Northwestern Networks Group

We do research in computer networking. We focused on the following research topics:

Auditing Internet content and ISPs

Network and content neutrality are vitally important concepts that ensure that, e.g., ISPs aren't discriminating against certain applications, and that, e.g., search engines aren't discriminating against some content publishers. We focus on developing and deploying effective auditing systems, both in terms of network and content neutrality.

Auditing-related papers
Synergistic Internet services

The Internet consists of various entities that provide vastly different services. We show that these different services can often be reused or combined to enable novel systems, capable of resolving real-world problems in unanticipated ways. We focus both on collaborative and non-intrusively parasitic scenarios, with applications ranging from WLANs to Internet-scale content distribution networks.

Semantic-enabled Internet services

The wealth of information on the Web is utilized in various domains on a daily bases. Our research efforts are focused on understanding how such semantic information can be effectively scraped and used to enable advanced Internet services. Among others, this approach lead to the word's most accurate geolocation service, and the most insightful traffic classification scheme.

Coping with the wireless revolution

The dramatic proliferation of mobile devices and applications has created an unprecedented pressure on wireless networks. Our research interests in this domain range from (i) understanding user mobility and application usage properties (ii) building and utilizing localization services, to (iii) addressing the core network planning and communication problems in such networks.

DoS-resilient Internet protocols

DoS attacks are presenting an increasing threat to the global networking infrastructure. Our research efforts are focused on discovering and thwarting new types of attacks. Indeed, without a vision to anticipate, understand, and intercept novel DoS attacks, we can be placed in the unfortunate position of witnessing the collapse of the Internet.

High performance despite heterogeneity

The Internet keeps bringing new stresses, from novel applications, skewed flow-size distributions, to diverse environments with vastly different characteristics. As a result, network protocols more than often operate in regions they were never designed for. Our research interests are in addressing heterogeneity-induced problems and deploying fast and efficient network protocols.