Impacts


Academic Contributions

Education and Student Training

Other Professional Activities


Our research efforts on the PERC project have had significant impact in the following areas:

1.      Fault tolerance: We have been involved in the commercialization of fault tolerance technology through a start-up company. 

2.      Exploitation of LRD in real-time resource management: Exploitation of LRD in congestion, resource, and traffic control is still in its infancy.  Tuan and Park pioneered the work of exploiting LRD in congestion control, and used, based on the conditional expectation, a simple estimation scheme to explore the correlation structure. We have taken the heuristic rule-of-thumb to a rigorous plateau, where the traffic prediction is rigorously made with the use of a LMMSE predictor, and the calculation of packet dropping probability in AQM and/or the window adjustment in TCP congestion control is pinpointed in the context of steady-state dynamics. Moreover, this is achieved without requiring router support or compromising simplicity and ease of implementation.  The research results have been (or will be) reported in IEEE INFOCOM 2002 (acceptance rate < 20%) and IEEE Int’l Conf. on Network Protocols 2002 (acceptance rate < 15%). 

3.     Centrality analysis within specific routing protocols: We believe that the results of this research should lead to an understanding of the impact and limitations of centrality in computer networks, and the development of extended, secure, and robust routing protocols. Specifically, 

·    We believe that capturing the changing centrality description of the routing topology will enable detection of some large scale network wide routing attacks, such as may be wrought by compromised routers. We believe that this detection can occur early, even before the changed forwarding tables are in place and data packet forwarding occurs. A goal of centrality-based intrusion monitoring is to abstract global network behavior locally at a router. Subverting such monitoring, while causing a network wide attack, is harder because of this abstraction. Given the nature of the information being abstracted, centrality-based monitoring might not detect attacks where the compromised routers are selectively misrouting packets. However, such attacks would typically not have a disruptive effect on the network. 

·       We believe that this study will suggest abstract specifications of router behavior that are both monitorable by individual routers and which capture expected behavior of routers in a given protocol; these specifications can detect rogue router behavior without requiring prior knowledge of a router compromise. 

4.      QoS-driven multicast routing protocols: The research results on QoS-driven multicast routing have direct applicability to the development and implementation of network protocols/solutions in support of resource management in network-centric warfare scenarios.  Three journal papers that document the research findings have been accepted for publication in two of the most prestigious IEEE journals: IEEE Trans. on Computers and IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking.  Several student-coauthored papers have been presented in highly-referenced IEEE conferences (usually with acceptance rate usually less than 20%), e.g., IEEE INFOCOM and IEEE Int’l Conf. on Network Protocols. 

5.      Scalable, real-time video multicast protocol: NS Solutions Corporation, one of the largest system integrators in Japan, is interested in marketing the scalable, real-time video multicast protocol that is developed under the support of AFOSR/MURI. 

6.     Transfer of wireless technologies to U.S. forces: The results from the research carried out in the PERC have direct applicability to the development and implementation of much needed solutions in support of wireless internetworking solutions that are critical for a full-spectrum dominance in the battlefield by the U.S. forces.  Lessons learned in the Task Force XXI experiments indicate that using COTS Internetoworking solutions will not suffice to satisfy the communication needs of military networks. We are sharing many of the results developed with support from the PERC with Raytheon, which is applying the results to tactical wireless networks with multi-beam antennas as part of the DARPA FCS program. 

7.      Mitigating misbehavior in routing protocols in MANETs: Our work on mitigating misbehavior in routing protocols in ad hoc networks has generated a great deal of interest and follow-on work.  Our experiments with Watchdog and Pathrater were published in Mobicom 2000 (the premiere forum for research in mobile networks).  Since then, other researchers such as Blazevic et al. and Buchegger et al. have experimented with other approaches involving heavier-weight security mechanisms. 

8.      Packet scheduling algorithms in MANETs: Our work on packet scheduling algorithms was presented as a poster at MobiHoc 2002 in Switzerland.  It was selected as one of the best posters of the conference and thus we were invited to publish the corresponding paper in ACM Mobile Computing and Communications Review (MC2R).  

9.     Standardization of Real-time CORBA: The OMG Real-time CORBA specification defines standard interfaces and policies that allow distributed real-time applications to configure and control the following system resources:

·         Processor resources via thread pools, priority mechanisms, intra-process mutexes, and a global scheduling service for real-time applications with fixed priorities

·         Communication resources via protocol properties and explicit bindings to server objects using priority bands and private connections and

·         Memory resources via buffering requests in queues and bounding the size of thread pools.

Real-time CORBA is designed for applications with hard real-time requirements, such as avionics mission computing, as well as those stringent soft real-time requirements, such as telecommunication call processing. Our work on real-time middleware significantly influenced the OMG Real-time CORBA specification.  

10.  Standardization of extensible transports in CORBA: Pluggable protocol capabilities are being standardized by the OMG in the Extensible Transport Framework (ETF) specification effort.  Although the OMG ETF has many commonalities to TAO's pluggable protocols framework, ETF only standardizes the interface to install transport protocols.  Thus, GIOP remains the sole ORB messaging protocol standard and is not itself pluggable in the ETF specification. We expect that our work on PERC will enable future OMG specifications to standardize pluggable high-level messaging protocols, as well as the lower-level transport protocols. 

11.  Widespread adoption of Real-time CORBA in the DoD and commercial industry: In addition to guiding the standardization of Real-time CORBA and extensible transports in CORBA, the most tangible impact of our work funded in part by PERC is the TAO ORB itself. TAO has been used in hundreds of production software systems in research labs, military applications, and commercial projects, including avionics mission computing systems at Boeing, satellite communication systems at Lockheed and Raytheon, telecommunication systems at Alcatel, BBN, Cisco, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, and Siemens, and medical systems at GE.  Since TAO is open-source software, the web site www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/TAO.html contains complete source code and documentation for TAO. 

12.  Bio-networking architecture: BBC News featured an article that overviews the motivation and vision of the Bio-Networking Architecture. In this article, adaptive object behaviors and network applications in the Bio-Networking Architecture are described. Also, key protocol designs in the Bio-Networking Architecture are currently being discussed as a possible reference architecture at the Super Distributed Objects group of the Object Management Group (OMG), the largest standard making bodies for object oriented software technologies. 

13. Bio-networking architecture: One of the papers on the Bio-Networking Architecture and its associated protocols received the best paper award at the 2002 IEEE SAINT (Symposium on Applications and the Internet) conference. This is an IEEE conference specializing in Internet applications with ten technical paper sessions, three panel sessions and 4 workshops.

14.  Narses: Even though it is in its early stages of development, the Narses simulator has already been used by three research projects, including one research group entirely unassociated with its authors.  One example of its use may be seen in the work on CUP, a controlled update protocol for propagating cached indices in large peer-to-peer networks.  We have also been asked by the LOCKSS project to provide simulation support via Narses.  The goal of the LOCKSS project is to provide a robust peer-to-peer network of digital libraries around the world.  Experiments comparing Narses to ns-2 are under submission to a conference.

15.  JavaSim software release: JavaSim provides an extensible, reusable network simulation and emulation environments.  Since its formal release, more than one hundred groups have downloaded the software, including NIST, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Fujitsu Labs of America, CMU, Univ. of Toronto, Dartmouth College, Georgia Tech, and Renesys, Inc.  We are currently collaborating with Oak Ridge National Laboratory on laying a Grid networking layer (on top of the transport layer) in JavaSim to support simulation of Grid applications and with Fujitsu Labs of America on extending JavaSim for network emulation.

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Education and Student Training: The research being carried in the PERC project is part of the thesis research of twelve Ph.D. students:  

1.    Lichun Bao has successfully advanced to candidacy at University of California at Santa Cruz and is expected to graduate during the Fall 2002 quarter.  He will present papers at ACM Mobicom 2002 and IEEE ICNP 2002

2.    Mayur Deshpande has passed his candidacy exam at University of California at Irvine and expects to graduate in late 2003 with an emphasis on protocols and algorithms for reflective middleware that can run efficiently and scaleably on parallel processors. 

3.   Yuan Gao has successfully advanced to candidacy at Ohio State University, is expected to graduate in September 2002, and will join Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories, Murray Hills in September 2002 as a member of technical staff in traffic measurement and control.  

4.   Guanghui He is expected to take his candidacy exam at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in September 2002, and is working as a summer intern student (in Summer 2002) at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in the area of studying web traffic patterns and user behaviors. 

5.   Ruppert Koch graduated from University of California at Santa Barbara, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the same University, while working for a start-up company. 

6.   Priya Narasimhan graduated from University of California at Santa Barbara, was supported as a postdoctoral researcher on this MURI project, and is now an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University. 

7.   Carlos O’Ryan has successfully defended his thesis, is expected to graduate from University of California at Irvine in Fall of 2002 and has joined Automated Trading Desk in Charleston, SC, which specializes in the use of distributed real-time middleware for online stock trading. 

8.   Irfan Pyarali graduated from University of California at Irvine in December 2001 and is currently the founder of the OOMWorks startup company in Metuchen, NJ, which specializes in distributed real-time middleware

9.  Soumya Roy has successfully advanced to candidacy at University of California at Santa Cruz and is expected to graduate during the Fall 2002 quarter.  He will present papers in IEEE SAWN 2002 and IEEE ICCCN 2002. 

10. Hung-Ying Tyan graduated from Ohio State University in Fall 2001 and is currently a member of technical staff at Fujitsu Labs of America, Sunnyvale, CA.  

11. Yu Wang is currently a pre-Ph.D. candidate at University of California at Santa Cruz.  He will present papers in IEEE SAWN 2002 and IEEE/ACM MASCOTS 2002. 

12. Wenbing Zhao graduated from University of California at Santa Barbara, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the same University, while working for a start-up company.   

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Other Professional Activities: Recognized by the research accomplishments (which are, in part, results of the grant), all the PIs on the project have been actively involved in professional services: 

1.     Mary Baker was elected by the membership to be vice chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Mobility (SIGMOBILE). In addition, she is co-chair of the technical program committee of the new annual ACM/USENIX conference on higher-level issues in mobile systems. The first MobiSys conference will take place in May 2003 and is already shaping up to be a premier forum for publishing mobile systems work. http://www.usenix.org/events/mobisys03/. She has also served on many program committees and editorial boards in the area of mobility and is also one of the founding editorial board members of the new IEEE Pervasive Computing magazine.  

2.    J .J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves was Program Co-Chair of the ACM MobiHoc 2002 Conference, held in Lausanne, Switzerland on June 9--11, 2002. 

3.     Jennifer Hou has served as the chair of the technical program committee of IEEE Real-time Technology and Application Symposium in June 2000 and as the general chair of the same symposium in June 2001.  In addition, she has served as the vice chair of the technical program committee of IEEE Int’l Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems in June 2002, the tutorial chair of IEEE Int’l Conf. on Computer, Communication, and Networks in November 2002, and the session chair for IEEE 8th Int'l Conf. on Network Protocols, November 2000, SPIE conference on scalability and traffic control in IP networks, August 2001, and IEEE 21st INFOCOM: The Conference on Computer Communication, June 2002.  She has also served on the review panel for NSF CAREER program in 1998-2001, NSF Information Technology Research program in 2000-2002, NSF Strategic Technology for Internet Program in 2001, NSF Computer and Computational Research program in 2001, and NSF Embedded and Hybrid Systems Program in 2002.

4.     Douglas C. Schmidt has served (or will serve) as the program co-chair for IEEE Real-time Technology and Application Symposium June 2003, the program co-chair for the IFIP/ACM/USENIX Middleware 2003, 4th International Conference on Distributed Systems Platforms June 2003, Area vice-chair and session chair for Middleware at the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS) May 2003, Program co-chair for the 4th International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications October 2002, Program Co-chair for the 3rd International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications September 2001, Area vice-chair and session chair for Middleware at the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS) April 2001, and co-chair of the OMG Workshop on Real-time and Embedded CORBA, in Reston, VA, July 2000.  

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