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

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.

Organizers

Co-organizers

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)

Workshop Proposal

Pre-workshop Perspectives

Resilience Engineering — Additional Material

Workshop presentations

Overviews

Session on Control and Learning

Session on Resilience Engineering

Session on Powergrid and Internet

Session on Public & Private Sector Perspective