Large-scale Federated Presence : Salability,
Virtual Presence and application-enablement. [Dec 2007 - ]
Presence today is mostly expressed as online status.
However, presence can convey a much richer spectrum of event notification
/ subscription, ranging from locating tracking to finding available
experts in real-time. Both services providers (e.g. device status,
subscriber location) and enterprises (e.g. free/busy, expertise, availability)
are rich sources of presence : this project will develop solutions
for federating presence across enterprise and service providers in
a secure, scalable way and explore different offering models for a
federated presence service (e.g. hosted offering, presence peering
with enterprise).
Three key aspects: How do we scale such federated presence
systems? How do we provide a model for meaningful aggregation/integration
of information from multiple presence systems? And finally, how do
we exploit presence using such a federated, scalable system to provide
a better interaction between applications and their users across domains?
First-of-a-kind projects typically work with a customer
to shape and define the project goals - if
you a carrier, web-based IM/Presence provider and/or large enterprise,
please contact me if you are interested. 1-Page
Description
This project has support from multiple product divisions
- Global Technology Services, Software group (Datapower, Presence
Server), Server group (Bladecenter Telco) and Internet Security Systems
and is a six-person research effort between Watson and IBM India Research
Labs starting Dec1.
Server
enhancements [2005 - 2006]
We studied scalability of Session Border Controllers and then developed
an algorithm and Linux in-kernel implementation of a programmable
message classification engine for SIP.
The classifier can be programmed with appropriate rules for specific
scenarios, such as overload control, server management or preventing
Denial-of-Service attacks.
Our prototype has been incorporated within DataPower, and we are
working with Prof Wenke Lee
of GTISC on detection /
prevention schemes for SIP/VoIP Security threats.
Primary Collaborators : Charles Wright, Xiping Wang.
Papers:
Real-time monitoring of SIP infrastructure
using Message Classification. ACM Workshop on Mining Network
Data (Mine-Net), 2007. [Paper]
A programmable message classification engine
for SIP. IBM Research Report RC24022.
Patents:
Differentiated Handling Of SIP Messages For VoIP Call Control.
China Patent ZL 200410092916.0. Issued Oct '06.
A Method and Apparatus for Fast Classification of SIP Messages.
Filed Aug '06.
A Method for monitoring SIP Call-flows by Tracking Message Transformation.
Filed Jun '07.
Dynamic State Management Algorithm for
SIP servers [2006 - ]
A SIP proxy such as OpenSER executes a number of functions while
processing a SIP request. It can handle a SIP request in either a
transaction stateful or stateless fashion - statefulness is required
for certain proxy functions such as forking or request retransmission.
However, statefulness reduces request handling thruput. We devised
a distributed algorithm whereby each proxy optimizes the ratio of
stateful-to-stateless calls it handles and we observe that this also
leads to higher scalability of the overall system compared to a-priori
requiring a proxy to be stateful or stateless.
We believe the importance of SIP goes beyond just setting up communications
- it represents a structured control mechanism for overlay networks.
SIP proxies essentially form a control plane overlay for the Internet.
We believe studying properties of this control overlay will provide
valuable insights for how to scale this control plane using an algorithmic
approach.
Paper :
SERvartuka : Enhancing SIP Server Scalability with Dynamic State
Management. [ Paper ]. Patent Filed
April '07.
This is ongoing joint work with Vijay Balasubramaniyan (PhD student,
Georgia Tech) and his advisor Prof Mustaque Ahamad. Vijay has been
a summer intern at IBM TJ Watson for the past two summers, and this
work is part of his PhD thesis.
Application
enablement with VoIP
This project kicked off research in SIP in Watson - our goal was
to show that the value of converged communications lies in applications
and composition of services, rather than VoIP or IM or Presence in
isolation. We developed architecture and prototypes of click-to-call,
VoIP-enabled multi-player gaming and voice-enabled community web-browsing,
for instance.
Representative Publications
SPLAT: A unified SIP services platform for
VoIP applications. International
Journal of Communications Systems, Special Issue on VoIP - Theory
and Practice, Vol 19, Issue 4, 2006. [Paper]
Multiplayer Network Gaming with the Session
Initiation Protocol. Computer
Networks, Vol 49, Issue 1, Sept 2005 (Special Issue on Networking
Issues in Entertainment Computing), Sept 2005 [Paper]
Patents Filed :
SIP based VoIP Multiplayer Network Games. Filed Feb '04.
Enabling collaborative applications with SIP-based VoIP. Filed
Oct '03.
System And Apparatus For Geographically Distributed VoIP Conference
Service With Enhanced QoS. Filed Oct '03.
Method and system for achieving synchronous communication
responsive to dynamic status. Filed Jan '04.
Summer students who worked on this project: Aameek
Singh, Georgia Tech (now with IBM Research, Almaden), Priya
Mahadevan, USCD.
IM and VoIP without preexisting infrastructure
This work was done as part of ORBIT,
a NSF funded project for next generation wireless networks and applications.
On behalf of IBM Research, I proposed investigating how SIP-based
VoIP / IM / Presence would work in the absence of pre-existing proxies,
such as would be the case for first-responder situations or in ad-hoc
wireless networks. An additional goal of our work was to couple the
application-layer routing and forwarding of SIP control messages and
VoIP packets with multiple-hop wireless media access (leveraging our
work on wireless mesh networks) .
We also looked at related issues of handoff in dual-model devices,
such as dual-mode cellphones.
This is joint work primarily with Nilanjan Banerjee, now working
at IBM India Research Lab.
Publications:
Enabling SIP-based Session Setup in Ad Hoc
Networks. N. Banerjee, A. Acharya, S. Das. ACM/Baltzer Journal
of Wireless Networks (WINET), special
issue on Broadband Wireless Multimedia. June 2006.
Corporate
Task Force participation : I have provided subject-matter expertise
on SIP and SIP-based services in key corporate-level studies in the
past years that have helped define IBM's strategy for SIP.
- Research representative to SIP Technology Team study, Feb - April
2004. Findings and recommendations presented to Nick Donofrio, Senior
VP, IBM.
- Task force on "Live Communication, Collaboration and Control
(LC3) - made possible by SIP and SIMPLE" , sponsored by Corporate
Strategy Office. Findings presented to Bruce Harreld, Senior VP (Sept
2003).
- SIP Technology Team study on VoIP : Findings presented to Nick Donofrio
(Sept 2002)
- IBM Academy Study on Infrastructureless Computing [2006]
Consulting Engagements: I lead the
Advanced
Networking Services micropractice within On-Demand Innovation Services
(ODIS),
which is an effort to directly apply research expertise to difficult
customer engagements. Some engagements where I provided subject matter
expertise:
- Low-cost nurse's call-station - Helped Global Engineering
Services to win a contract from one of the largest hospital equipment
supplies to develop a lost-cost nurse's call station. [ Apr 2007]
- Infrastructure Scalability assessment for a top cable network
in the US to support growth of their VoIP customer base from 30,000
to 8 million within 5 years. Joint work with Business Consulting Services
[ July 2005 - Nov 2005]
-SIP adoption strategy for a large multinational bank based
in Canada to leverage SIP/SIMPLE beyond VoIP. Joint work with Global
Services. [Nov 2004 - June 2005].
- In-building e911 : High-level architecture of a wireless
LAN based solution for a US university, to provide room-level location
resolution for e911 calls originating within campus buildings, using
SIP/VoIP from devices such as dual-mode cell-phones and 802.11-enabled
PDAs/laptops. Joint work with Research and Global Services. [ June
- July 2004].
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