Research Interests

My interests are pretty diverse. I'm often looking for new, cool projects. Here are a list of my publications.

Past Work

Distributed Systems

My PhD work at Ohio State CIS was in distributed systems (Mukesh Singhal was my advisor). I am still interested in the area, though it covers a pretty broad area (from mutual exclusion and voting algorithms to network protocols and more). Specific topics are mentioned below. Here's a link to my CV/resume.

Real-time Multimedia Data

My dissertation was on Network and Operation System Support for Multimedia. The focus was on how to send time-sensitive data over a network that provides no quality of service (QoS) guaranetees. One factor that made it easier was that it was a "soft" real-time system: data that had exceeded its deadline could not be used, however, the system could function as long as the overall error rate was below a certain value. We applied the notion of "delta-causality" to multimedia data to create an efficent approach for preserving data ordering.

Ethernet and ATM Networks

As part of the dissertation work, I created some schemes to increase the efficiency of the Ethernet protocol under high loads. This involved creating a detailed simulation of an Ethernet using csim and running a lot of sample systems on it.

I also did some analyses of ATM networks (but that was a while ago).

Multicasting

Multicasting is another area of interest. I did research on ways of representing the overall efficiency of a multicast system, and created an efficient, robust, distributed way of building multicast trees (along with Golden Richard and Loren Schwiebert).

Heterogeneous Databases

As a postdoc at the Xerox Design Research Institute (sadly, neither it nor its web server exist any more), I worked on a project on creating automatic translators for heterogeneous databases. In addition, I worked on a metadata project which was an extension of the heterogeneous DB project.

I also wrote a web page "crawler" which would grab all the pages from a site, build a graph of them, and then present a tree representation of them, when you specify which node is the root.

Current Work

Wireless Networks

I've become interested in wireless networks. 802.11b and all its ilk, both in terms of network protocols and security issues (see below). Plus, it's just too damn useful and cool.

Handheld Devices

Going hand-in-hand with wireless networks are handheld devices. I have an iPAQ pocket PC that runs the Intimate distribution of Linux. It's pretty damn cool, although I must admit I don't really use it all that much. I still use paper and pens as my "palm" devices.

Security

I'm currently involved in various computer security related stuff. I've dealt with behavior based detection (computer immunology) and pseudo honeypot like system, as well as correlators.

I've done some Red Team work, testing the security of a software system, and penetration testing on a web and mail interface of a large company's system, as well as vulnerability analysis of the whole information protection infrastructure (from physical to online).

In general, security and trust issues interest me, and I often find myself applying the same principles in the real world (or deciding to break the rules and trust someone despite the lack of credentials).

Digital Forensics

I've worked on some digital forensics projects and have been involved in the Digital Forensics Workshop (DFWS). I'm interested ways to automate reconstructing the events that took place, as well as synchronizing multiple time lines. I am now a GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst (GCFA) and created a free tool, tar2d2, for the practical exam for the certification.

Web

The web's cool. I've created a number of web pages and CGIs, including this site, the East Hill Flying Club's site, and MyCause.com (a site in which you can buy things online and have a portion of the cost go to a cause of your choice (plug!!!)). I'm not too much into flashy things and dancing icons. Although, I must admit, out of everything I've seen, this stands out as the most brilliant use of Flash animation I've seen.

The Book

I am working on a book titled Fundamentals of Mobile and Pervasive Computing with Golden Richard, Loren Schwiebert, and Sandeep Gupta. Due in September 2004.

Future Work

Collaborative Work

I'm co-authored a (text)book with Golden Richard, Loren Schwiebert, and Sandeep Gupta titled Fundamentals of Mobile and Pervasive Computing published by McGraw-Hill (ISBN: 0071412379), due out late Fall 2004. Here's my biography photo.

I've worked with Golden and Loren on previous projects involving efficient multicast tree generation.

I've worked with Golden on a project involving physically locating wireless (802.11) intruders.

I have also collaborated with Zygmunt Haas on an ultrawide band MAC and network protocol.

This page last modified Jun 28, 2009.
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