Current Programs

Here are a selection of programs running (or recently completed) at CAIA, or external projects with which CAIA is involved.

• An in-house testbed for research into the performance characteristics of IP applications running over "broadband" access networks such as DOCSIS cable, ADSL, and 802.11.
  

• Not really a project. Just a place to store random pictures associated with the centre.

• What would happen if most of the Internet's capacity was at the edges, and content was pushed to caches in every suburb and city?

• Characterizing the 'network load' introduced by popular online, interactive, real-time games.

• Qualitatively and quantitatively exploring the relationships between IP network traffic patterns and the energy consumption of devices such as routers, wireless access points and other infrastructure devices.
  

• Passively monitor selected unused IP addresses across an entire enterprise or ISP network, detecting unexpected or unwanted network scans and probing with minimal consumption of valuable IP address space.
  

• This project, supported by a Cisco University Research Program (URP) grant,  explores novel techniques for anomalous traffic detection and collaborative network control. We utlise existing, commercial 3D multiplayer game engines to combine two distinct roles: In-game avatars and entities represent fluctuating network events in real-time, and the game engine's metaphors for interaction inside the virtual world are used to control network entities out in the real-world.

• Developing techniques and methods for Lawful Interception of IP traffic. Meeting the competing demands of Law Enforcement Agencies (who need access to specific traffic) and user expectations (that traffic interception will not exceed those levels allowed by law, nor unreasonably weaken the Internet's overall security).

• How well do IPv4 and IPv6 approaches to Mobile IP perform under real-world scenarios? What needs to be done before a global, mobile internet service becomes an everyday experience?
  

• Design, analysis and prototyping of next generation transport protocols for the Internet. An umbrella research program encompassing a number of collaborative projects between CAIA, industry and other research institutions.
  

• What are the fundamental technological challenges that pose problems for the deployment of VoIP services? We're looking at improving QoS over bottlneck last-hop links, reliability and security, peering and number management, and implementation strategies.
  

• Stockade is a TCP-layer tool for reducing the level of network traffic arriving at an SMTP server due to spammers. Stockade sits 'in front' of your mailserver, rejecting incoming TCP connections from known (or suspected) spammers. The rejection is statistical in nature, based on the presumed likelyhood of a new connection's source being 'a spammer'.

• We have a number of projects supported in part by Cisco Systems's University Research Program 2004-2007.
  

Prior Programs

• We are associate founding members of a consortium building an optical, broadband network infrastructure in the City of Ballarat (Victoria, Australia). $4M funding by the Victorian Government's Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development was announced on July 25th 2002. The COLT project is lead by Dr Jonathan Spring of CEOS Pty Ltd.

• The dynamic classification and identification of network applications responsible for the creation of traffic flows offers substantial benefits to a number of key areas in IP network engineering, management and surveillance. This project, supported by a Cisco University Research Program (URP) grant, explores a novel method for traffic classification and application identification using Machine Learning (ML) techniques. 

• We've been a node as part of the SLAC PingER project. Our reverse traceroute server is up, and our current ping results can be seen here. (Suspended Jan 2005)

• We've developed an automated approach to network re-configuration in response to detection of game traffic, and a suite of traffic simulation and modelling tools so ISPs can predict the impact of highly interactive applications (such as games) on their networks. Concluded 28 Feb 2007. (This is a spinout from our earlier GENIUS project.)