Abstract
The Internet has become highly centralized at both the network infrastructure and application layers. Due to extensive ISP consolidation, a small number of number of companies control much of the network infrastructure. Equally problematic is the centralization of our application-delivery infrastructure, which relies heavily on highly consolidated cloud services. The physical localization of network infrastructure, even when distributed across ISPs, has significant vulnerabilities. Although the major cloud providers are geo-distributed, their datacenters are co-located in a few places based on access to inexpensive electricity. To overcome these vulnerabilities, we advocate for the creation of decentralized fallback networks (DFNs). During times of duress or attack, DFNs can be used to re-enable network applications, albeit at lower performance, but still capable of providing key functions. One component of a DFN is a city-scale mesh network built out of existing Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices. It requires a new approach to scalable routing for millions of devices in a city. I will discuss a solution that uses detailed information about buildings from widely available maps—data that was unavailable at scale over a decade ago, but is widely available now—to compute paths in a scalable way, with no exchange of routing information between nodes and a minimal size of routing tables. I will also discuss approaches to de-cloudifying applications and improving security.
Bio
Hari Balakrishnan is the Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at MIT. His current projects are on resilient networks and on developing AI assistants for research and education. His honors include the Marconi Prize, the ACM SIGCOMM Award for lifetime contributions to networks, the IEEE Kobayashi Award, and the Infosys Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been honored as a distinguished alumnus of both UC Berkeley EECS and IIT Madras. He is also the founder of Cambridge Mobile Telematics, the world’s largest telematics company focused on making roads and drivers safer worldwide.
