Papers by Algorithms and Randomness Center (ARC) and ThinkTank members that provide new ways of increasing Internet connectivity and the speed of wireless networks will be presented at the Sixth Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets-VI) from November 14-15 in Atlanta, GA.

A paper titled "Path Splicing: Reliable Connectivity with Rapid Recovery," provides a method to radically improve availability on the Internet. Co-authored by College of Computing graduate student Murtaza Motiwala, College of Computing Assistant Professor Nick Feamster, and College of Computing Professor and ARC ThinkTank Director Santosh Vempala, it shows how a simple extension of standard Internet routing algorithms will create networks that can handle more failures, leading to exponentially higher reliability for Internet users.

A second paper provides an algorithm for better wireless network routing, which can be implemented on commonly available platforms. "Life (and routing) on the Wireless Manifold," co-authored by College of Computing graduate student Varun Kanade and Santosh Vempala, shows how wireless signal propagation can be viewed as travel along shortest paths on a distorted surface. They give an algorithm for constructing such a manifold from signal decay measurements, leading to efficient representations and routing algorithms for mobile networks. They plan to evaluate and refine the algorithms jointly with College of Computing Assistant Professor Mike Best and the TeNet group in Chennai, India.

The Sixth Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets-VI) will bring together researchers in the networking systems community to engage in lively discussion of future trends in networking research and technology. The workshop provides a venue for researchers to present and discuss ideas that have the potential to significantly influence the community in the long term; the goal is to promote community-wide discussions of those ideas.