( Education | Publications | Code | Employment | Honors )

( PDF version )

Research Interests

I am interested in designing, building and evaluating large-scale distributed systems over both wired and wireless networks. As such, my research spans a wide range of topics from operating systems to distributed sytems and networking. Please see my research statement and publications list below for details.

Education

• Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
  M.S. in Computer Science December, 2006
  Ph.D. in Computer Science. June, 2010
  Dissertation defense slides
  Advisor: Fabián E. Bustamante
• Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA
  B.A. in Physics & French, May, 2002

Publications in Computer Science
(For more information, see my ACM author page.)

Textbooks

• Deitel, H., Deitel, P., Choffnes, D., Operating Systems, Third Edition, Prentice Hall, 2004. (ISBN: 0131828274). (Link to product)
• Deitel, H., Deitel, P., Choffnes, D., Kelsey, C., Simply C++ : An Application-Driven Tutorial Approach, Prentice Hall, 2005. (ISBN: 0131426605) (Link to product)

Peer-reviewed Workshop and Conference Publications

• SIGCOMM '10
  David R. Choffnes, Fabian E. Bustamante, Zihui Ge, Crowdsourcing Service-Level Network Event Detection, Accepted for publication in Proc. of ACM SIGCOMM 2010, August 2010.
  Abstract | PostScript [3M] | PDF Format [500K]
• IPTPS '10
  David R. Choffnes, Jordi Duch, Dean Malmgren, Roger Guimera, Fabian E. Bustamante, Luis Amaral, Strange Bedfellows: Communities in BitTorrent, In Proc. of the 9th International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS), April 2010.
  Abstract | PostScript [295K] | PDF Format [123K]
  Slides from presentation: PDF
• INFOCOM '10
  David R. Choffnes, Mario A. Sanchez, Fabian E. Bustamante, Network positioning from the edge: An empirical study of the effectiveness of network positioning in P2P systems, In Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM 2010 mini-conference, March 2010.
  Abstract | PostScript [3.3M] | PDF Format [684K]
  (See extended version here.)
• CoNEXT '09
  Kai Chen, David R. Choffnes, Rahul Potharaju, Yan Chen, Fabián E. Bustamante, Dan Pei, Yao Zhao. Where the Sidewalk Ends: Extending the Internet AS Graph Using Traceroutes From P2P Users, In Proc. of ACM CoNEXT 2009, December 2009.
  Abstract | PostScript [1.5M] | PDF Format [284K]
• INFOCOM '09
  David R. Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. On the Effectiveness of Measurement Reuse for Performance-Based Detouring, In Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM 2009, April 2009.
  Abstract | PostScript [500K] | PDF Format [250K]
• SIGCOMM '08
  David R. Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. Taming the Torrent: A practical approach to reducing cross-ISP traffic in P2P systems, In Proc. of ACM SIGCOMM 2008, August 2008.
  Abstract | PostScript [2.0M] | PDF Format [652K]
  Slides from presentation: Powerpoint
• ICDCS '08
  Ao-Jan Su, David R. Choffnes, Fabián E. Bustamante and Aleksandar Kuzmanovic Relative Network Positioning via CDN Redirections, In Proc. of the International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), June 2008
  Abstract | PostScript [765K] | PDF Format [284K]
• HotAC '07
  David R. Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. Exploiting Emergent Behavior for Inter-Vehicle Communication, In Proc. of 2nd International Workshop on Hot Topics in Autonomic Computing (HotAC), June 2007. (Details and PDF)
• SIGCOMM '06
  Ao-Jan Su, David R. Choffnes, Alekzandar Kuzmanovic and Fabián E. Bustamante. Drafting Behind Akamai (Travelocity-Based Detouring), In Proc. of ACM SIGCOMM 2006, September 2006. (Details and PDF)
• VANET '05
  David R. Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. An Integrated Mobility and Traffic Model for Vehicular Wireless Networks, In Proc. of the 2nd ACM International Workshop on Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET), September 2005. (Details and PDF)

Journal and Magazine Articles

• CCR '10
  D. Choffnes and F. Bustamante, Pitfalls for Testbed Evaluations of Internet Systems, In SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (CCR), April, 2010.
  PDF Format
• ;login: '10
  D. Choffnes and F. Bustamante, Taming the Torrent, In USENIX ;login:, February 2010.
  PDF format
• ToN '09
  A-J Su, D. Choffnes, A. Kuzmanovic and F. Bustamante. Drafting Behind Akamai: Inferring Network Conditions Based on CDN Redirections In IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol.17, no.6, pp.1752-1765, Dec. 2009.
• OSR '08
  D. Choffnes, M. Astley, and M. J. Ward Migration policies for multi-core fair-share scheduling. SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev. 42, 1 (Jan. 2008), 92-93.

Non-refereed Publications

• David R. Choffnes, Fabian E. Bustamante. Pitfalls for Testbed Evaluations of Internet Systems Tech. Report NWU-EECS-09-22, Department of EECS, Northwestern University, December 2009. Note: A revised version will appear in SIGCOMM CCR in April, 2010.
• David R. Choffnes, Fabian E. Bustamante. Using the Crowd to Monitor the Cloud: Detecting Network Events from Edge Systems Tech. Report NWU-EECS-09-19, Department of EECS, Northwestern University, October 2009. (PDF | Abstract)
• David R. Choffnes, Fabian E. Bustamante. Network Positioning From the Edge: An empirical study of the effectiveness of network positioning in P2P systems Tech. Report NWU-EECS-09-15, Department of EECS, Northwestern University, June 2009. (PDF | Abstract)
• David R. Choffnes, Jordi Duch, Dean Malmgren, Roger Guimera, Fabian E. Bustamante, Luis Amaral. SwarmScreen: Privacy Through Plausible Deniability in P2P Systems Tech. Report NWU-EECS-09-04, Department of EECS, Northwestern University, June 2009. (PDF | Abstract )
• David R. Choffnes, John R. Lange, Aleksandar Kuzmanovic. Rethinking the Use of Parallel TCP in Web Browsers, Tech. Report NWU-EECS-06-15, Department of EECS, Northwestern University, October 2006.
• David R. Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. Modeling Vehicular Traffic and Mobility for Vehicular Wireless Networks, Tech. Report NWU-CS-05-03, Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University, 2005.

Professional Activities

• TPC member, ICCCN 2009 P2PN (Peer-to-Peer Networking Track)
• Reviewer: IEEE TPDS (Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems), IEEE TVT (Transactions on Vehicular Technology)

Other Activities

• David Choffnes, Using the Crowd to Monitor the Cloud, Talk at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, November 2009.
• David Choffnes, Using the Crowd to Monitor the Cloud, Speaker for MITACS Seminar, McGill University, QC, Canada, November 2009.
• David R. Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. NEWS: Crowd Sourcing Network Anomaly Detection, Poster Session, Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), December 2008, San Diego, CA.
• David Choffnes, Sustainable Internet Scalability through Measurement Reuse, Invited Talk, Amherst College, MA, March 2008.
• David R. Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. SideStep - Scalable Detouring by Reusing CDN Measurements, Poster Session, Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP) 2007, Stevenson, WA.

Press

• Apr 9, 2009 -- Slashdot: Privacy In BitTorrent By Hiding In the Crowd
• Nov 25, 2008 -- Slashdot article: "News for Nerds" on NEWS.
• Nov 24, 2008 -- Chronicle of Higher Education: Researchers Create 'Neighborhood Watch' System to Detect Network Problems.
• May 6, 2008 -- Ars Technica article on Ono.
• May 5, 2008 -- Slashdot article on Ono.
• May 2, 2008 -- New Software Allows ISPs and P2P Users to Get Along Without Getting Too Cozy

Publicly Released Code

• SwarmScreen
  Plugin for the Vuze (Azureus) BitTorrent client that provide downloading privacy through plausible deniability. (Project page)
• NEWS
  Plugin for the Vuze (Azureus) BitTorrent client that reliably finds problems in the network and raises alerts about them. Currently 47,427 users and growing! (Project page)
• Ono
  Plugin for the Vuze (Azureus) BitTorrent client that uses CDN-based measurements to improve performance and reduce P2P impact on ISPs. Currently 1,052,274 users and growing! (Project page)
• STRAW (STreet RAndom Waypoint)
  Vehicular mobility model implemented for the JiST/SWANS simulation platform. Currently downloaded 2,715 times. (Project page)
• SWANS++
  Sourceforge project that unifies updates and improvements to the JiST/SWANS simulation platform. Along with STRAW (see above), currently downloaded 2,715 times.(Project page)
• Ceratias
  Real-time visualization tool for the JiST/SWANS simulation platform. Also enables interaction with and online modification of the ongoing simulation, and can be detached/reattached dynamically for performance. (Part of SWANS++, see above for project page.)

Recent Employment

• AT&T Labs - Research, Florham Park, NJ, Summer 2009
• Exploratory research on mobile IP networks
• Mentor: Kobus van der Merwe
• IBM T. J. Watson Research Lab, Hawthorne, NY, Summer 2007
• Worked on a practical fair-share process scheduler for the Linux kernel. The contributions included efficient, fair support for MP systems, support for legacy priority-based applications and a simulation study to prove its effectiveness.
• Northwestern University, Evanston, IL Fall 2005 – Fall 2006
  • Teaching Assistant for Operating Systems, Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science and Introduction to Computer Systems.
• Deitel & Associates, Maynard, MA August 2002–July 2004
  • Coauthor and project manager for Simply C++ : An Application-Driven Tutorial Approach (ISBN: 0131426605), an introductory-level C++ textbook.
  • Coauthor and project manager for Operating Systems, Third Edition (ISBN: 0131828274). The book focuses on operating system concepts in addition to providing in-depth case studies. It is designed intended for upper-level undergraduate CS courses and intro-level graduate courses.
  • Programmer, writer and editor for the first book in the “Simply…” series of books, Simply Visual Basic .NET. (ISBN: 0131405535)

Honors

• Computing Innovation Fellow, 2010-2011
• Terminal Year Cabell Fellowship, Northwestern University, 2008-2009.
• Honorable Mention, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, April 2005.
• Cabell Fellowship, Northwestern University, Sept 2004.
• Magna cum laude, Amherst College, May 2002.

Cetera

• US Citizen
• Webmaster for the Amherst Alumni Association of Chicago
• Treasurer, Northwestern Graduate Student Association
• Committee member, Graduates in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (GEECS)
• Organizer, Graduate Research Seminar in CS and CE
• Treasurer and 4-year rower on the Crew team, Co-president of the Amherst College Alumni Rowing Association
• Knowledgeable in Linux internals, particularly version 2.6.
• Fluent in French