SPRING 2012

The rise of popular online services such as online social networks and user generated content has dramatically changed the landscape of the Web. With millions of users viewing and uploading large volumes of content, services are now delivered using large-scale data centers comprised of tens of thousands of servers. At this scale, ensuring data is delivered securely and reliably to clients is paramount. This talk will focus on the challenge of Internet routing security and then briefly cover data center network reliability, two challenges currently facing popular online services.

The Internet's routing system is surprisingly vulnerable to attack, however, deployment of security solutions (e.g., S*BGP) has been at an impasse for more than a decade. I will first present our three-step strategy to create economic incentives for deploying S*BGP.  The cornerstone of our strategy is S*BGP's impact on network traffic which we harness to drive revenue-generating traffic toward ISPs deploying S*BGP, thus creating incentives for deployment. In the second part of the talk, I will briefly cover my empirical study of data center network reliability in a network comprised of tens of data centers and thousands of devices.

Bio: Phillipa Gill is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. She uses network measurement, data analysis and ideas from economics to improve security and reliability of networks. She has spent time as a visiting researcher at Microsoft, AT&T and Boston University, and holds a MSc in Computer Science from the University of Calgary.

 

Faculty Host: Ken Birman

4:15pm

B17 Upson Hall

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Refreshments at 3:45pm in the Upson 4th Floor Atrium

 

Computer Science

Colloquium

Security and Reliability

for Internet-scale Services

Phillipa Gill

University of Toronto