(February 14, 2007)--College of Computing Assistant Professor Nick Feamster recently received the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Over the next five years, Feamster will receive support for his research project titled "Kaleidoscope: Improving Network Operations with a View From the Edge."

The Kaleidoscope project is developing techniques, tools, and systems to facilitate network operations---a class of tasks that includes monitoring network conditions, detecting actionable problems, and taking steps to remediate them. “We focus on two areas of network operations,” says Feamster “first, network security (specifically, unwanted traffic) and second, network monitoring, diagnosis, and troubleshooting.”  The results from this project will both streamline today's network operations tasks and provide design insights for network operations in the next-generation Internet.

The first part of the project involves performing measurements and analysis on the current Internet to better understand both the extent of network operations problems today and the degree to which cooperation between users and operators can mitigate them.  Based on these findings, Feamster’s project will propose new approaches to network operations both for the current Internet and for future networks.  This research leverages recent advances in streaming data management, machine learning, economics, and privacy and may inspire new work in these areas, as well.

NSF CAREER Awards are one of the highest honors given to young university faculty in science and engineering who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization. Feamster is an assistant professor within the College’s School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. His research focuses on many aspects of computer networking and networked systems, including the design, measurement, and analysis of network routing protocols, network security, anonymous communication systems, and adaptive streaming media protocols.

For more information about Nick Feamster, click here.