1 Algorithmic Foundations of the Internet Alejandro Lopez-Ortiz (Waterloo) Jennifer Rexford (Princeton) Rebecca Wright (Stevens)

2 Planned Three-Year Special Focus Many challenges facing the Internet –Scalability –Reliability –Security –Manageability –… other “X-ities” Need for a strong algorithmic foundation –Deepening the understanding of the existing protocols –Improving the operation of these protocols –Guiding for the design of the future Internet Cross-disciplinary research –Networks, theory of computing, security, game theory, …

3 The Need to Bridge the Gap Traditional algorithms research does not capture –Autonomy –Scalability –Privacy –… all crucial aspects of the Internet Internet protocol-adoption process emphasizes –Intuition and experience –Experimentation and testing –… and not formal analysis of behavior Result: protocols with a variety of problems – Correctness, performance, security, management, …

4 Planned Workshops Goals of the workshops –Bring together researchers in multiple disciplines –Introduce students and post-docs to the field –Catalyze collaborations across disciplines Example workshop topics –Secure interdomain routing –Wireless and delay-tolerant networks –Streaming algorithms for network measurement –Tomography for network troubleshooting –Internet economics and game theory

5 Other Planned Activities Tutorials –Integrating research and education –Providing “domain knowledge” about the area –Highlighting important unsolved research problems Visitors –Short-term visits before/after a workshop –Long-term visits for a few months Reading lists of key research results –Theory/algorithms papers relevant to networking –Networking papers identifying unsolved problems K-12 education –Internet algorithms part in crash course in discrete math

6 NSF FIND and GENI Projects Synergy with major NSF CISE initiatives –Future INternet Design (FIND) –Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) Clean-slate rethinking of the Internet architecture –A unique opportunity for foundational research to have a major impact on the future of the Internet –A desire to enable collaboration between the networking and theoretical computer science communities –A need to identify fundamental problems with the existing protocols and promising areas for improvement Applying for NSF support for the special focus –Submitting the grant proposal during this month

7 Current Status Identified the main workshop and tutorial topics –Important problems facing data networking –Areas where an algorithmic focus provides leverage Drafted a grant proposal to submit to NSF –Submission planned sometime this month