Abstract :

The current Internet consists of ten to twenty thousand different interconnected autonomous networks. In many cases these networks have negotiated cumbersome bilateral and multilateral agreements that constrain how data is allowed to flow from source to destination. For example, universities can communicate with each other through the Abilene network but must rely on other networks to communicate with non-academic entities such as Google. These agreements generally impose a loose hierarchy on the Internet with respect to the flow of data and information. The recent development of peer-to-peer file sharing technology, however, has the unintended effect of relaxing and voiding these agreements. This has resulted in a "flattening" of the Internet. In this talk we review the introduction of peer-to-peer (p2p) technology and examine the implications that it may have on the Internet over the next ten years. In particular, we examine the effects of p2p on economics for Internet service providers (ISPs), and the impact on how they manage and engineer their networks. We focus on one p2p technology, "swarming," as exemplified by BitTorrent, and examine how it could further flatten the Internet if it were to become the basis of a "universal swarm" and form the basis of a new data transfer architecture over the next ten years. Last, we present a research agenda centered on swarm technology to make this happen. We will focus in particular on interesting theoretical and algorithmic challenges that will arise with such an architecture.

Biography :

Don Towsley received a B.A. degree in physics and a Ph.D. degree in computer science, both from University of Texas University. He is currently a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, where he co-directs the Networking Research Laboratory. Professor Towsley has been a Visiting Scientist at AT&T Labs - Research, IBM Research, INRIA , Microsoft Research Cambridge, and the University of Paris 6.

Prof. Towsley's research interests include network measurement, modeling, and analysis. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and on the editorial boards of Journal of the ACM and IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications. He is also currently Chair of the IFIP Working Group 7.3 on computer performance measurement, modeling, and analysis. He has also served on numerous editorial boards including those of IEEE Transactions on Communications and Performance Evaluation. He has been active in the program committees for numerous conferences including IEEE Infocom, ACM SIGCOMM, ACM SIGMETRICS, and IFIP Performance conferences for many years, and has served as Technical Program Co-Chair for ACM SIGMETRICS and Performance conferences.

Prof. Towsley has received the 2007 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computer and Communications Award , the 2007 ACM SIGMETRICS Achievement Award, the 1999 IEEE Communications Society William Bennett Award, and several conference and workshop best paper awards. He is also the recipient of the University of Massachusetts Chancellor's Medal and the Outstanding Research Award from the College of Natural Science and Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts. He is one of the founders of the Computer Performance Foundation. He has twice received IBM Faculty Fellowship Awards, and is a Fellow of the IEEE and the ACM.