Improving the energy-efficiency of core routers is important for ISPs and equipment vendors alike. We tackle this problem by focusing on packet buffers in backbone router line-cards. We broadly classify the talk into two parts – an evolutionary approach and a clean-slate design. In the former, we propose a simple power saving mechanism that turns buffers on/off to save energy. Our scheme can be incrementally deployed today and requires minimal changes to existing line-card design.

Disruptive events such as large-scale power outages, undersea cable cuts, or Internet worms could cause the Internet to deviate from its normal state of operation. This deviation from normalcy is what we call the impact on the Internet, which we also refer to as an "Internet earthquake."    

The media access control (MAC) layer of the IEEE 802.11 standard specifies a set of parameters that regulate the behavior of the wireless stations when accessing the channel. Although the standard defines a set of recommended values for these parameters, they are statically set and do not take into account the current conditions in the wireless local area network (WLAN) in terms of, e.g., number of contending stations and the traffic they generate, which results in suboptimal performance

A frequent problem in settings where a unique resource must be shared among users is how to resolve the contention that arises when all of them must use it, but the resource allows only for one user each time. The application of efficient solutions for this problem spans a myriad of settings such as radio communication networks or databases.

Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Enhanced Collision Avoidance (CSMA/ECA) is a distributed MAC protocol that allows collision-free access to the medium in WLAN. The only difference between CSMA/ECA and the well-known CSMA/CA is that the former uses a deterministic backoff after successful transmissions. Collision-free operation is reached after a transient state during which some collisions may occur. This article shows that the duration of the transient state can be shortened by appropriately setting the contention parameters. Standard absorbing Markov Chain theory is used to describe the behaviour of the system in the transient state and to predict the expected number of slots to reach the collision-free operation.

The scalability issues the global routing system has been experienc- ing over the past years have raised serious concerns in the Internet community. One of the main culprits for the rapidly growing BGP routing table is the defragmentation process of the address blocks allocated to ASes, also known as prefix deaggreation. The Internet is a complex system and understanding its behavioural evolution is certainly a challenging task. For this reason, the use of eco- nomic models can provide intuitive explanations of the complex interactions between networks that result in the aforementioned phenomenon of prefix deaggreation. In this paper, we propose a game theoretic model to analyze the incentives behind the deag- gregating strategies of the networks. Announcing more-specific prefixes in the Internet impacts the size of the global routing table and increases the network operators’ capital expenditure for rout- ing equipment capable of sustaining the growing Internet. How- ever, we prove that the ASes are driven by fundamental economic reasons towards this type of apparently harming behaviour. We find that by announcing more prefixes the originating network achieves a more predictable traffic pattern and reduces the peak levels of bandwidth consumption. We show that this happens because, both in the equilibrium point and the social welfare point, the cost re- duction achieved by smoothing the traffic distribution outweighs the additional cost incurred by the routing table expansion.

In this talk I will briefly overview the research topics I have been working on, as well as describe new topics I recently began looking into. The former includes behavior-based Internet worm detection, Internet routing forensics, IP spoofing prevention, and trusted and incentivized peer-to-peer data sharing between distrusted and selfish clients. The latter includes reliable IP prefix monitoring, active phishing disruption, social networks for access control, security and privacy for homecare rehabilitation environments, and the clean-slate architecture design for future Internet. The purpose of this talk is to provide a glimpse of my fights, so you can weigh which fights you would like to join me to win, or leverage my weapons to help win yours, or even better, we find and beat a common enemy.

The seminar will cover essential aspects of tech-based entrepreneurship, with special regard to ventures in the field of ICTs. Resources for entrepreneurs at UC3M within the Campus del Emprendedor UC3M Programme will be detailed. An inspiring speech by young entrepreneurs from our Business Incubator will stimulate a discussion with attendees.  

Since the early nineties, intelligent agents and multiagent systems have been envisioned as the key enabling technologies for the design and implementation of large-scale, open, distributed systems. After two decades, the scientific community is still in quest of the killer application that could unleash the full potential of multiagent systems. In recent years, smart infrastructures, such as intelligent transportation and smart power networks, attracted the interest of the scientific community as two paradigmatic large-scale, open, distributed systems of a great social and economical relevance. In particular the talk will focus on two examples of on-going research on the application of market-based methods for the efficient allocation of urban road networks and coalition formation for the creation of virtual power plants.

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the protocol used among Internet Service Providers to provide IP connectivity among and across their networks. In this course, we will first review the basics of Internet routing with BGP.