About the talk:
 

Wireless data networking technology is ideal for residential use because it is inexpensive and easy to install (no wiring). As a result, we have seen a sharp increase in wireless communication in residential settings. In the first part of the talk, I will focus on the privacy and interference problems created by this deployment trend. As we grow more reliant on these wireless devices and use them in more settings, the fact that they leak a variety of identifying user information and fail to provide robust connectivity when expected will become more troublesome. I will describe both our work on quantifying the privacy leaks and interference problems and our initial work on improving wireless protocol designs to address this issue. In the second half of the talk, I will focus on the opportunity to create cooperative neighborhood networks using existing wireless network deployments. In current residential neighborhoods, the wireless bandwidth between homes far exceeds each home's ability to transfer data to the Internet. I will describe some of the interesting alternatives for delivering data to the typical user that this bandwidth gap enables.

 

About the speaker:
 

Srinivasan Seshan is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He held the Finmeccanica chair at Carnegie Mellon from 2004 to 2006. Dr. Seshan received his Ph.D. in 1995 from the Computer Science Department at University of California, Berkeley. From 1995 to 2000, Dr. Seshan was a research staff member at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center. Dr. Seshan's primary interests are in the broad areas of network protocols and distributed network applications. In the past, he has worked on topics such as transport/routing protocols for wireless networks, fast protocol stack implementations, performance prediction for Internet transfers, ISP multihoming, new approaches to congestion control, large-scale multiplayer games, and large-scale sensor networks. His current work explores the challenges and opportunities created by chaotic wireless network deployments.