Computer Science > Graduate Research > Graduate Research – Distributed Systems

Graduate Research – Distributed Systems

During the Friday mixer on 9/5/2014, in the Computer Science Department at UT Dallas, Joseph Beshay, Brooks McMillin, and Swair Shah talked about their research on Distributed Systems.  Their adviser is Dr. Ravi Prakash.  A summary of their presentation is included below.

TCP Optimization for LTE networks

LTE vastly increases the resources available to wireless clients compared to previous generations of cellular networks. However, end-user applications that use TCP are not always able to make efficient use of the available resources, the root cause being the assumptions made by conventional TCP about the network, which are not always valid for LTE. My work is focused on identifying the best practices that should be used with the current implementations of TCP as well as proposing modifications to provide a better experience to mobile users on LTE networks.

MAC protocols for Contention-based Wireless Networks with Directional Antennae

The bandwidth requirements of wireless devices are increasing. The current 2.4 GHz ISM band is no longer enough to satisfy the demand. One the other hand, mmWave bands promise more resources but they suffer from worse signal propagation properties. Directional antennae come as a solution to the issues faced in both bands. By limiting the transmitted signal to a specific direction, they enable better spatial reuse in the 2.4 GHz band as well as provide higher signal levels in the mmWave bands.

Consistency of routing policies in Software-Defined WANs

Software-defined networks promise more efficient use of network resources by providing a centralized view/control of the network. The techniques used to guarantee consistency of routing policies in traditional distributed network fabric are no longer adequate. We look into novel approaches to managing the policy updates in an SDN to provide bounds on the time it takes for policies to be applied as well as guarantee the integrity of the network during the transition.

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