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Improving data transport over high-speed networks

Modern society is becoming increasingly dependent on high-speed communication networks for instant access to information. People now make banking transactions, monitor news and weather, play interactive games, listen to music, and watch real-time video and sports over the Internet. High-speed broadband access is required to facilitate many of the above applications. Similarly, scientific experiments have now become more dependent on high-speed networks as they move towards the paradigm of distributed computing. As an example, large data sets such as DNA information of micro-organisms may be transferred from remote data warehouses to a computation facility over a backbone grid network (lambda grid) where the data is processed, visualized, and delivered to the scientist. This dissertation investigates how emerging network technologies, namely optical broadband access networks and lambda grids, coupled with efficient protocols at the edge of the network---the end-system---may deliver such emerging applications to the respective users. 
The dissertation begins by introducing relevant and emerging high-speed network technologies, namely the Passive Optical Network (PON) and lambda grids in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, the problem of aggregating files from distributed databases at a (grid) computing node over a lambda grid is considered. The challenge is (i) to identify routes (i.e., circuits) in the lambda-grid network along which files should be transmitted and (ii) to schedule the transfers of these files over their respective circuits. 
In Chapter 3, the broadband access network is considered. We study the challenge of enabling open access in a broadband access network. Open access implies the ability of multiple service providers to share the access network infrastructure to make services available to the end users. This requires fairness in terms of throughput, delay, jitter, and other network parameters in the access channel among the sharing entities, namely service providers and end users. The idea of having two different Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) called Dual SLAs to meet the above fairness requirements is introduced and demonstrated in this chapter. 
Traditionally, the network speed has been slow compared to the processor speed and therefore the network has generally been the bottleneck for transferring data. However, high-speed networks such as lambda grids and PONs can offer line rates of several Gigabits per second. In these circumstances, the congestion moves to the edge of the network---namely the end-system. The ability of a system to receive data from the network and deliver it to the application may often be the bottleneck for seamless data transfer. Therefore, performance matching the network performance with the end-system performance is an important research challenge. 
In this context a lightweight, end-system performance aware rate-adaptive transport protocol called RAPID, is introduced in Chapter 4. RAPID attempts to maximize the end-to-end throughput while minimizing packet loss over a lambda grid. In Chapter 5, an analytical model of the end-system based on a Stochastic Reward Net (SRN) model is investigated. The objective is to estimate the optimal rate for the best data transfer. The dissertation is concluded in Chapter 6 with a discussion of important open research problems. 
This dissertation makes important contributions by introducing and investigating novel architectures, algorithms, protocols and systems knowledge that will help meet the demands of next-generation applications.