Computer Science Department

Computer Science Department

Modeling, Online Performance Monitoring, and Accelerated Evaluation of Network Services
Michael Devetsikiotis
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
NC State University, Raleigh, North Carolina

Wed, March 27, 12 Noon, McGl 020

Abstract
Modeling and adaptation of resources based on state and workload (current or predicted) is highly desirable in emerging high-performance computing and information service systems, on the path towards completely "autonomic" services. In this seminar, we provide an overview of our efforts at NC State, in collaboration with IBM and Tekelec, to develop frameworks and algorithms for modeling of emerging network-based services, predictive and dynamic resource allocation, adaptive scheduling, on line performance monitoring and accelerated estimation.

We describe techniques in a "smart" control framework that includes quality of service and economic considerations. We present an overview of adaptive scheduling approaches that we have used for profit or utility-oriented scheduling in service access nodes. We are currently working to apply similar techniques to Web services, network appliances and multimedia services (e.g., SIP).

The ability to diagnose important events and dynamically adapt to transient conditions is essential to meet the end-user demands of an autonomic information system. On-line performance monitoring and sampling techniques, which analyze the state of the system while imposing a minimal footprint on available resources, are essential for on-line control algorithms in information and software systems.

Finally, we discuss related modeling and simulation techniques, including meta-modeling and fast simulation techniques based on Importance Sampling for accelerated estimation of extremely low probabilities in highly available services.

Biography
Michael Devetsikiotis (IEEE S 1985, M 1994, SM 2003) was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. He received the Dipl.Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1988, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1990 and 1993, respectively. As a student he received scholarships from the National Scholarship Foundation of Greece, the National Technical Chamber of Greece, and the Phi Kappa Phi Academic Achievement Award for a Doctoral Candidate at North Carolina State University. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of the honor societies of Eta Kappa Nu, Sigma Xi, and Phi Kappa Phi. In October 1993 he joined the Broadband Networks Laboratory at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research Associate. Michael later became an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University in April 1995, an Assistant Professor in July 1996 and an Associate Professor in July 1999. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State as an Associate Professor, in October 2000, and became a Professor in July 2006. He remains an Adjunct Research Professor in the SCE Department, Carleton University. He is also an active member of the Operations Research faculty, and an associate member of the faculty of Computer Science at NC State. Michael recently finished his stint as Chairman of the IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on Communication Systems Integration and Modeling. He has served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Communications Letters, an Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation and a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Simulation and Process Modeling and the new Journal of Internet Engineering. He has co-chaired the Next Generation Internet symposium under IEEE ICC 2002 in New York, the High-Speed Networks symposium under IEEE ICC 2004 in Paris, the Quality, Reliability and Performance Modeling symposium under IEEE ICC 2006 in Istanbul, and the Quality, Reliability and Performance for Emerging Network Services symposium under IEEE Globecom 2006 in San Francisco.