About Me

I am a co-founder at Forward Networks, where we are actively hiring exceptional individuals. Forward Networks delivers an innovative platform that provides network visibility, policy verification, and change modeling. Designed to help network teams eliminate costly network outages, the Forward Networks platform enables engineers and operators to easily visualize and search complex networks, quickly debug problems, verify network-wide policy correctness, and predict network behavior prior to making changes to production equipment — for legacy, SDN, or hybrid environments. Fortune 100 financial institutions, telcos, and IT service providers use Forward Networks to de-risk business operations and drive operational efficiency.

I finished my PhD in 2013 from the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. I am broadly interested in computer systems and networking. I worked with the most amazing advisor, Nick McKeown, on the most exciting new technology in the networking world. I graduated in 2008 from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India with a B. Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering.

Bio and Resume

Research

My research interests are in the area of computer systems and networking. At Stanford, my research primarily focuses on Software Defined Networking (especially OpenFlow), and Programmable Open Mobile Internet (POMI). In the past, I have worked on the Data-Oriented Transfer (DOT) project at CMU and on Wireless Sensor Networks at IIT Madras.

Research Grants

  • NSF EAGER Research Grant, Oct 2010 -- Sep 2011
    In collaboration with U. Washington, U. Wisconsin, and Georgia Tech.

Doctoral Dissertation

Publications

  • I Know What Your Packet Did Last Hop: Using Packet Histories to Troubleshoot Networks
    Nikhil Handigol, B. Heller, V. Jeyakumar, D. Mazières, N. McKeown
    NSDI 2014, Seattle, WA
    [PDF] [Slides (PPT)]
  • Reproducible Network Experiments using Container Based Emulation
    Nikhil Handigol, Brandon Heller, Vimalkumar Jeyakumar, Bob Lantz, Nick McKeown
    CoNEXT 2012, Nice, France
    [PDF]
  • Confused, Timid, and Unstable: Picking a Video Streaming Rate is Hard
    T.Y. Huang, Nikhil Handigol, B. Heller, N. McKeown, R. Johari
    IMC 2012, Boston, USA
    [PDF]
  • Where is the Debugger for my Software-Defined Network?
    Nikhil Handigol, B. Heller, V. Jeyakumar, D. Mazières, N. McKeown
    HotSDN 2012, Helsinki, Finland (Best Student Presentation Award)
    [PDF] [Slides (PPT)]
  • Leveraging SDN Layering to Systematically Troubleshoot Networks
    B. Heller, C. Scott, N. McKeown, S. Shenker, A. Wundsam, H. Zeng, S. Whitlock, V. Jeyakumar, Nikhil Handigol, J. McCauley, K. Zarifis, P. Kazemian
    HotSDN 2013, Hong Kong
    [PDF]
  • Logically Centralized? State Distribution Trade-offs in Software Defined Networks
    D. Levin, A. Wundsam, B. Heller, Nikhil Handigol, Anja Feldmann
    HotSDN 2012, Helsinki, Finland
    [PDF]
  • Aster*x: Load-Balancing as a Network Primitive
    Nikhil Handigol, M. Flajslik, S. Seetharaman, R. Johari, N. McKeown
    ACLD 2010 (Poster), St. Malo, France
    [PDF] [BibTeX]
  • Blueprint for Introducing Innovation into Wireless Mobile Networks
    Kok-Kiong Yap, Rob Sherwood, Masayoshi Kobayashi, Te-Yuan Huang, Michael Chan, Nikhil Handigol, Nick McKeown, Guru Parulkar
    VISA 2010: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Virtualized Infrastructure Systems and Architecture
    [PDF] [BibTeX]
  • Carving Research Slices Out of Your Production Networks with OpenFlow
    Rob Sherwood, Michael Chan, Adam Covington, Glen Gibb, Mario Flajslik, Nikhil Handigol, Te-Yuan Huang, Peyman Kazemian, Masayoshi Kobayashi, Jad Naous, Srinivasan Seetharaman, David Underhill, Tatsuya Yabe, Kok-Kiong Yap, Yiannis Yiakoumis, Hongyi Zeng, Guido Appenzeller, Ramesh Johari, Nick McKeown, Guru Parulkar
    SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, January 2010, Volume 40 Issue 1 (SIGCOMM Best Demo 2009)
    Johari, Nick McKeown, Guru Parulkar
    SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, January 2010, Volume 40 Issue 1 (SIGCOMM Best Demo 2009)
    [PDF] [BibTeX]
  • OpenRoads: Empowering Research in Mobile Networks
    KK Yap, M. Kobayashi, Nikhil Handigol, TY Huang, M. Chan, R. Sherwood, N. McKeown
    ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review , January 2010, Volume 40 Issue 1 (SIGCOMM Best Poster 2009)
    [PDF] [BibTeX]
  • Report on WREN 2009 -- Workshop: Research on Enterprise Networking
    Nathan Farrington, Nikhil Handigol, Christoph Mayer, Kok-Kiong Yap, and Jeffrey C. Mogul
    ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, January 2010, Volume 40 Issue 1
    [PDF] [BibTeX]
  • Fast Reroute and Multipath Routing Extensions to the NetFPGA Reference Router
    Hongyi Zeng, Mario Flajslik, Nikhil Handigol
    NetFPGA Developers Workshop 2009, Stanford, CA
    [PDF] [BibTeX]
  • A Reliable Data Transport Protocol for Partitioned Actors in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks
    Nikhil Handigol, K. Selvaradjou, C. Siva Ram Murthy
    International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC), December 2010
    [PDF] [BibTeX]
  • Energy-Efficient Directional Routing Between Partitioned Actors in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks
    K. Selvaradjou, Nikhil Handigol, A. Franklin, C. Siva Ram Murthy
    IET Communications, January 2010, Volume 4, Issue 1
    [PDF] [BibTeX]
  • Energy Efficient Directional Routing for Effective Actor-Actor Communication in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks
    Nikhil Handigol, K. Selvaradjou, A. Franklin, C. Siva Ram Murthy
    ICCBN 2008, Bangalore, India
    [PDF] [BibTeX]

Demos

  • Aster*x: Load-Balancing as a Network Primitive
    Nikhil Handigol, Srini Seetharaman, Mario Flajslik, Ramesh Johari, Nick McKeown
    Plenary Demo, 9th GENI Engineering Conference, Washington DC, November 2010
    [Abstract] [YouTube Video] [Description] [BibTeX]
  • Plug-n-Serve: Load-balancing Web Requests Using OpenFlow
    Nikhil Handigol, Mario Flajslik, Srini Seetharaman, Ramesh Johari, Nick McKeown
    Sigcomm 2009, Barcelona
    [Abstract] [BibTeX]
  • Carving Research Slices out of your Production Networks with OpenFlow
    Rob Sherwood, Michael Chan, Adam Covington, Glen Gibb, Mario Flajslik, Nikhil Handigol, Te-Yuan Huang, Peyman Kazemian, Masayoshi Kobayashi, Jad Naous, Srinivasan Seetharaman, David Underhill, Tatsuya Yabe, Kok-Kiong Yap, Yiannis Yiakoumis, Hongyi Zeng, Guido Appenzeller, Ramesh Johari, Nick McKeown, Guru Parulkar
    Sigcomm 2009, Barcelona (Best Demo Award)
    [PDF] [BibTeX]

I also maintain the OpenFlow videos page.

Invited Talks

  • Using Packet Histories to Troubleshoot Networks
    • Insieme Tech Talk, November 30, 2012
    • NTT MCL, October 3, 2012
  • Should a load-balancer choose the path as well as the server?
  • OpenFlow: Enabling Technology Transfer to Networking Industry
    Cisco Nerd Lunch, July 9, 2009
    [PPT] [PDF]

Courses

Teaching

Contact

Stanford, CA 94305

The best way to reach me is by email.

Links

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