Networking a dependable cyberinfrastructure

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The daily life of ordinary people, ranging from banking to shopping and from learning to entertaining, is increasingly dependent on the Internet-centric cyberinfrastructure. In the last decade, a vast amount of research and investment has been devoted to improving the performance and reliability of the Internet, primarily in its backbone. However, there are still many obstacles left in providing such reliability in access networks and among Internet Service Providers. Denial-of-Service attacks, email spams and web scams have caught many Internet users, both consumers and businesses, off-guard. The control-plane vulnerabilities in Domain Name System (DNS), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and Session Initiation Protocol are even more alarming. Existing schemes such as DNS Security and Secure BGP have high complexity and are rarely deployed. For such a complex system as the Internet, it is very surprising to find that there are no systematic and online testing capabilities embedded. In summary, the Internet is still much less dependable than what it should be and most people have taken for granted. Our research program on a dependable cyberinfrastructure focuses on the fundamental networking issues in order to considerably improve the end-to-end reliability, security and testability of the Internet and its accessories. The research explores three highly correlated topics: (1) We want to leverage the reliability at the core Internet with that of wireless personal, local, metropolitan and even wide area networks in ad hoc or hybrid mode. (2) We want to enhance the control plane security for the Internet, particularly in its naming, routing and signaling infrastructures. (3) We want to embed the systematic and online testability into the cyberinfrastructure, rather than being another add-on. The research is also expected to produce highly qualified personnel for academia and industry with growing demands for such talent to meet this grand challenge during the next major transformation of the Internet.