Wireless Networking and Next Generation Internet Architecture Research
at Washington University in Saint Louis

The Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Department at Washington University in Saint Louis has a very aggressive program of research in Networking and Telecommunications. We are participating in many industry forums such as WiMAX Forum, IEEE 802, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), ANSI, International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and Telecommunications Industry of America (TIA). We collaborate with industry to ensure that we are working on relevant problems of current interest and that our solutions are adopted by the industry.

Faculty members involved in networking research at WUSTL include Professor Jon Turner, Professor Patrick Crowley, Professor Chenyang Lu, and Professor Raj Jain. Professor Turner has a long distinguished research career and is an authority on high performance platforms for overlay hosting services that will make it dramatically easier to deploy innovative new network services in the next generation Internet. Professor Crowley is an expert on multicore processors and memory systems and on building fast programmable network routers. Professor Chenyang Lu is a leader in the area of real-time embedded systems and wireless sensor networks. Please see respective faculty web pages for further details. See also Applied Research Lab for projects on networking systems research.

This page describes the research projects lead by Professor Raj Jain.

Current Research Projects:

Internet 3.0: Architecture for the Next Generation Internet
Resource Management in Wireless Networks
Mobile Video Modeling
Network Security
Congestion Control and Traffic Management
TCP Persistence
Energy Efficient Protocols

1. Internet 3.0: Architecture for the Next Generation Internet

The basic ideas of the Internet architecture were developed 30+ years ago. In these 30 years, a lot has been learnt about networking and packet switching. How would one design the Internet if it were to be designed now? In response to this question, we are developing a clean slate architecture framework for the next generation Internet, which we call Internet 3.0. The next generation Internet should be secure. It should allow business to set their boundaries and enforce their policies inside their boundaries. It should allow governments to set rules that protect their citizens on the Internet the same way they protect them on other means of transports. It should allow receivers to set policies for how and where they receive their information. They should have freedom to select their names, IDs and addresses with as little centralized control as possible. This is made possible by an object oriented approach to networking architecture.

Naming and addressing are important issues for the next generation Internet. We have developed a new Mobility and Multihoming supporting Identifier Locator Split Architecture (MILSA) and also proposed a Policy Oriented Naming Architecture (PONA).

Related Recent Publications:

Jianli Pan, Subharthi Paul, Raj Jain, Xiaohu Xu, "Hybrid Transition Mechanism for MILSA Architecture for the Next Generation Internet," Proceedings of the Second IEEE Workshop on the Network of the Future (FutureNet II), IEEE Globecom 2009, Honolulu, Hawaii, 30 Nov - 4 Dec 2009, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/milsat.htm
Jianli Pan, Raj Jain, Subharthi Paul, Mic Bowman, Xiaohu Xu, Shanzhi Chen, "Enhanced MILSA Architecture for Naming, Addressing, Routing and Security Issues in the Next Generation Internet," Proceedings of IEEE International Conference in Communications (ICC) 2009, Dresden, Germany, June 14-18, 2009, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/emilsa.htm
Jianli Pan, Subharthi Paul, Raj Jain, Mic Bowman, "MILSA: A Mobility and Multihoming Supporting Identifier Locator Split Architecture for Naming in the Next Generation Internet," Proceedings of IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) 2008, New Orleans, LA, USA, 30 November - 4 December 2008, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/milsa.htm
Subharthi Paul, Raj Jain, Jianli Pan, Mic Bowman, "A Vision of the Next Generation Internet: A Policy Oriented Perspective," Proceedings of British Computer Society (BCS) International Conference on Visions of Computer Science, Imperial College, London, September 22-24, 2008, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/pona.htm
Raj Jain, "Internet 3.0: Ten Problems with Current Internet Architecture and Solutions for the Next Generation," in Proceedings of Military Communications Conference (MILCOM 2006), Washington, DC, October 23-25, 2006, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/gina.htm

2. Resource Management in Wireless Networks

IEEE 802.16e based WiMAX networks promise the best available quality of experience for mobile data service users. Unlike wireless LANs, WiMAX networks incorporate several quality of service (QoS) mechanisms at the Media Access Control (MAC) level for guaranteed services for data, voice and video. The problem of assuring QoS is basically that of how to allocate available resources among users in order to meet the QoS criteria such as delay, delay jitter and throughput requirements. IEEE standard does not include a standard scheduling mechanism and leaves it for implementer differentiation. Scheduling is, therefore, of special interest to all WiMAX equipment makers and service providers. We have developed and analyzed several scheduling mechanisms for WiMAX.

Most of the resource management studies require simulation. It is important to have some common features among these models so that their results can be compared. Working with the Application Working Group at the WiMAX Forum, we have developed a standard simulation methodology that describes the key features to be simulated, the method of simulating these features and various parameter values to be used. This system level methodology has been used in several public and commercial WiMAX simulation models.

Related Recent Publications:

Bong-ho Kim, Jungnam Yun, Yerang Hur, Chakchai So-In, Raj Jain, Abdel-Karim Al Tamimi, "Capacity estimation and TCP performance enhancement over mobile WiMAX networks," IEEE Communications Magazine, special issue on Mobile WiMAX, Vol. 47, Issue 6, June 2009, pp. 132-141, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/capacity.htm
Chakchai So-In, Raj Jain, and Abdel-Karim Tamimi, "Scheduling in IEEE 802.16e Mobile WiMAX Networks: Key Issues and a Survey," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), Vol. 27, No. 2, Feb 2009. http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/sched.htm
R. Jain, C. So-in, A. Tamimi, "System Level Modeling of IEEE 802.16e Mobile WiMAX Networks: Key Issues," IEEE Wireless Communications, Vol. 15, No. 5, October 2008, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/slm.htm
C. So-in, R. Jain, A. Tamimi, "SWIM: A Scheduler for Unsolicited Grant Service (UGS) in IEEE 802.16e Mobile WiMAX Networks1," Proceedings of 2009 Fourth International Conference on Access Networks (AccessNets 2009), November 1-3, 2009, Hong Kong, China, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/swim.htm
C. So-in, R. Jain, A. Tamimi, "OCSA: An algorithm for Burst Mapping in IEEE 802.16e Mobile," Proceedings of the 15th Asia Pacific Conference on Communications (APCC 2009), October 8-10, 2009, Shanghai, China, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/ocsa.htm
Chakchai So-In, Raj Jain, and Abdel-Karim Tamimi, "A Deficit Round Robin with Fragmentation Scheduler for IEEE 802.16e Mobile WiMAX," Proceedings 2009 IEEE Sarnoff Symposium, Princeton, NJ, Mar 30-Apr 1, 2009, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/drrf.htm

3. Mobile Video Modeling

Proper workload characterization is important for analyzing resource management schemes. Video streaming is continuously acquiring a larger and larger share of Internet's traffic resulting in a need to have a reliable video traffic model. We have analyzed several video streams for mobile streaming and have developed a a simple model, which we call Simplified Seasonal ARIMA Model (SAM). This model represents most of the video streams very well. Our library of video traces is available for other researchers to use.

Related Recent Publications:

A. Tamimi, R. Jain, C. So-in, "SAM: A Simplified Seasonal ARIMA Model for Mobile Video over Wireless Broadband Networks," Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (ISM2008), December 15-17, 2008, Berkeley, California, USA, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/sam.htm

4. Network Security

Distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) pose an immense threat to the Internet. The most studied solution is to let routers probabilistically mark packets with partial path information during packet forwarding, which is referred as Probabilistic Packet Marking (PPM). We have shown that random marking is sufficient to impede the victim from tracing the attackers. A simple enhancement based on IP path length distribution makes it harder for the victim.

Key predistribution is a popular technique for key distribution in sensor networks. We have developed two key predistribution based scheme for heterogeneous networks i.e., networks which consist of nodes which are stationary as well as highly mobile.

With the growth and acceptance of the Internet, there has been increased interest in maintaining anonymity in the network. Using traffic analysis, it is possible to infer who is talking to whom over a public network. We have developed a novel approach to hide the senders and the receivers of messages. Our protocol poses no bandwidth overhead when there is at least some traffic while posing minimal bandwidth overhead when there is no traffic at all.

We have developed Air to Air Communication (AAC) - a wireless protocol designed for communication among airplanes as well as airplanes and control centers. AAC enables the broadcast of emergency and surveillance information such as realtime video over the network even in presence of adverse conditions such as coordinated terrorist attacks. AAC has the potential to significantly enhance the security of the homeland by closely monitoring the airplane which, if hijacked by terrorists or criminals, could be used as weapons.

Related Recent Publications:

V. Paruchuri, A. Durresi, Raj Jain, "On the (in)effectiveness of Probabilistic Marking for IP Traceback under DDoS Attacks," Proceedings of IEEE Global Communications Conference, (GLOBECOM) 2007, Paper #IPS06-5, Washington, DC, November 26-30, 2007, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/ppm_gc07.htm
Vijay Bulusu, Arjan Durresi, Vamsi Paruchuri, Raj Jain, "Key Distribution in Mobile Heterogeneous Sensor Network", Proceedings IEEE GLOBECOM 2006, San Francisco, CA, November 27 - December 1, 2006, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/key.htm
A. Durresi, V. Paruchuri, L. Barolli, Raj Jain, "Tokens for Anonymous Communication in the Internet," The 9th International Workshop on Network-Based Information Systems NBiS2006 in conjunction with the 17th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications DEXA'2006, to be held in Krakow, Poland Sept. 4 - 8, 2006, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/tokens.htm
A. Durresi, V. Paruchuri, L. Barolli, Raj Jain, "Air to Air Communication Protocol," in Proceedings of 27th IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, March 4-11, 2006, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/aacp.htm

5. Congestion Control and Traffic Management

Ethernet is replacing the traditional storage networking technologies like Fiber Channel and Infiniband in Datacenters. The key feature of these traditional technologies that make them suitable for datacenter is their low-loss low-delay operation. Consequently IEEE 802.1 standards committee is developing new specification for congestion management for Ethernet in datacenter networks.

We have developed an explicit rate control framework for Ethernet applications. The framework guarantees zero packet drops at the congested switch and fast convergence to fair and stable state.

Related Recent Publications:

Chakchai So-In, Raj Jain, and Jinjing Jiang, "Enhanced Forward Explicit Congestion Notification (E-FECN) Scheme for Datacenter Ethernet Networks," Proceedings of 2008 International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (SPECTS 2008), Edinburgh, UK, June 16-18, 2008, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/efecn.htm
Jinjing Jiang, Raj Jain, Chakchai So-In, "An Explicit Rate Control Framework for Lossless Ethernet Operation," Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2008, Beijing, China, 19-23 May 2008, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/icc08.htm
Jinjing Jiang, Raj Jain, "Analysis of Backward Congestion Notification (BCN) for Ethernet Datacenter Applications," accepted for IEEE Infocom minisymposium, Anchorage, Alaska, May 7-11, 2007, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/bcn.htm

6. TCP Persistence

Mobile applications often get disconnected because TCP times out when a user moves from one location and reconnects at another location. This happens even with the use of Mobile IP since Mobile IP hides the IP address change from TCP but does nothing to prevent it from timing out. We have developed a In our proposed PErsistent TCP using Simple freeze (PETS) framework, we combine TCP freeze and Mobile IP to prevent TCP from disconnecting during mobile operations.

Related Recent Publications:

C. So-In, R. Jain, G. Dommety, "PETS: Persistent TCP using Simple Freeze," Proceedings of the First International Conference on Future Information Networks (ICFIN 2009), October 14-17, 2009, Bejing, China. http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/pets.htm

7. Energy Efficient Protocols

While broadcasting is a very energy-expensive protocol, it is also widely used as a building block for a variety of other network layer protocols, particularly in sensor networks. Therefore, reducing the energy consumption by optimizing broadcasting is a major improvement in heterogenous sensor networking. Our QoS Geometric Broadcast Protocol (QoS-GBP) is a distributed algorithm where nodes make local decisions on whether to transmit based on a geometric approach. Related Recent Publications:

V. Paruchuri, A. Durresi, L. Barolli, Raj Jain, "QoS-Energy aware Broadcast for Sensor Networks," in Proceedings of The 8th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel Architectures, Algorithms, and Networks ISPAN 2005, Las Vegas, Nevada, December 7-9, 2005, 524 - 529, http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/qos_snsr.htm

Collaboration:

In addition to traditional sources of research funding, our research in the past has also been sponsored by: Intel Corporation, Huawei, and Boeing Corporation.