Barath Raghavan

Senior Researcher, ICSI @ Berkeley

Jan 13th, 2017, 11am-12pm, DBH 6011

Title:

Frontier Networks: Context, Challenges, and Connectivity

Abstract:

In this talk, I discuss Frontier Networks -- networks that expand Internet access to disconnected regions -- and their role in scaling Internet access to the half of the global population that remains offline. I describe how a deep understanding of the context and challenges reveals new technical and organizational approaches to building more reliable, cost-effective, and manageable Frontier Networks. I describe a project I led to build such a network in a previously-disconnected region of Mendocino County, CA, the lessons it taught us about network design and operation, and the systems we built to address the needs that were unmet. I then describe three challenges left unaddressed in that work -- bootstrapping, planning, and routing -- and describe ongoing projects to address them.

Speaker Bio:

Barath Raghavan is a senior researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, CA. His research interests include networked systems, security and applied cryptography, ICTD, and sustainable computing. His work spans a wide range of topics including congestion control, routing security, Internet architecture, software-defined networking, rural Internet access, network function virtualization, network troubleshooting and testing, anonymity systems, and computational agroecology. He received his PhD from UC San Diego in 2009 and his BS from UC Berkeley in 2002. He has received a number of paper awards including from ACM SIGCOMM and ACM DEV.