Research

I am interested in computer networks : their design and architecture, and how we interact with them as users and/or administrators. My thesis proposes a user-driven approach to personalize network services, touching on net neutrality, software-defined networking, and WiFi virtualization.

Projects

Neutral Net Neutrality

Should applications receive special treatment from the network? And if so, who decides which applications are preferred? This discussion, known as net neutrality, goes beyond technology and is a hot political topic. In this work we approach net neutrality from a user's perspective. Through user studies, we demonstrate that users do indeed want some services to receive preferential treatment; and their preferences have a heavy-tail: a one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to work. This suggests that users should be able to decide how their traffic is treated. A crucial part to enable user preferences, is the mechanism to express them. To this end, we developed network cookies, a general mechanism to express user preferences to the network. Using cookies, we prototype Boost, a user-defined fast-lane and deploy it in 161 homes.

Related Links

Sigcomm paper | CITP Talk | GitHub | Anylink Chrome Extension | CableShow Hackathon Video (First Prize)

BeHop

The BeHop research project is trying to improve the performance of WiFi networks in dense deployments (such as enterprises, college dorms, and urban areas), and let users connect to it with their own SSID, password, and reachable resources. Learn more details here.

Related Links

BeHop Project page | Paper | Slashdot | Network World

OpenFlow

I was part of the original team that pioneered OpenFlow and SDN at Stanford, and have been involved with all things around it (spec, demos, tutorials, prototypes and research projects). I built the first OpenFlow prototype for Juniper switches, and maintained the implementation for Wireless Access Points and home routers for a few years.

BETSY

BETSY was an EU project for multimedia streaming on wireless handheld devices (before iPhone made this possible). I worked on BETSY during an internship at Philips Research in the Netherlands and my undergraduate diploma in Greece. I developed a controller to autoadjust streaming content in current network conditions, and ported Linux and our framework in an iPaq hx4700 and Philips’ own prototype device. As part of my undergrad thesis I developed a hardware 802.11e MAC controller (using Verilog) to provide QoS for video and voice, and a software emulation layer to facilitate testing and development.