Georgios Smaragdakis
Title
The Measurement Lens: How to Understand and Improve the Internet
Abstract
The Internet has revolutionized the way individuals and corporations communicate, publish, access, and search for information. As our globally-connected digital civilization increasingly relies on the smooth and uninterrupted Internet operation, any disruption has a direct negative impact on both the economy and society. However, the Internet was not designed to serve its current role nor was foreseen to be a public good. Many of the Internet protocols and architectures were introduced in simpler times (decades ago), and there is no centralized authority on how to improve, operate, and expand the Internet.
In this talk, I will present measurement techniques to assess the state and the health of the Internet towards understanding its expansion, improving its operations, and protecting it as critical infrastructure. In particular, I will present empirical studies on: (1) how to track the tectonic changes in the Internet topology and interconnections, (2) how to assess the impact of content delivery in Internet operation and business relationships, and (3) how to get insights on Internet's resilience and security status to inform policymaking.
About the Speaker
Georgios Smaragdakis is currently a Professor with Technical University (TU) Berlin, a research affiliate with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligent Laboratory (CSAIL) and the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative (IPRI), and a research collaborator with Akamai Technologies. From 2014-2017 he was a Marie Curie fellow at the MIT CSAIL. From 2008-2014 he acted as Senior Researcher at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories and at the TU Berlin. In 2008 he was a research intern at Telefonica Research. He earned the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Boston University in 2009 and the Diploma in Electronic and Computer Engineering from the Technical University of Crete.
His research interests include Internet measurement, content distribution, Web and content delivery analytics, Internet policy, Internet security and resilience, and personal data privacy protection.
George's research was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant Award (2015), a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship (2013), and best paper awards at IEEE INFOCOM (2017), ACM IMC (2016 and 2011) and ACM CoNEXT (2015).
