'Eye in the Sky' Will Bypass Internet Traffic Jams
Cornell Chronicle (10/24/14) Bill Steele
A new proposal for using "knowledge planes" to help ease Internet traffic jams will not require extensive upgrades to network hardware. A team of researchers from Cornell University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Massachusetts says their application will work with tools that are already available in Internet routers. Called IN-CONTROL (Programmable Inter-Domain Observation and Control), the application will collect information on how networks are organized, and its database will help network operators select the best paths, relay around faults, or avoid untrustworthy networks.
IN-CONTROL will build on ideas from Frenetic, a programming language developed by Cornell professor Nate Foster that enables network programmers to write commands for what they want routers to do without understanding the details of the hardware. Security mechanisms planned for IN-CONTROL will help keep network information from being exposed. In addition, the team plans to distribute the database across the Internet for security and scalability. The researchers say the promise of improved performance should convince network operators to support the plan.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/10/eye-sky-will-bypass-internet-traffic-jams