Research focus

Empirical measurements of Internet paths and systems form the foundation for understanding the performance and behavior of the current Internet, and for designing next-generation protocols, systems, and applications. The focus of my research is on the design of algorithms and techniques for accurate and robust measurement of networked systems and on designing systems and environments for performing repeatable and realistic experiments. I am also interested in using measurements for improving network performance and toward developing next-generation networked systems. My interests and research activities span the complementary areas of networking, operating systems, distributed systems, and security.

Grants and awards

  • Collaborative Research: NeTS: Medium: Large Scale Analysis of Configurations and Management Practices in the Domain Name System. National Science Foundation. October 2023-September 2026.
  • Collaborative Research: IMR: MM-1C: Methods for Active Measurement of the Domain Name System . National Science Foundation. October 2023-September 2026.
  • NeTS: Small: RUI: Automating Active Measurement Metadata Collection and Analysis. National Science Foundation, Grant CNS-1814537. October 2018–September 2022.
  • Measuring Characteristics of the Multilingual Web. Colgate University Research Council, Major Grant, Hearst Fellow, 2017-2018.
  • CAREER: Expanding the Functionality of Internet Routers. National Science Foundation, Grant CNS-1054985, 2011-2017.
  • A Measurement System for GENI, Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) (Subcontract from University of Wisconsin through BBN), 2008-2010.

Publications

  • An Elemental Decomposition of DNS Name-to-IP Graphs. A. Anderson, A Mondal, P. Barford, M. Crovella and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, April 2024. . dns
  • Schooling NOOBs with eBPF. J. Sommers, N. Rudolph and R. Durairajan. In 1st SIGCOMM 2023 Workshop on eBPF and Kernel Extensions (eBPF '23), September 2023. . measurement ebpf
    Paper.
  • BigBen: Telemetry Processing for Internet-wide Event Monitoring. M. Syamkumar, Y. Gullapalli, W. Tang, P. Barford and J. Sommers. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management 19(3), June 2022. . measurement timesync
    Paper.
  • Reassessing the Constancy of End-to-End Internet Latency. L. Davisson, J. Jakovleski, N. Ngo, C. Pham and J. Sommers. In IFIP Traffic Monitoring and Analysis Conference, September 2021. Copyright IFIP 2021. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of IFIP for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published from the IFIP TMA Conference 2021. measurement
    Paper.
  • ELF: High-Performance In-band Network Measurement. J. Sommers and R. Durairajan. In IFIP Traffic Monitoring and Analysis Conference, September 2021. Copyright IFIP 2021. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of IFIP for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published from the IFIP TMA Conference 2021. measurement ebpf
    Paper.
  • A Web Client Perspective on IP Geolocation Accuracy. J. Sommers. In IEEE International Symposium on Networks, Computers, and Communications, October 2020. . web geolocation measurement
    Paper.
  • Switchyard: A Framework for Network System-Building Projects. J. Sommers. In ACM SIGCOMM Education Workshop, August 2020. . education
    Paper.
  • Bokeh: Obfuscating Physical Infrastructure Maps. Y. Gullapali, J. Koritzinsky, M. Syamkumar, P. Barford, R. Durairajan and J. Sommers. In ACM SIGSPATIAL LocalRec, November 2019. . topology security measurement
    Paper.
  • What time is it? Managing Time in the Internet. S.K. Mani, R. Durairajan, P. Barford and J. Sommers. In Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW 2019), July 2019. . timesync
    Paper.
  • Open Collaborative Hyperpapers: A Call to Action. Dainotti, Alberto, Holz, Ralph, K\"uhlewind, Mirja, Lutu, Andra, Sommers, Joel and Trammell, Brian. SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 49(1), February 2019. . measurement reproducibility
    Paper.
  • An Architecture for IoT Clock Synchronization. S.K. Mani, R. Durairajan, P. Barford and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on the Internet of Things, October 2018. . measurement timesync
    Paper.
  • TimeWeaver: Opportunistic One Way Delay Measurement via NTP. R. Durairajan, S.K. Mani, P. Barford, R. Nowak and J. Sommers. In ITC 30 --- International Teletraffic Conference, September 2018. . measurement timesync
    Paper.
  • Wrinkles in Time: Detecting Internet-wide Events via NTP. M. Syamkumar, S.K. Mani, R. Durairajan, P. Barford and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of IFIP Networking, May 2018. . measurement timesync
    Paper.
  • On the Characteristics of Language Tags on the Web. J. Sommers. In Proceedings of Passive and Active Measurement Conference, March 2018. . measurement web language tags
    Paper.
  • On the Structure and Characteristics of User Agent Strings. J. Kline, A. Cahn, P. Barford and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November 2017. . measurement web
    Paper.
  • Automatic Metadata Generation for Active Measurement. J. Sommers, R. Durairajan and P. Barford. In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November 2017. . measurement reproducibility
    Paper.
  • MNTP: Improving Time Synchronization in Mobile Devices. S. Kumaran, R. Durairajan, P. Barford and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2016. . measurement timesync
    Paper.
  • Time’s Forgotten: Using NTP to understand Internet Latency. R. Durairajan, S. Kumaran, P. Barford and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM HotNets '15, November 2015. . measurement timesync
    Paper.
  • InterTubes: A Study of the US Long-haul Fiber-optic Infrastructure. R. Durairajan, P. Barford, J. Sommers and W. Willinger. In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM, August 2015. . topology measurement
    Paper.
    MITTechnologyReviewCoverage PopularScienceCoverage GizmodoCoverage TechRepublicCoverage VoiceOfAmericaCoverage NYTCoverage
  • pfs: Parallelized, Flow-based Network Simulation. Mukta Gupta, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Meenakshi Syamkumar, Paul Barford and Joel Sommers. In Proceedings of SummerSim '15, July 2015. . simulation traffic generation
    Paper.
  • Lowering the Barrier to Systems-level Networking Projects. J. Sommers. In Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical symposium on Computer Science Education, March 2015. . education routers programmable networks
    Paper.
    imcfeedbacksessionslides
  • Controller-agnostic SDN Debugging. R. Durairajan, J. Sommers and P. Barford. In Proceedings of ACM CoNEXT, December 2014. Awarded "Best short paper" at CoNEXT 2014. programmable networks simulation
    Paper.
  • Layer 1-Informed Internet Topology Measurement. R. Durairajan, J. Sommers and P. Barford. In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November 2014. . topology measurement
    Paper.
  • Balancing Accuracy and Efficiency in TCP Flow Simulation. J. Sommers and Y. Mok. In IEEE MASCOTS, September 2014. . simulation measurement
    Paper.
  • OFf: Bugspray for Openflow (Extended Abstract). R. Durairajan, J. Sommers and P. Barford. In ACM SIGCOMM HotSDN Workshop, August 2014. . programmable networks simulation
    Paper.
  • Fast, Accurate Simulation for SDN Prototyping. M. Gupta, J. Sommers and P. Barford. In ACM SIGCOMM HotSDN Workshop, August 2013. . programmable networks simulation
    Paper. Slides.
  • Revisiting Broadband Performance. I. Canadi, P. Barford and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November 2012. . measurement
  • Cell vs. WiFi: On the Performance of Metro Area Mobile Connections. J. Sommers and P. Barford. In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November 2012. . wireless measurement
    Paper.
  • Comparing Metro-Area Cellular and WiFi Performance (Extended abstract). J. Sommers and P. Barford. In ACM SIGMETRICS, June 2012. . measurement wireless
    Paper. Poster.
  • A Passive Measurement System for Network Testbeds. C. Thomas, J. Sommers, P. Barford, D. Kim, A. Das, R. Segebre and M. Crovella. In Tridentcom '12, June 2012. . measurement
    Paper.
  • RFC 6534: Loss Episode Metrics for IP Performance Metrics (IPPM). N. Duffield, A. Morton and J. Sommers. http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6534.txt, April 2012. . measurement packet loss
  • A Router Primitive Approach for Building Diverse Network Services. J. Sommers, P. Barford and B. Liblit. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), January 2012. . routers programmable networks measurement
    Paper.
  • On the Prevalence and Characteristics of MPLS Deployments in the Open Internet. J. Sommers, B. Eriksson and P. Barford. In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November 2011. . topology measurement
    Paper. Slides.
  • Inferring Unseen Components of the Internet Core. B. Eriksson, J. Sommers, P. Barford and R. Nowak. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 29(9), October 2011. . topology measurement
    Paper.
  • Scaling the Practical Education Experience. J. Sommers and A. Moore. In ACM SIGCOMM Education Workshop, August 2011. . education
    Paper.
  • DomainImpute: Inferring Unseen Components in the Internet. B. Eriksson, P. Barford, J. Sommers and R. Nowak. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM Miniconference, April 2011. . topology measurement
    Paper.
  • Efficient Network-wide Flow Record Generation. J. Sommers, R. Bowden, B. Eriksson, P. Barford, M. Roughan and N. Duffield. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, April 2011. . simulation traffic generation anomaly detection
    Paper.
  • Efficient and Realistic Generation of IP Addresses. J. Sommers and J. Raffensperger. In Proceedings of the 4th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques (SIMUtools), March 2011. . simulation traffic generation
    Paper.
  • BasisDetect: A Model-based Network Event Detection Framework. B. Eriksson, P. Barford, R. Bowden, M. Roughan, N. Duffield and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2010. . anomaly detection
    Paper.
  • A Machine Learning Approach to TCP Throughput Prediction. M. Mirza, J. Sommers, P. Barford and J. Zhu. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 18(4), August 2010. . measurement
    Paper.
  • Multiobjective Monitoring for SLA Compliance. J. Sommers, P. Barford, N. Duffield and A. Ron. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 18(2), April 2010. . measurement packet loss
    Paper.
  • A Bayesian Learning Approach to IP Geolocation. B. Eriksson, P. Barford, J. Sommers and R. Nowak. In Proceedings of Passive and Active Measurement Conference, April 2010. . topology geolocation measurement
    Paper.
  • Educating the Next Generation of Spammers. J. Sommers. In Proceedings of the 41st ACM Technical symposium on Computer Science Education, March 2010. . education
    Paper.
  • Router Primitives for Programmable Active Measurement. J. Sommers, P. Barford and M. Crovella. In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM PRESTO Workshop, August 2009. . routers measurement programmable networks
    Paper. Slides.
  • Are smaller packets less likely to be lost?. J. Sommers, V. Omw, o and F. Sisenda. In International Conference on Internet Monitoring and Protection (ICIMP), May 2009. . measurement packet loss
    Paper.
  • Network Performance Anomaly Detection and Localization. P. Barford, N. Duffield, A. Ron and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, April 2009. . measurement anomaly detection
    Paper.
  • Power Awareness in Network Design and Routing. J. Chabarek, J. Sommers, P. Barford, C. Estan, D. Tsiang and S. Wright. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, May 2008. Awarded IEEE INFOCOM 2019 "Test of time" award. measurement energy consumption
    Paper.
  • A Geometric Approach to Improving Packet Loss Measurement. J. Sommers, P. Barford, N. Duffield and A. Ron. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 16(2), April 2008. . measurement packet loss
    Paper.
  • An SLA Perspective on the Router Buffer Sizing Problem. J. Sommers, P. Barford, A. Greenberg and W. Willinger. ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review 35(4), March 2008. . measurement routers
    Paper.
  • An Active Measurement System for Shared Environments. J. Sommers and P. Barford. In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2007. . measurement programmable networks
    Paper.
  • Accurate and Efficient SLA Compliance Monitoring. J. Sommers, P. Barford, N. Duffield and A. Ron. In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM, August 2007. . measurement packet loss
    Paper. Slides.
  • Calibrated Network Measurement. J. Sommers. Doctoral Dissertation, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 2007. . measurement traffic generation network emulation
    Paper.
  • A Machine Learning Approach to TCP Throughput Prediction. M. Mirza, J. Sommers, P. Barford and J. Zhu. In Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS, June 2007. . measurement
    Paper.
  • Laboratory-based Calibration of Available Bandwidth Estimation Tools. J. Sommers, P. Barford and W. Willinger. Elsevier Microprocessors and Microsystems Journal 31(4), June 2007. . measurement
    Paper.
  • A Framework for Multi-objective SLA Compliance Monitoring. Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, Nick Duffield and Amos Ron. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM (minisymposium), May 2007. . measurement packet loss
    Paper.
  • A Proposed Framework for Calibration of Available Bandwidth Estimation Tools. J. Sommers, P. Barford and W. Willinger. In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communication, June 2006. Received one of six best paper awards. measurement
    Paper.
  • Recent Advances in Network Intrusion Detection System Tuning. J. Sommers, V. Yegneswaran and P. Barford. In Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, March 2006. . traffic generation measurement anomaly detection
    Paper.
  • SPLAT: A visualization tool for mining Internet measurements. Joel Sommers, Paul Barford and Walter Willinger. In Proceedings of Passive and Active Measurement Conference, March 2006. . measurement visualization
    Paper. Slides.
  • Scalable Network Path Emulation. S. Agarwal, J. Sommers and P. Barford. In IEEE MASCOTS, September 2005. . network emulation
    Paper. Slides.
  • Improving Accuracy in End-to-End Packet Loss Measurement. J. Sommers, P. Barford, N. Duffield and A. Ron. In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM, August 2005. . measurement packet loss
    Paper. Slides.
  • Self-Configuring Network Traffic Generation. J. Sommers and P. Barford. In ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2004. . measurement traffic generation
    Paper.
  • A Framework for Malicious Workload Generation. J. Sommers, V. Yegneswaran and P. Barford. In ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2004. . measurement traffic generation security
    Paper.
  • Recent results in sizing router buffers. G. Appenzeller, N. McKeown, J. Sommers and P. Barford. In Network Systems Design Conference (invited paper), October 2004. . routers measurement
    Paper.
  • Comparing Probe- and Router-Based Packet-Loss Measurement. P. Barford and J. Sommers. IEEE Internet Computing, Special Issue on Measuring the Internet 8(5), September 2004. . measurement packet loss
    Paper.
  • Harpoon: A Flow-Level Traffic Generator for Router and Network Tests (Extended abstract). J. Sommers, P. Barford and H. Kim. In ACM SIGMETRICS, June 2004. . measurement traffic generation
    Paper. Poster.
  • Electronic Commerce On the World-Wide Web: Performance and Availability. D. Finkel, R. E. Kinicki, M. Mikhailov, A. Raghavendra, S. Cunningham, Y. Elkin, A. Lin, M. Quinlivan, J. Sommers and B. Wescott. In Proceedings of the 17th IASTED International Conference Applied Informatics (AI'99), February 1999. . web
    Paper.
  • Combining client knowledge and resource dependencies for improved world wide web performance. J. H. Hine, C. E. Wills, A. Martel and J. Sommers. In Proceedings of the INET '98 Conference, July 1998. . web
  • Electronic Commerce Performance Study. B. Kinicki, D. Finkel, M. Mikhailov, J. Sommers, S. Cunningham, Y. Elkin, R. Gopalan and M. Quinlivan. In Proceedings of the Euromedia '98 Conference, January 1998. . web
    Paper.
  • Merging client and server profiles on the World Wide Web. J. Sommers. Master's thesis, Computer Science Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, May 1997. . web