Current Research Projects
P2P Networks
In the past few years, our research group has been focusing
on many technical aspects of P2P networks, for example, we study issues like:
- mechanisms that can optimize file distribution;
- techniques to avoid the tragedy of the common;
- incentive protocols to encourage cooperation;
- methods to reduce inter-ISP traffics;
- delivery techniques for live streaming as well as video-on-demand services;
- tradeoffs between fairness, performance and scalability;
- various security issues, both in attack and in defense mechanisms;
- file replication for multimedia services;
For many of the above issues, we develop the fundamental theories
to understand the design space, we design the protocols and
algorithms to provide the needed features,
and implement the software components so that we can delivery such service.
Online Social Networks:
We take both the network science and distributed systems
angles in examining issues of online social networks.
Some of the issues that we are studying are:
- influence and information spreading;
- advertisement and recommendations;
- privacy and security;
- complimentary role of online social networks and P2P technology;
- dynamics and evolution of OSN;
- fault-tolerance and reliability;
We take both the analytical as well as system approach in examining the above
issues.
Wireless Networks and Network Coding
In recent years, there has been a lot of interests
in wireless networks, from WLANs to wireless mesh networks,
from 802.11 to 802.16, from stationary or fixed networks
to mobile ad-hoc networks. We have been looking at issues like:
- performance of TCP on such networks;
- routing and packet forwarding policies;
- resource allocations and scheduling;
- application of network coding;
- tomography and network management;
- security and attack detection;
Network Economics
Many of the networking problems have economics implications.
In other words, one may use economics to improve the efficiency and scalability
of networks. Another interesting question is how to formulate
scalable and sustainable communication policies to improve the underlying networks.
We look at issues like
- Use pricing to provide service differentiation;
- Profit re-distributions for ISPs;
- Product Advertisement;
- Interactions of competing ISPs;
- Cooperation among ISPs and content providers;
- Charging, billing and accounting for future networks;
Traffic Theory, Network Calculus, NS-2 Simulation
Distributed Multimedia Services
The main focus of this research project is to analyze, design and implement
various distributed multimedia services on the broadband infrastructure.
Possible multimedia services include video/audio on-demand,
education-on-demand, as well as various entertainment and educational
multicasting services. We also look into various security aspects
and peer-to-peer computing paradigm. We seek both theoretical
understanding as well as system implementation for experimenting
different operating conditions.