Abstract:

The field of network protocols is very confusing. This talk focuses on layers 2 and 3. Why do we need both Ethernet and IP, and furthermore, what is Ethernet?  As we'll see, what we call "Ethernet" today has little resemblance to the original invention. This talk explains the evolution of Ethernet from CSMA/CD through spanning tree, and now TRILL, as well as explaining why we need both Ethernet and IP.  This talk also tries to separate ways in which protocols can differ, so rather than comparing one buzzword against another, we can focus on ways in which approaches can differ, and the pros and cons of these differences.

Bio:

Radia Perlman is a Fellow at Intel Labs, specializing on network protocols and security protocols.  Many of the technologies she designed have been deployed in the Internet for decades, including link state routing, the spanning tree algorithm, and TRILL, which improves upon spanning tree while still "being Ethernet".  She has also made contributions to network security, including assured delete of data, design of the authentication handshake of IPSec, trust models for PKI, and network infrastructure robust against malicious trusted components.  She is the author of the textbook "Interconnections: 

Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols", and coauthor of "Network Security". She has a PhD from MIT in computer science, and has received various industry awards including lifetime achievement awards from ACM's SIGCOMM and Usenix, and an honorary doctorate from KTH.