Moving Network Flows without Congestion: Different Models, Different
Complexities
Wednesday June 1, 2016, 11am
Computer Science 302

While the optimal utilization of networks with (multi-commodity) flows
is a well-studied research area, the consistent migration of flows is
still a relatively young field: If the demands in a network change,
how can we satisfy these new demands without losing packets or
rate-limiting flows in the process? Central control, as offered by
Software Defined Networking, cannot change the network behavior
instantaneously. E.g., due to asynchrony, links can be over-utilized
in the migration, leading to (temporary) congestion.

In this talk, we are going to look at consistent flow migration for
different models, ranging from single-destination flows with weak
consistency requirements and arbitrary flow paths, to multi-commodity
flows along fixed new paths with truly lossless migration. (Joint
ongoing work with Sebastian Brandt, Laurent Vanbever, and Roger
Wattenhofer)

Klaus-Tycho Foerster is a PhD candidate in the Computer Engineering
and Networks Laboratory at ETH Zurich, advised by Roger Wattenhofer.
Prior to joining ETH as a research assistant, he earned his master
degrees in mathematics and computer science, both at the Braunschweig
University of Technology. Klaus' research focus lies in distributed
computing, graph algorithms, and Software Defined Networking: Funded
by Microsoft Research, he is studying the complexity of consistent
updates in SDNs.