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Keynote Talks


Monday Morning Keynote, June 6, 2011

Internet Video: The 2011 Perspective [slides]

Hui Zhang
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Conviva
Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract: What are the key research problems to solve to enable ubiquitous Internet video? Once video becomes ubiquitous, what are the implications for Internet architecture and design? These were among the questions discussed in the 1st NOSSDAV workshop held at Berkeley in 1990. I was a second year doctoral student in the audience and did not realize at the time that these questions were driving my research in the following two decades.

After long anticipation and several false starts, the age of Internet Video has finally arrived. Today, Youtube and Netflix are among the most popular sites on the Internet; Olympics, World Cup, Presidential Inauguration, and world’s most important events are broadcast live on the Internet; consumers can watch HBO, ESPN, and world’s premium video content over the Internet any time, any where, on any device such as PC, Television, smart phone, and iPad. Have all the important problems been solved? In there any good research left to be done? In this talk, I will, with the 2011 perspective, revisit these two questions posed in 1990 NOSSDAV.

Bio: Hui Zhang is Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Conviva and Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

As a researcher, Zhang has worked in the area of Internet Quality of Service (QoS), video streaming, network control, and Internet architecture. As part of his Ph.D. thesis research at U.C. Berkeley, Hui Zhang was one of the principal designers and implementers of the Tenet Real-Time Protocol Suite, which was the first complete protocol suite that provided guaranteed real-time service across heterogeneous wide-area internetworks. At Carnegie Mellon, Zhang supervised Ion Stoica's 2001 award-winning Ph.D. dissertation on Internet QoS. His End System Multicast (ESM) research group pioneered the overlay multicast architecture and developed the world's first peer-to-peer live streaming system in 2002. In 2003, Zhang started the 100x100 Clean Slate Project and 4D Project, which were among the first to apply clean-slate methodology to Internet architecture research.

As an entrepreneur, Zhang co-founded Conviva with Ion Stoica. Conviva optimizes video quality for premium content properties such as HBO, ESPN3, ABC, CBS, Fox. Conviva's technology has powered some of the world's largest on-line events such as Olympics, FIFA World Cup, NCAA College Basketball March Madness, Major League Baseball, and Academy Awards. Zhang also served as the Chief Technology Officer of Turin Networks from 2000 to 2003.

Zhang is an ACM Fellow. He was awarded the Alfred Sloan Fellowship in 2000, the National Science Foundation Career Award in 1996, and the Finmeccanica Chair in Computer Science at CMU from 1998 to 2001.

Zhang received a bachelor's degree from Beijing University, a master's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.


Tuesday Morning Keynote, June 7, 2011

The Future of Networking, and the Past of Protocols [slides]

Scott Shenker
Professor of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
Vice President, International Computer Science Institute
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Nicira Networks

Abstract: In this talk, which is based on joint with work Martin Casado, Teemu Koponen, and Nick McKeown, I first discuss why networking's fundamental intellectual framework so weak. I then argue that it can be strengthened through the definition of several abstractions. My main focus is on the network control plane, and the abstractions I present motivate the adoption of Software-Defined Networking. However, I will also mention how new networking abstractions can create a far more evolvable Internet architecture.

Bio: Scott Shenker spent his academic youth studying theoretical physics but soon gave up chaos theory for computer science. Continuing to display a remarkably short attention span, his research over the years has wandered from computer performance modeling and computer networks to game theory and economics. Unable to hold a steady job, he currently splits his time between the U. C. Berkeley Computer Science Department (where he is the Carl J. Penther Professor of Engineering) and the International Computer Science Institute (where he is Vice President and leader of the Networking Group). He was also a co-founder of Nicira Networks, continuing to serve as their Chief Scientist, and was one of the inventors (along with Martin Casado and Nick McKeown, who were the other co-founders of Nicira) of the Software-Defined Networking paradigm.

In 2002, Shenker received the SIGCOMM Award in recognition of his “contributions to Internet design and architecture, to fostering research collaboration, and as a role model for commitment and intellectual rigor in networking research”. In 2006, he received the IEEE Internet Award for “contributions towards an understanding of resource sharing on the Internet.” In 2007 he received an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Chicago for achieving “an unprecedented record of fundamental contributions to the core architecture that underlies the Internet”. In addition, according to several citation indices, Scott is the most cited author in all of computer science.