TITLE: Towards Predictable Networks

ABSTRACT:

Fueled by evolving applications, requirements from systems and networks are changing in fundamental ways: networks today must provide increasingly strict performance guarantees and not just high performance. However, the design principles of the early Internet continue to be the basis of modern networks to provide best-effort performance. This leads to a mismatch between what applications need and what networks provide. To bridge this gap, we need predictability to be built into the design of networks.

In this talk, I will focus on the unique challenges and unprecedented opportunities for building predictable networks. I will first discuss this in the context of shared public clouds by presenting a new abstraction and system, PicNIC, for predictable network performance while navigating fundamental trade-offs. Then, I will expand the discussion with wide-area networks with a system to achieve efficiency and predictability. Finally, I will highlight research directions towards leveraging hardware support to build predictable networks in a scalable, robust, and efficient manner.

BIO:

Praveen Kumar is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Cornell University. His research focuses on building predictable networks and takes a multi-disciplinary approach spanning architecture, PL, systems, and theory to build holistic networking solutions — from low-level hardware to high-level abstractions and algorithms. Kumar’s systems have been deployed at scale and also influenced the design of several other systems in production. His work has been recognized with a SIGCOMM best student paper award.

JOIN THE TALK HERE: https://bluejeans.com/946032411