Joel Sommers

BS, Atlantic Union College
MS, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)
PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison

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.

• J. Sommers.  Lowering the Barrier to Systems-level Networking Projects.  In Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical symposium on Computer Science Education, March, 2015.
• R. Durairajan, J. Sommers and P. Barford.  Controller-agnostic SDN Debugging.  In Proceedings of ACM CoNEXT, December, 2014.
• R. Durairajan, J. Sommers and P. Barford.  Layer 1-Informed Internet Topology Measurement.  In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November, 2014.
• J. Sommers and Y. Mok.  Balancing Accuracy and Efficiency in TCP Flow Simulation.  In IEEE MASCOTS, September, 2014.
• R. Durairajan, J. Sommers and P. Barford.  OFf: Bugspray for Openflow (Extended Abstract).  In ACM SIGCOMM HotSDN Workshop, August, 2014.
• M. Gupta, J. Sommers and P. Barford.  Fast, Accurate Simulation for SDN Prototyping.  In ACM SIGCOMM HotSDN Workshop, August, 2013.
• I. Canadi, P. Barford and J. Sommers.  Revisiting Broadband Performance.  In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November, 2012.
• J. Sommers and P. Barford.  Cell vs. WiFi: On the Performance of Metro Area Mobile Connections.  In Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November, 2012.
• J. Sommers and P. Barford.  Comparing Metro-Area Cellular and WiFi Performance  (Extended abstract).  In ACM SIGMETRICS, June, 2012.
• C. Thomas, J. Sommers, P. Barford, D. Kim, A. Das, R. Segebre and M. Crovella.  A Passive Measurement System for Network Testbeds.  In Tridentcom '12, June, 2012.
• N. Duffield, A. Morton and J. Sommers.  RFC 6534: Loss Episode Metrics for IP Performance Metrics (IPPM).  http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6534.txt.  April, 2012.
• C. Thomas, J. Sommers, P. Barford, D. Kim, A. Das (Colgate ’12), R. Segebre (Colgate ’12), and M. Crovella.  A Passive Measurement System for Network Testbeds.  Proceedings of Tridentcom ’12, June 2012.
• J. Sommers, P. Barford, and B. Liblit.  A Router Primitive Approach to Building Diverse Network Services.  Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), January 2012, pp 1-10.
• J. Sommers, B. Eriksson, and P. Barford.  On the Prevalence and Characteristics of MPLS Deployments in the Open Internet.  Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, November 2011, pp 445-462.
• B. Eriksson, J. Sommers, P. Barford, and R. Nowak.  Inferring Unseen Components in the Internet Core. Journal on Selected Areas of Communication, Vol. 29, Issue 9 (October 2011), pp 1788-1798.
• Joel Sommers, Rhys Bowden, Brian Eriksson, Paul Barford, Matthew Roughan, and Nick Duffield.  Efficient Network-wide Flow Record Generation.  IEEE INFOCOM, April 2011.
• Brian Eriksson, Paul Barford, Joel Sommers, and Rob Nowak.  Ghost in the Machine: Inferring Unseen Components in the Internet Core.  IEEE INFOCOM Miniconference, April 2011.
• Joel Sommers and John Raffensperger (Colgate ’12).   Efficient and Realistic Generation of IP Addresses.  SIMUtools ’11, March 2011.
• Brian Eriksson, Paul Barford, Rhys Bowden, Matthew Roughan, Nick Duffield, and Joel Sommers.  BasisDetect: A Model-based Network Event Detection Framework.  ACM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2010.
• Mariyam Mirza, Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, and Jerry Zhu.  A Machine Learning Approach to TCP Throughput Prediction.  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, August 2010.
• Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, Nick Duffield, and Amos Ron.  Multiobjective Monitoring for SLA Compliance.  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, April 2010.
• Brian Eriksson, Paul Barford, Joel Sommers, and Rob Nowak. A Learning-based Approach to IP Geolocation. Proceedings of the Passive and Active Measurement Conference, April 2010.
• Joel Sommers. Educating the Next Generation of Spammers. Proceedings of ACM SIGCSE Annual Symposium, March 2010.
• Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, and Mark Crovella. Router Primitives for Programmable Active Measurement. Proceedings of PRESTO Workshop, ACM SIGCOMM, August 2009.
• Joel Sommers, Victor Omwando (Colgate '09) and Fred Sisenda (Colgate '10). Are smaller packets less likely to be lost? Proceedings of the International Conference on Monitoring and Protection (ICIMP), May 2009.
• Paul Barford, Nick Duffield, Amos Ron, and Joel Sommers. Network Performance Anomaly Detection and Localization. Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, April 2009.
• Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, Nick Duffield, and Amos Ron. A Geometric Approach to Improving Packet Loss Measurement. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, June 2008.
• Joe Chabarek, Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, Cristian Estan, David Tsiang, and Steve Wright. Power Awareness in Network Design and Routing. Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, May 2008.
• Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, Albert Greenberg, and Walter Willinger. An SLA Perspective on the Router Buffer Sizing Problem. ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, March 2008.
• Joel Sommers and Paul Barford. An Active Measurement System for Shared Environments. Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2007.
• Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, Nick Duffield, and Amos Ron. Accurate and Efficient SLA Compliance Monitoring. Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM, August 2007.
• Mariyam Mirza, Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, and Jerry Zhu. A Machine Learning Approach to TCP Throughput Prediction. Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS, June 2007.
• Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, and Walter Willinger. A Proposed Framework for Calibration of Available Bandwidth Estimation Tools. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communication, June 2006.
• Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, and Walter Willinger. SPLAT: A visualization tool for mining Internet measurements. Proceedings of Passive and Active Measurement Conference, March 2006.
• Joel Sommers, Paul Barford, Nick Duffield, and Amos Ron. Improving Accuracy in End-to-End Packet Loss Measurement. Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM, August 2005.
• Shilpi Agarwal, Joel Sommers, and Paul Barford. Scalable Network Path Emulation. IEEE MASCOTS, September 2005.
• Joel Sommers, Vinod Yegneswaran, and Paul Barford. A Framework for Malicious Workload Generation. ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2004.
• Joel Sommers and Paul Barford. Self-Configuring Network Traffic Generation. ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2004.

For older publications, see my homepage in the CS department.

Calibrated Network Measurement. Doctoral Dissertation, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 2007.

• ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, Area Editor, 2014-2015
• Open Networking Summit Research Track, 2014
• Second NSF Workshop on perfSONAR based Multi-domain Network Performance Measurement and Monitoring (pSW 2014)
• ACM Internet Measurement Conference, 2013
• 7th IEEE Workshop on Network Measurements, 2013
• IFIP WG 7.3 Performance, 2013
• IEEE ICNC, Internet Services and Applications Track, 2013
• IEEE ICCCN Networking for Sustainability, Reliability, and Energy Efficiency Track, 2012
• Technical Program Committee, ACM Internet Measurement Conference, 2011.
• Technical Program Committee, Passive and Active Measurement Conference, 2011.
• Technical Program Committee, ACM SIGMETRICS Conference, 2010.
• Technical Program Committee, Passive and Active Measurement Conference, 2010.
• Publicity Co-Chair, ACM SIGCOMM, 2009.
• Technical Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2009 Poster and demo session.
• Technical Program Committee, ACM SIGMETRICS GreenMetrics Workshop, 2009-2013
• Technical Program Committee, ACM Internet Measurement Conference, 2008.
• Technical Program Committee, International Conference on Internet Monitoring and Protection (ICIMP), 2007-2011.

National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, July 2011-June 2016, $400,461.  Project title: "CAREER: Expanding the Functionality of Internet Routers."