivity service, is at odds
with emerging services that are driving the growth of the Internet,
which demand availability, robustness to failure, mobility and
quality of service. Traditional means to bridge this divide is via
the use of application specific overlay networks. overlay networks,
while filling an immediate and specific need, introduce problems of
their own.
As a way to address these important requirements, we
designed the framework for a unifying network substrate, named the
Service Oriented Internet.
Essentially, this platform serves as a flexible and unifying
substrate to deliver services over the Internet. We use several
applications to demonstrate the effectiveness of such an architecture
in addressing the inadequacies of the Internet architecture.
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Network Security
In the past, I have worked with the MINDS research
group. The general research focus is in applying techniques from data
mining and statistics to network security.
I am also keenly interested in infrastructure based network security,
i.e., in-network mechanisms to deal with DDoS attacks, IP spoofing,
etc.
For a somewhat more formal description of my reserch, see my research statement