High-Performance Modeling and Simulation of Computer Networks

Abstract:

Modeling and simulation (M&S) plays an important role in the design analysis and performance evaluation of complex systems. Many of these systems, such as computer networks, involve a large number of interrelated components and processes. Complex behaviors emerge as these components and processes inter-operate across multiple scales at various granularities. M&S must be able to provide sufficiently accurate results while coping with the scale and complexity.

My talk will focus on two novel techniques in high-performance network modeling and simulation. The first is a GPU-assisted hybrid network traffic modeling method. The hybrid approach offloads the computationally intensive bulk traffic calculations to the background onto GPU, while leaving detailed simulation of network transactions in the foreground on CPU. Our experiments show that the CPU-GPU hybrid approach can achieve significant performance improvement over the CPU-only approach.

The second technique is a distributed network emulation method based on simulation symbiosis. Mininet is a container-based emulation environment that can study networks consisted of virtual hosts and OpenFlow-enabled virtual switches on Linux. It is well-known, however, that experiments using Mininet may lose fidelity for large-scale networks and heavy traffic load. The proposed symbiotic approach uses an abstract network model to coordinate distributed Mininet instances with superimposed traffic to represent large-scale network scenarios.

Short Bio:

Dr. Jason Liu is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University (FIU). He received a B.A. degree from Beijing University of Technology in China in 1993, an M.S. degree from College of William and Mary in 2000, and a Ph.D. degree in from Dartmouth College in 2003. He was also a postdoctoral researcher at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2003-2004 and also an Assistant Professor at Colorado School of Mines during 2004-2007. His research focuses on parallel simulation and performance modeling of computer systems and communication networks.  He served both as General Chair and Program Chair for several conferences, and  is currently on the steering committee of SIGSIM-PADS, and on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS) and SIMULATION, Simulation Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International.  He is an NSF CAREER awardee (2006) and an ACM Distinguished Scientist (2014). His research has been funded by various US federal agencies, including NSF, DOE, DOD, and DHS.