Disputation: Runa Barik

Doctoral candidate Runa Barik at the Department of Informatics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, is defending the thesis “Measuring the Impact of Middleboxes on Internet Protocols for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor.

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Trial lecture - time and place

13th of February, 10:15 AM, 

" The Evolution of Middleboxes "

Conferral summary

Intermediary devices other than the standard Internet protocol routers, the so-called middleboxes, in private and cellular networks have been known to change Internet packages in many ways, making it difficult to design new protocols and protocol extensions that work for the vast majority of Internet users. This thesis introduces novel measurement tools and a measurement platform to verify which protocols and network mechanisms could be used opportunistically in the global Internet.

 

Main research findings

The ubiquitous deployment of intermediary devices other than the standard Internet Protocol (IP) routers, the so-called middleboxes, in the Internet shows that the future will have more, not fewer, of them. These devices in private and cellular networks have been known to change packages in many ways, making it difficult to design new protocols and protocol extensions that work for the vast majority of Internet users. To cope with this, the networking stack at the end systems needs to be more flexible in selecting the right protocols or network mechanisms. But there is no measurement tool or platform to verify which protocols or mechanisms can be available to the end systems.

The goal of my thesis is to design a scaleable, simple and flexible measurement platform to verify which protocols and network mechanisms could be used opportunistically in the global Internet. We, therefore, developed novel measurement tools and a measurement platform called fling.

Using fling, we conducted a large set of tests covering both network and transport protocols, and assessed the impact of middleboxes in both IP version 4 and version 6 networks. Specifically, my thesis documents the opportunistic use of the DiffServ Code Point --- responsible for classifying and managing network traffic and providing quality of service (QoS) --- in the IP header as well as several native transport protocols.

 

 

Contact information to Department: Mozhdeh Sheibani Harat

Publisert 30. jan. 2020 09:30 - Sist endret 12. feb. 2020 10:24