Jason Jue is focused on optimizing the movement of vast quantities of information using light.
When he first started his computer science studies, the Internet was young and mostly being used for e-mail and other low-bandwidth tasks. Then came the dawn of the Web and browsers. As the Internet gained in popularity, new high-bandwidth applications started to emerge and the number of users increased dramatically.
“Internet growth started to explode,” said Dr. Jue, now an associate professor of computer science. “At that point, it looked like optical networks were the only way to satisfy the exponentially growing demand.”
Today, optical technology moves information at higher bandwidths than other technologies. But he’s investigating ways to further enhance both the services and reliability of these networks.
“Currently optical networks provide the raw bandwidth, but we need to enhance that and make better use of the bandwidth,” he said. “We’re looking into how to dynamically allocate the optical network bandwidth so that the network can provide a wider range of services to end users and applications that consume large amounts of bandwidth.
“If you look at existing networks,” he added, “things are fairly static. If I as an end user wanted to set up a new high-bandwidth connection between two points, it would take a while to set up and would probably be very expensive. Our goal is to improve the quality of service to end users by dynamically providing resources on demand. Such services can be used to support applications such as video conferencing, IPTV, e-science, and Grid computing.”
Dr. Jue received his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Davis. He came to UT Dallas in 1999, attracted in part by its proximity to Richardson’s telecom corridor. He received a National Science Foundation Career Award in 2002, and his current research is also funded by the NSF. He directs the Jonsson School’s Advanced Networks Research Lab, and he recently co-authored the book “Optical Burst Switching.”
Today he has six graduate students working under his guidance. Among the issues they’re addressing is the survivability and reliability of optical networks, which can be subject to disruption due to natural or man-made causes, such as when construction crews inadvertently sever underground cables from time to time.
“We want to understand how we can continue supporting the traffic when a failure occurs, and how a network can be designed and built with enough redundancy to handle these occasional failures,” he said.
With growing quantities of information moving on the Internet – and the ever-increasing importance of that information – Dr. Jue’s research is crucial to keeping technology humming efficiently, and his students are an integral part of that.
“Their questions and interactions frequently bring a new perspective to the work,” he said. “And this diversity of perspectives helps generate new ideas and insights.”
