[UCI-Calit2] Counter Braids: A Novel Counter Architecture

[Anna Lynn Spitzer]

Counter Braids: A Novel Counter Architecture
A Networked Systems Seminar

With Balaji Prabhakar, Stanford University

2-3 p.m.
Thursday, March 13
Calit2 Building, Room 3008

Measuring data (packets, bytes, flows, events) accurately and on a
per-flow basis in high-speed networks is hard because one needs fast and
dense memories which are a rare and expensive commodity. This has led to
approximate schemes where the goal is to identify large "elephant" flows
quickly and measure them. Thus, in network measurement, there is a gulf
between what is desirable and what has been achievable. Prabhakar
revisits the topic of exact, per-flow measurement and proposes a novel
counter architecture, called "Counter Braids." He shows how ideas from
modern coding theory (notably Turbo codes) enable a counter architecture
that is compact enough to fit into SRAMs and quite simple to implement;
the essential idea is to "compress as you count." If time permits, he
will also present an overview of a congestion-management scheme his
group has been developing for Ethernet as part of the IEEE 802.1
standards effort.
 
About the Speaker:

Balaji Prabhakar is an associate professor of electrical engineering and
computer science at Stanford University. He is interested in network
algorithms, scalable methods for network performance monitoring and
simulation, wireless (imaging) sensor networks, stochastic network
theory and information theory. He has designed algorithms for switching,
routing, bandwidth partitioning, load balancing, and web caching. 
Balaji has been a Terman Fellow at Stanford University and a Fellow of
the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has received the CAREER award from
the National Science Foundation, the Erlang Prize from the INFORMS
Applied Probability Society, and the Rollo Davidson Prize from the
University of Cambridge, awarded to young scientists for their
contributions to probability and its applications. He has been
co-recipient of best paper awards at Infocom and Hot Interconnects.

For more information, contact Athina Markopoulou, athina at uci.edu