SIGCOMM Workshop on Network Troubleshooting

Wed Feb 25 04:29:31 UTC 2004

(Recent messages on the list suggest this announcement to be quite timely)

We hope that this workshop will be of interest to NANOG members and that 
many of you will participate and/or submit material to it.

Jon Bennett and Mark Allman   ( trouble04-chairs at icir.org )

http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm2004/netts.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To be held in conjunction with SIGCOMM '04

Network Troubleshooting:
  Research Theory and Operations Practice Meet Malfunctioning Reality

Call For Papers

Network monitoring and measurement has received a great deal of attention 
in the research community recently.  While some research to-date has been 
focused on finding problems, failures and anomalies in networks this 
workshop endeavors to focus specifically on such topics.  The workshop 
seeks papers exploring several themes:

DETECTION: Mechanisms and techniques for detecting failures, imminent 
failures and other anomalies in real time.  The focus of this workshop is 
research that can be used operationally to help the network in the 
short-term.  Techniques that require heavyweight off-line analysis to find 
problems provide the community with an understanding of and an insight into 
the dynamics and potential long-term solutions for network issues, but are 
not the main focus of this workshop.

CORRECTION: While detecting problems (or imminent problems) and alerting 
network operators is a good first step, techniques for automatically 
mitigating problems as they occur are also sought.

COORDINATION: Detecting and solving problems in a multi-provider 
environment inevitably involves communicating between distinct autonomous 
entities.  Mechanisms and facilities to streamline and automate such 
communication are sought.

EXPERIENCE: Insight from network operators into network problems they 
cannot easily detect (or, detect far too late) and tools that would make 
network management much easier.  Input from network operators on 
non-obvious or non-technical considerations which impact technical 
solutions are also sought.

This workshop invites two kinds of submissions:

Original papers on any area of network measurement, monitoring or 
management specifically directed towards one or more of the above themes.

Poster presentation proposals.  While posters on any of the above themes 
will be accepted, posters on operational experience are highly sought.

Note: For this workshop, "networks" includes both physical networks and 
virtual networks (CDNs, overlays, etc.).

Some of the specific problems of interest, include:
Protocol failures - link, routing, management
Detecting mis-configuration of network elements
Partial hardware failures - intermittent, unreported
Traffic engineering for overload control
Security - DDoS attacks, detecting compromised network elements, intrusion 
detection (especially for non-edge networks since a large body of work 
already tackles the problems at the network edge)

Submissions:

Submissions ranging from presentations of specific research to position 
papers are welcome. Papers presenting interesting and novel ideas at an 
early stage of development are preferred over completed journal-style 
results. Selected papers will be forward-looking, with impact and 
implications for both operational networks and ongoing or future research.

Original papers should be 3-6 standard SIGCOMM formatted pages (with the 
expectation that position papers will be shorter and research papers longer).

Poster proposals should be sent in the form of 1-page abstracts.

The submission process and specific guidelines will be posted at a later date.

Important Dates:

Submission registration: April 8, 2004
Submission deadline: April 15, 2004
Notification deadline: May 15, 2004
Camera ready deadline: June 15, 2004

Workshop Co-Chairs (trouble04-chairs at icir.org)

      Jon C.R. Bennett, Harvard University
      Mark Allman, ICIR

Program Committee:

      TBD 