Research

Research Interests:

  • Management and economics of virtualized distributed systems
  • Transport and routing protocols for the Internet and wireless networks
  • Feedback-based control design and analysis
  • Architectures for protocol design and large-scale traffic management
  • Modeling and performance evaluation.

Current and recent projects involve application management over edge-cloud cyberinfrastructures (see the HEECMA website), clean-slate network architectures (see the RINA website), reliable petabyte-scale file transfer (see the MLED website),  virtual network embedding, configurable protocol design, stability and compositional analysis, data management, and green networking.

Profiles on Google Scholar, DBLP, Mendeley, and ResearchGate.

ORCID id: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4528-0344 

Selected Recent Publications: 

(More are listed here.)

[Distributed Learning]

Zongshun Zhang, Andrea Pinto, Valeria Turina, Favio Esposito, and Ibrahim Matta. Privacy and Efficiency of Communications in Federated Split Learning. arXiv January 2023. https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.01824v2. Accepted May 15, 2023 in IEEE Transactions on Big Data.

Valeria Turina, Zongshun Zhang, Flavio Esposito, and Ibrahim Matta. Federated or Split? A Performance and Privacy Analysis of Hybrid Split and Federated Learning Architectures. In IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD), September 2021. [PDF]

Valeria Turina, Zongshun Zhang, Flavio Esposito, and Ibrahim Matta. Poster: Combining Split and Federated Architectures for Efficiency and Privacy in Deep Learning. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT 2020), Barcelona, Spain, December 2020. [PDF]

[Configuring & Placing Serverless Functions]

Mina Morcos and Ibrahim Matta. A Throughput Optimizing Scheduler for Multi-Cloud Serverless Computing. In Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (CloudCom), Napoli, Italy, December 2023.

Nabeel Akhtar, Ali Raza, Vatche Ishakian, and Ibrahim Matta. COSE: Configuring Serverless Functions using Statistical Learning. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Beijing, China, April 2020. [Link] Extended journal paper accepted in IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, February 2023. [TNSM]

Ali Raza, Zongshun Zhang, Nabeel Akhtar, Vatche Ishakian, and Ibrahim Matta. LIBRA: An Economical Hybrid Approach for Cloud Applications with Strict SLAs. In Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E), October 2021. [PDF] Best Paper Award.

Ali Raza, Ibrahim Matta, Nabeel Akhtar, Vasiliki Kalavri, and Vatche Isahagian. Function-as-a-Service: From an Application Developer’s Perspective. Journal of Systems Research (JSYS), Accepted August 2021. [PDF] [JSys]

[Management & Economics of Layered Services]

Maryam Ghasemi, Ibrahim Matta, and Flavio Esposito. The Effect of (Non-)Competing Brokers on the Quality and Price of Differentiated Internet Services. Computer Networks, June 2019. [Link]

[Joint Computation Placement & Traffic Steering]

Nabeel Akhtar, Ibrahim Matta, Ali Raza, Leonardo Goratti, Torsten Braun, and Flavio Esposito. Virtual Function Placement and Traffic Steering over 5G Multi-Technology Networks. The 4th IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft), June 2018. [PDF] An extended version will appear in the IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management in 2021. [Link]

[Autonomic Communications]

Zhongliang Zhao, Eryk Schiller, Eirini Kalogeiton, Torsten Braun, Burkhard Stiller, Mevlut Turker Garip, Joshua Joy, Mario Gerla, Nabeel Akhtar, and Ibrahim Matta. Autonomic Communications in Software-driven Networks. IEEE JSAC special issue on Emerging Technologies in Software-driven Communication, 35(11):2431–2445, November 2017. [PDF]

[Transport Network Design & Management]

Arash Sarabi, Ibrahim Matta, and Violet Syrotiuk. MLED: A Layered Architecture for Reducing Undetected Error Probability in File Transfer. IEEE Communications Letters, Accepted August 2021. [PDF]

Yuefeng Wang and Ibrahim Matta. Multi-Layer Virtual Transport Network Management. Journal of Computer Communications, August 2018. [Link]

Yuefeng Wang and Ibrahim Matta. Multi-Layer Virtual Transport Network Design. Journal of Network and Systems Management, pages 1–35, November 2017. [PDF]

[Virtual Network Embedding]

Flavio Esposito, Donato Di Paola, and Ibrahim Matta. A General Distributed Approach to Slice Embedding with Guarantees. In Proceedings of IFIP Networking, Brooklyn, New York, May 2013. [PDF] A survey paper on the subject was published in ACM Computing Surveys [PDF]. A journal version (accepted November 2014) will appear in the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking [PDF]. A policy-based architecture for virtual network embedding will appear in the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (accepted January 2016) [PDF].

[Principled Protocol Design]

John Day, Ibrahim Matta, and Karim Mattar. “Networking is IPC”: A Guiding Principle to a Better Internet. In Proceedings of ReArch’08 – Re-Architecting the Internet, Madrid, SPAIN, December 2008. Co-located with ACM CoNEXT 2008. [PDF] Follow-up work can be found on the RINA website. A recent white paper titled “Toward a Dynamic, Recursive SDN/SDX” was presented at the 2016 NSF workshop on SDI/SDX.

[Green Network Design]

Luca Chiaraviglio, and Ibrahim Matta. GreenCoop: Cooperative Green Routing with Energy-efficient Servers. In the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Energy-Efficient Computing and Networking, University of Passau, Germany, April 2010. [PDF] Follow-up work appears in Technical Report BUCS-2010-008: “A Green Distributed Cooperation for Network and Content Management,” March 31, 2010. [long version: PDF] [shorter slightly revised version: PDF, just accepted to IEEE INFOCOM 2011 Green Communications and Networking Workshop]. BU-CS is a collaborating institution of the EU TREND project of the Network of Excellence on Energy Efficient Networking.

[Energy-aware Transport]

Niky Riga, Ibrahim Matta, Alberto Medina, Craig Partridge, and Jason Redi. JTP: An Energy-conscious Transport Protocol for Multi-hop Wireless Networks. In Proceedings of  CoNEXT Conference, New York, NY, December 2007. [PDF] [Patent Application] Patent awarded 4/12/2011.

[Mobile Data Management]

Hany Morcos, George Atia, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. An Information Theoretic Framework for Field Monitoring Using Autonomously Mobile Sensors. Ad Hoc Networks: Special Issue on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems, 2010. [PDF] See also our Med-Hoc-Net 2010 paper [PDF] (Best Paper Award), our DCOSS 2008 paper [PDF] (Best Paper Award, Applications Track), and our SECON 2008 paper [PDF].

[Safe Policy Routing]

Sam Epstein, Karim Mattar, and Ibrahim Matta. Principles of Safe Policy Routing Dynamics. In Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP’09), Princeton, NJ, October 2009. [PDF] Extended version appears in Technical Report BUCS-2009-013 with the same title, April 21, 2009. [PDF]

[Resilient Protocol Design]

Mina Guirguis, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. Exploiting the Transients of Adaptation for RoQ Attacks on Internet Resources. In Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP’04), Berlin, Germany, October 2004. [PDF] Follow-up work can be found on the RoQ website.

[Resilient Distributed Caching]

Nikolaos Laoutaris, Georgios Smaragdakis, Azer Bestavros, Ibrahim Matta, and Ioannis Stavrakakis. Distributed Selfish Caching. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 18(10), October 2007. [PDF] See project page.

[Safe Network Service Composition]

Azer Bestavros, Adam Bradley, Assaf Kfoury, and Ibrahim Matta. Typed Abstraction of Complex Network Compositions. In Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP’05), Boston, MA, November 2005. [PDF] See project page.

[Friendly High-speed Transport]

Shudong Jin, Liang Guo, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. A Spectrum of TCP-friendly Window-based Congestion Control Algorithms. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 11(3), June 2003. [PDF] See project page.

[Friendly Adaptive Virtualization]

Yuting Zhang, Azer Bestavros, Mina Guirguis, Ibrahim Matta, and Richard West. Friendly Virtual Machines: Leveraging a Feedback-Control Model for Application Adaptation. In Proceedings of the 2005 ACM/USENIX Conference on Virtual Execution Environments, Chicago, Illinois, June 2005. [PDF]

[Cross-layer Measurement]

Karim Mattar, Ashwin Sridharan, Hui Zang, Ibrahim Matta, and Azer Bestavros. TCP over CDMA2000 Networks: A Cross-Layer Measurement Study. In Proceedings of the 8th Passive and Active Measurement Conference (PAM), Louvain-la-neuve, Belgium, 2007. [PDF]

more >>

Selected Older Publications:

Liang Guo and Ibrahim Matta. The War between Mice and Elephants. In Proceedings of ICNP’2001: The 9th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, Riverside, CA, November 2001.

Alberto Medina, Anukool Lakhina, Ibrahim Matta, and John Byers. BRITE: An Approach to Universal Topology Generation. In Proceedings of MASCOTS ’01: The International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, Cincinnati, Ohio, August 2001.

Liang Guo, Mark Crovella, and Ibrahim Matta. How does TCP Generate Pseudo-Self-Similarity?. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunications Systems – MASCOTS ’01, Cincinnati, Ohio, August 2001.

Selma Yilmaz and Ibrahim Matta. On Class-Based Isolation of UDP, Short-Lived and Long-Lived TCP Flows. In Proceedings of MASCOTS ’01: The International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, Cincinnati, Ohio, August 2001.

Ibrahim Matta and Liang Guo. Differentiated Predictive Fair Service for TCP Flows. In Proceedings of ICNP’2000: The 8th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, Osaka, Japan, October 2000.

Ibrahim Matta and Liang Guo. QDMR: An Efficient QoS Dependent Multicast Routing Algorithm. Journal of Communications and Networks – Special Issue on QoS in IP Networks, 2(2):168-176, June 2000.

Jaehee Yoon, Azer Bestavros, and Ibrahim Matta. SomeCast: A Paradigm for Real-Time Adaptive Reliable Multicast. In Proceedings of RTAS’2000: The IEEE Real-Time Technology and Applications Symposium, Washington, DC, May 2000.

Alberto Medina, Ibrahim Matta, and John Byers. On the Origin of Power Laws in Internet Topologies. ACM Computer Communication Review, 30(2), April 2000.

Karu Ratnam, Ibrahim Matta, and Sampath Rangarajan. Analysis of Caching-based Location Management in Personal Communication Networks. In Proceedings of ICNP ’99: The 7th International Conference on Network Protocols, Toronto, Canada, November 1999.

Ibrahim Matta and Azer Bestavros. A Load Profiling Approach to Routing Guaranteed Bandwidth Flows. In Proceedings of Infocom’98: The IEEE International Conference on Computer Communication, San Francisco, CA, April 1998.

Ibrahim Matta and A. Udaya Shankar. Fast Time-Dependent Evaluation of Integrated Services Networks. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems – Special Issue on Modeling of Wired and Wireless ATM, 29(17-18):1999-2020, February 1998.

Cengiz Alaettinoglu, Ibrahim Matta, and A. Udaya Shankar. A Scalable Virtual Circuit Routing Scheme for ATM Networks. In Proceedings of ICCCN ’95: The International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks, pages 630-637, Las Vegas, Nevada, September 1995.

Ibrahim Matta and A. Udaya Shankar. Z-Iteration: A Simple Method for Throughput Estimation in Time-Dependent Multi-Class Systems. In Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS / PERFORMANCE ’95, pages 126-135, Ottawa, Canada, May 1995.

Ibrahim Matta and A. Udaya Shankar. Type-of-Service Routing in Datagram Delivery Systems. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications — Special Issue on the Internet, 13(8):1411-1425, October 1995.

A. Udaya Shankar, Cengiz Alaettinoglu, Klaudia Dussa-Zieger, and Ibrahim Matta. Transient and Steady-State Performance of Routing Protocols: Distance-Vector versus Link-State. Journal of Internetworking: Research and Experience, 6:59-87, 1995.