MobiArch 2007 Keynote Speeches



Keynote 1: Victor Bahl (Microsoft Research, USA)

Are Self Managing Networks in Our Future?  (Slides)

For over a decade we have been pursuing research on optimizing the performance of IEEE 802.11 networks and it’s been a stimulating ride. However, it is time for the research community to think deeply about problems related to maintaining and managing these networks. IT departments of major corporations spend millions of dollars to keep their networks operating reliably and securely. Yet when you talk to the operations staff they are still unhappy. User complaints about the performance and connectivity go unsolved because the IT staff does not have the tools to perform root cause analysis. Even after years of effort building security protocols, wireless networks remain vulnerable.  These problems results in user frustration and productivity loss.  On a different front, researchers have long touted wireless meshes as a way to bridge the digital divide. They are the solution of choice for providing low-cost connectivity in remote areas in the developing regions of the world; however these networks are not self-sustaining. Someone technical is needed to keep these networks up and going after they are deployed. Here again there is a serious lack of tools and techniques that would allow non-technical users to maintain these networks. In this talk, I will describe the problem space, enumerate the challenges and offer a few technical suggestions on managing wireless networks for mobile users. My goal is to stimulate discussions by challenging the audience to think about solutions that could eventually lead us to self-managing networks.

Short Biography

Victor Bahl is a Principal Researcher and the founding Manager of the Networking Research Group in Microsoft Research Redmond. In this capacity, he directs research activities that push the state-of-art in the design of networked systems. He and his group builds proof-of-concept systems, engage with academia, publish papers in competitive conferences and journals, publish software for the research community, file patents, and work with product groups to influence Microsoft’s products. His personal research interests span a variety of topics in wireless systems design and network management. Significant amount of his research has been incorporated into Microsoft's core products, industry standards, and numerous non-Microsoft commercial products. He is credited with several firsts, including the world’s first indoor location determination systems, the world’s first wireless hot spot network, and the world’s first multi-radio single network system. Some of his professional leadership activities include founding ACM SIGMOBILE, ACM/USENIX MobiSys, and ACM MC2R. He has published over 80 papers and filed over 70 patents of which 40 have issued. For his contributions to the research community he became an ACM Fellow in 2003 and an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer in 2007. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1997, he was with Digital Equipment Corporation where he initiated, led, and shipped several seminal hardware and software multimedia products Victor received his Ph. D in Computer Systems Engineering in 1997 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.


Keynote 2: Krishan Sabnani (Bell Labs, USA)

Key Technologies and Architectures for the Next-Generation Mobile Networks  (Slides)

Next-generation networks will be based on IP technology and carry predominantly content traffic, along with voice and best-effort data traffic.  There are many challenges to achieve this vision.  This talk will focus on these challenges and some Bell Labs solutions being worked on.

Today’s cellular networks have adopted a hierarchical design that works well for voice and low-bandwidth data traffic. To accommodate increasing data demands, the complex radio-access networks will be replaced by a collection of access routers. A promising approach developed at Bell Labs called Base Station Router aggregates several functions in one access router and significantly simplifies architecture of cellular networks.  

Current IP networks are best-effort, poorly managed, and not secure, and therefore not suitable for next-generation wireless networks. To achieve carrier-grade performance, these networks will need to provide QoS-support, manageability, and high security. We are working on a unique way of building carrier-class packet networks, in which routers are disaggregated into simple forwarding elements and shared control elements. This approach, which we call SoftRouter, also enables easy addition of new functions to the networks.  

Opening cellular networks to the Internet creates security holes. We have identified a number of unique denial-of-service (DoS) attacks which can be launched against 3G/4G high-speed networks such as EV-DO, UMTS/HSDPA, and WiMAX. These attacks can be easily generated with low volumes of attack traffic and cannot be detected by commercially available security products designed for wireline networks. Bell Labs has developed novel solutions for detecting and mitigating these wireless DoS attacks.  

Short Biography

Krishan Sabnani is Vice President of the Networking and Network Management Center at Bell Labs. He has conceived and launched numerous systems projects in the areas of internetworking and wireless networking. His successful transfers of research ideas to products in Lucent and AT&T business units have had a major positive impact on the business. He has built organizations known for technical excellence by recruiting and coaching the top talent in the industry. Krishan has also conducted extensive personal research in data and wireless networking. He made major contributions in the communications protocols area. For example he designed the SNR, RMTP, and Airmail protocols. He also made significant contributions to conformance test generation, protocol validation, automated converter generation, and reverse engineering.  
Krishan received the 2005 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award and the 2005 IEEE W. Wallace McDowell Award. He is a Bell Labs Fellow and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). He received the Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper Award from the IEEE Communications Society in 1991. Krishan received the 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, India. He also won the 2005 Thomas Alva Patent Award from the R&D Council of New Jersey. He holds 37 patents and has published more than 70 papers. Krishan received his B. Tech. in electrical engineering from IIT Delhi in 1975 (#1 in class), and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Columbia University, New York, in 1981. He joined Bell Labs in 1981.