NSF Workshop: Towards Re-architecting Today’s Internet for Survivability

Evanston, IL | November 28-29, 2023

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Over the past decades, the Internet has undergone a major change from being primarily a research-oriented network for academics to becoming a cyber-physical infrastructure “critical” for modern society in general and the global economy in particular. This transformation has occurred largely by happenstance, rather than by design, and under the assumption that the current architecture that has ensured its robustness in the past would be sufficient to provide the robustness now expected from it. We argue that this organically-grown architecture of today’s Internet cannot live up to this new role humanity has assigned it or withstand the types of threats that it now faces. To re-architect today’s Internet as critical infrastructure requires a new understanding of the architectural principles on which it should be based. It demands a reassessment of the possible scenarios that can challenge the network’s basic functioning and the threats that can arise as a result of the network’s constant evolution. At the same time, it must explore paths for incremental deployment that embed the necessary incentives for adoption. Given the expected tight coupling of tomorrow’s Internet with the emerging smart grid, both the analysis of potential threats, as well as any re-design to enhance survivability, must consider both systems in parallel and inform each other’s progress.

The success of this proposed ambitious effort depends on close collaborations among a broad and interdisciplinary team of scientists, including networking researchers, power/smart grid experts, economists, and social science researchers. The goal of the workshop is to bring together an initial group of national and international experts to sketch and start implementing a transformative research agenda for solving one of our community’s most challenging yet important tasks: the re-architecting tomorrow’s Internet for “survivability”, ensuring that the network is able to fulfill its mission even in the presence of large-scale catastrophic events.

NSF

Organizers

Co-organizers


November 28, 2023
08:00 AM-09:00 AM Breakfast
09:00 AM-09:15 AM Opening & organization
Fabián E. Bustamante and Walter Willinger
09:15 AM-10:30 AM Reconsidering Internet Architecture
Speaker: John Doyle
Discussants: Ramesh Govindan, Fernando Paganini, Lixia Zhang
10:30 AM-11:00 AM Break
11:00 AM-11:45 AM Overview talk: Threats to Internet Survivability
Speaker: Stefan Savage
11:45 AM-12:30 AM Overview talk: Powergrid and Internet
Speaker: Dominic Gross, Steven Low, Lang Tong
12:30 AM-02:00 PM Lunch
02:00 PM-02:45 PM Overview talk: Control and Learning
Speaker: James Anderson
02:45 PM-03:30 PM Overview talk: Resilience Engineering
Speaker: David Alderson, John Allspaw, and David Woods
03:30 PM-04:00 PM Break
04:00 PM-05:00 PM Overview talk: Public & Private Sector Perspective
Speaker: Henning Schulzrinne and Marwan Fayed
05:00 PM-05:30 PM Wrap-up
06:30 PM-09:00 PM Dinner
November 29, 2023
08:00 AM-09:00 AM Breakfast
09:00 AM-10:15 AM Session on Threats to Internet Survivability
Organizer: Stefan Savage
Presenters/Discussants include: Zakir Durumeric, Stefan Savage, Aaron Schulman
10:15 AM-11:30 AM Session on Control and Learning
Presenter: Nik Matni
11:45 AM-01:00 PM Session on Resilience Engineering
Organizer: David Alderson
Presenters/Discussants: John Allspaw, Lorin Hochstein, Zoran Perkov, David Woods
01:00 PM-02:00 PM Lunch
02:00 PM-03:15 PM Session on Powergrid and Internet
Organizer: Steven Low
Presenters/Discussants: Dominic Gross, Fernando Paganini, Joshua Taylor, Lang Tong, Le Xie
03:15 PM-04:30 PM Session on Public & Private Sector Perspective
Organizers: Henning Schulzrinne and Marwan Fayed
Presenters/Discussants include: Doug Montgomery, David Forscey, Yih-Chun Hu
04:30 PM-05:00 PM Wrap-up and next steps

Venue

The workshop will be held at the Orrington Hotel.
The hotel is located at 1710 Orrington Ave, Evanston, Illinois.

Hotel Information

We have a block of reserved rooms at the Orrington Hotel at a rate of $129 per night. The block will remain open until November 10th. Please use the following link to place your reservation at the
Hotel reservation.

Getting to Evanston

Getting to Evanston

If you are booking your flight and would like to be reimbursed, please make sure to travel by US-Flag Air carriers, if available.

Workshop Reimbursement Form

Please fill in the following form for reimbursement.

Confirmed Participants (as of 11/21/23)

Name Affiliation
Dave Alderson Naval Postgraduate School
John Allspaw Adaptive Capacity Labs
Luis Amaral Northwestern U.
James Anderson Columbia U.
Todd Arnold West Point
Paul Barford U. Wisconsin-Madison
Pete Beckman Argonne National Labs/Northwestern U.
Zachary Bischof Georgia Tech
Fabián E. Bustamante Northwestern U.
Alberto Dainotti Georgia Tech
John Doyle Cal Tech
Zakir Durumeric Stanford U.
Marwan Fayed Cloudlfare
David Forscey Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative
Ramesh Govindan University of Souther California
Dominic Gross U. of Wisconsin-Madison
Lorin Hochstein Coupang
Yih-Chun Hu UIUC
Igor Kadota Northwestern U.
Steven Low Cal Tech
Z. Morley Mao U. of Michigan
Nikolai Matni U. of Pennsylvania
Deepankar Medhi NSF
Douglas Montgomery NIST
Fernando Paganini Universidad ORT Uruguay
Zoran Perkov Super Stealth Startup Inc.
Ahmed Saeed Georgia Tech
Stefan Savage UCSD
Aaron Schulman UCSD
Henning Schulzrinne Columbia U.
Yixin Sun U. of Virginia
Joshua Taylor U. of Toronoto
Cecilia Testart Georgia Tech
Lang Tong Cornell U.
Ermin Wei Northwestern U.
Walter Willinger NIKSUN
David Woods Ohio State U.
Le Xie Texas A&M University
Lixia Zhang UCLA

Workshop Proposal

Pre-workshop Perspectives

Resilience Engineering — Additional Material

Workshop presentations

Overviews

Session on Control and Learning

  • Nik Matni

Session on Resilience Engineering

Session on Powergrid and Internet

Session on Public & Private Sector Perspective