Architectures for Secure and Robust Distributed Infrastructures

Abstract

The major barrier constraining the successful management and design of large-scale distributed infrastructures is the conspicuous lack of knowledge about their dynamical features and behaviors. Up until very recently analysis of systems such as the Internet, or the national electricity distribution system, have primarily relied on the use of non-dynamical models, which neglect their complex, and frequently subtle, inherent dynamical properties. These traditional approaches have enjoyed considerable success while systems are run in predominantly cooperative environments, and provided that their performance boundaries are not approached. With the current proliferation of applications using and relying on such infrastructures, these infrastructures are becoming increasingly stressed, and as a result the incentives for malicious attacks are heightening. The stunning fact is that the fundamental assumptions under which significant large-scale distributed infrastructures have been constructed and analyzed no longer hold; the invalidity of these non-dynamical assumptions is witnessed with the greater frequency of catastrophic failures in major infrastructures such as the Internet, the power grid, the air traffic system, and national-scale telecommunications systems. This project is about network reliability and robustness in large-scale systems. To address the challenges posed by dynamical behavior of large-scale network infrastructures we bring to bear the tools and techniques of control theory together with those from communication networks and queuing theory. In particular, the algorithms and analytical approaches of control used for developing control strategies and logic are combined with protocol design methods to construct new, secure architectures for distributed networks.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 02, 2007
Accession Number
ADA465427

Entities

People

  • Balaji Prabhakar
  • Carolyn L. Beck
  • Chris Hadjicostis
  • Geir E. Dullerud
  • George Verghese
  • John M. Doyle
  • Muriel Médard
  • R. Srikant
  • Sanjay Lall
  • Stephen Boyd

Organizations

  • Stanford University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Communication Channels
  • Communication Networks
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Networks
  • Control Systems
  • Detectors
  • Heterogeneous Networks
  • Linear Accelerators
  • Load Monitoring
  • Mathematical Models
  • Network Computing
  • Network Protocols
  • Sensor Networks
  • Systems Biology
  • Wireless Communications
  • Wireless Networks
  • Wireless Sensor Networks

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Networking
  • Economics
  • Theoretical Analysis.