Dr. Sergey Gorinsky (Senior Researcher, IMDEA Networks) Prof. Dr. Arturo Azcorra (Director General for Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurial Development (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) Paul Patras (Research Assistant, IMDEA Networks) Dr. Mary Luz Mouronte (Division Manager, Telefonica Research, Madrid) Dr. Albert Banchs (Deputy Director, IMDEA Networks; Associate Professor, UC3M) Prof. Dr. Narasimha Reddy (Cátedra de Excelencia, University Carlos III of Madrid; Visiting Researcher, IMDEA Networks, Madrid; Texas A&M University, USA) Alejandro Javier Tosina González (Spanish Representative in ICT Committee – EU Framework Programme; CDTI – Ministry of Science and Innovation) Location: Basement Floor, “Sala de Audiovisuales”, Room 3.1.S08, Building: Rey Pastor (Library), University Carlos III of Madrid, Avda. Universidad, 30, 28911 Leganes – Madrid Date: November 11th, 2009, 15:00 – 18:00 Organization: IMDEA Networks in collaboration with the Higher Polytechnic School, University Carlos III of Madrid, Leganes Campus The conference will be conducted in English Advanced registration: rebeca.demiguel imdea.org

The way the Internet works today is that routing protocols select a single path through the network, and transport protocols like TCP then adapt to the properties of that path. So the situation where there are unused paths that remain idle is quite common. The idea behind multipath TCP is to modify TCP so it can send packets over multiple paths at the same time, moving traffic from more congested paths to less congested paths and thus optimizing network utilization and performance.

This talk gives an overview on how different overlay networks can share information among them and some recent results based on an implementation tested on an emulation environment are given.

Interest in underwater acoustic networking research has grown rapidly in the past few years. Fundamental differences between underwater acoustic propagation and terrestrial radio propagation call for new criteria for the design of communications systems and networking protocols. In this talk, we will provide an overview of the main challenges posed by the underwater acoustic propagation environment, with special emphasis on networking and protocol design issues, and provide novel insights that are useful in guiding both protocol design and network deployment. We will then address in more detail some specific examples of how the unique features of underwater propagation and acoustic modems affect protocol design. In particular, we will (1) focus on the energy consumption profile of acoustic modems and its impact on the design of topology control mechanisms and on the trade-off between sleep cycles and wake-up modes, and (2) present a novel energy-efficient routing protocol for underwater networks that explicitly accounts for the relationship between hop distance, bandwidth, and energy consumption.

The peer-to-peer paradigm shows the potential to provide the same functionality like client/server based systems, but with much lower costs. One substantial limitation of p2p systems are missing guarantees on the quality of service, as the whole infrastructure is based on unreliable peers. In order to control the quality of peer-to-peer systems, monitoring and management mechanisms need to be applied. Both tasks are challenging in large-scale networks with autonomous, unreliable nodes.

According to most technology pundits, progress in wireless and sensor networks will lead us into a world of ubiquitous computing, in which myriads of tiny, untethered sensors and actuators will communicate with each other. Information technology will thus deliver its most encompassing and pervasive accomplishment to mankind, promptly taking care of the needs and wishes of everyone.

Mobile communications networks have been evolved through multiple technologies over a period of several decades, to a stage that they become very complicated in the context of resource control and management. The heterogeneous next generation mobile network (NGMN) now includes a variety of network technologies and topologies incorporating with one another to provide a wide range of services; operate in a variety of channel conditions and environments; and within a single universal end user device. NGMN will need to be offered as an integrated system, and to promote interoperability among networks, offer global coverage and seamless mobility, enable the use of a universal handheld terminal, and enhance service quality compared to current wired networks. NGMN will be the infrastructure of the true mobile Internet.

Wireless mesh networks are becoming popular alternatives to wireless LANs and for cost-effective use in varied application environments. There are several technical challenges that must be addressed for mesh networking to be as effective as any other form of broadband networking. Much of these challenges relate to multi-hop wireless communication and limited capacity. The goal of this informal presentation is to facilitate further discussions on these challenges.

"ADSL is becoming the standard form of residential and small-business broadband access to the Internet due, primarily, to its low deployment cost. These ADSL residential lines are often deployed with Access Points (AP) that provide wireless connectivity. While the ADSL technology has showed evident limits in terms of capacity, the short-range wireless communication can guarantee a similar or higher capacity. Even more important, it is often possible for a residential wireless client to be in range of several other APs belonging to nearby neighbors with ADSL connections. We introduce ClubADSL, a prototype wireless station that can connect to several multi-frequency APs in range and aggregate their available ADSL bandwidth. ClubADSL achieves a fair bandwidth among the concurrent stations and minimizes the impact of end-to-end latency on the system performance. We show the feasibility of such a system in seamlessly transmitting TCP traffic, and validate its experimental implementation over commodity hardware in controlled scenarios."