Toronto Networking Seminar

Organized by Department of Computer Science and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto



Distributed Search Revisited: Resolving the conflict of Flexibility and Efficiency


Raouf Boutaba
School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo

Date:  Friday, October  3,  2pm
Location: BA 1210 

Abstract:

Peer-to-peer technology has impacted a wide range of distributed systems beyond simple file- sharing. Distributed XML databases, Distributed computing, server- less web publishing and networked resource/service sharing are only a few to name. Despite the diversity in applications, these systems share a common problem regarding searching and discovery of information. This commonality stems from transitory peer population and volatile peer content. As an effect users do not have the exact information about what they are looking for. Rather queries are based on partial information, which requires the search mechanism to be flexible. On the other hand to scale with network size the search mechanism is also required to be bandwidth efficient. Since the advent of P2P technology experts from industry and academia have proposed a number of search techniques - none of which is able to provide satisfactory solution to the conflicting requirements of search efficiency and flexibility. Structured search techniques, mostly DHT- based, are bandwidth efficient while semi(un)- structured techniques are flexible. But, neither achieves both ends.

This talk will introduce a generic framework called Distributed Pattern Matching to address the search problem in distributed environments while achieving both search flexibility and efficiency.

This is joint work with Reaz Ahmed.


Bio:

Raouf Boutaba is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo and a David R. Cheriton faculty fellow. He is currently a distinguished speaker of the IEEE Communications Society and served in the past as a distinguished speaker of the IEEE Computer Society. He is the Chairman of the IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on Information Infrastructure, the Technical Committee on Autonomic Communications, and the Director of the Communications Society Conference Publications Board. He is the founder and Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management and serves on editorial boards of other journals. His research interests include resource, network and service management. He has published more than 300 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings and received several journal and conference Best Paper Awards such as the 2008 Fred W. Ellersick Prize Paper Award as well as other recognitions such as the Premier's Research Excellence Award, two industry research excellence Awards, a fellowship of the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, and the IEEE Communications Society Hal Sobol Award.

Host of the talk

Shahrokh Valaee (valaee@comm.utoronto.ca)