Talk#1: The Internet topology: Inference, Evolution and Dynamics

Abstract: Accurate measurement, inference and modelling techniques are fundamental to research on the characteristics of the Internet topology. Spatial analysis of the Internet is needed to develop network planning, optimal routing techniques and failure detection measures.

Motivated by the desire to generate topologies which take into account the dynamic failure and growth of the Internet nodes and links, we identify the need for high quality, multi-scale, end-to-end network topology
generators. After examining a number of commonly used generators and comparing their output with data sources available at wide area (AS level), ISP (IP routing level) and enterprise networks, we are developing a mechanism for synthetically generating topologies which are able to represent networks across multiple scales.

About the invited speaker: Hamed has worked on network sampling and measurement, network topology. http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~hamed/

Talk#2: Social-based Forwarding in Delay-Tolerant Networks

Abstract: In this talk we seek to improve our understanding of human social context and use it in the design of forwarding algorithms for Pocket Switched Networks (PSN). From human mobility traces taken from the real world, we discover the heterogeneity of human interaction, including communities and hubs. Society naturally divides into communities, and individuals have varying popularity. We propose a social based forwarding algorithm, BUBBLE, which is shown empirically to improve the forwarding efficiency significantly.

We apply centralised community detection algorithms from complex network studies to human mobility studies, which opens a new aspect in human mobility traces analysis. We also introduce novel decentralised community detection methods that enable this algorithm to be used practically in online applications.

About the invited speaker: Ben has worked extensively on EU-funded Haggle project concerning opportunistic/delay tolerant networking, including social networking and wireless ad hoc networking. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~ph315/