Where the time goes

Our research interests span several areas of experimental systems with a focus on distributed and parallel computing, operating systems, and to some extent, networking. We focus primarily in large-scale and globally-distributed services, implemented at the application layer and following a cooperative, self-organizing model where hosts contribute resources to support a commonly needed service.

To be successfully deployed in a complex and open setting such as the Internet, large-scale distributed systems must be mostly self-manageable and they must tolerate dynamic membership, high heterogeneity, and large dynamism in resource demand and availability. Our work addresses these challenges using an experimental approach in the context of a variety of cooperative application classes - from content sharing to overlay multicast and distributed systems based on vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETS).

More recently, our work is increasingly focused on ensuring sustainable scalability for large-scale distributed computing. I believe that any solution to systems problems in this context must be carefully crafted so as not to impose unbearable demands on the environment or the systems administrators at risk of curtailing further growth. For example, we have started to explore a new approach to the design and implementation of distributed systems -- one that focuses on minimizing aggregated control and administrative overhead by strategically reusing environment~s views and/or recycling previously gathered measurements. We call this approach 3R for Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, highlighting the analogy between our natural habitat and the artificial, Internet environment shared by these systems.

We sponsor a number of undergraduate student research projects in the area of distributed systems. Please contact us if you are interested in how to get involved with our research.

Some of our ongoing projects include ...