High-Speed Networks: A Tutorial (Practical Networking) - Softcover

Elie F. Kfoury iscurrently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the College of Engineering and Computing, University of South Carolina, USA. He previously worked as a research and teaching assistant in the computer science and ICT departments at the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut. He is a member of the CyberInfrastructure Laboratory at the University of South Carolina, where he conducts research on high-speed networks, TCP congestion control, performance measuring, buffer sizing, and routing protocols, and P4 programmable switches.

Elias Bou-Harb received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He was a Senior Research Scientist with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where he contributed to federally funded projects related to critical infrastructure security. He is currently the Director of the Cyber Center for Security and Analytics, University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), where he leads, co-directs, and co-organizes university-wide innovative cyber security research, development, and training initiatives. He is also an Associate Professor with the Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security specializing in operational cyber security and data science as applicable to national security challenges. His research interests include operational cyber security, attacks’ detection and characterization, malware investigation, cyber security for critical infrastructure, and big data analytics. He was a recipient of five best research paper awards, including the prestigious ACM’s Best Digital Forensics Research Paper.

Nasir Ghani received the Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from the University of Waterloo. He is currently a Professor with the Electrical Engineering Department, University of South Florida. He is also a Research Liaison with Cyber Florida. He also spent several years working with large Blue-Chip organizations (IBM, Motorola, Nokia) and several hi-tech startups. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Department of Energy, Qatar Foundation, and Sprint-Nextel. His research interests include cyberinfrastructure networks, cybersecurity, cloud computing, disaster recovery, and cyber-physical systems. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2005, and the Best Paper Awards at IEEE PIMRC 2017 and IEEE ANTS 2010. He was the Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on High-Speed Networking (TCHSN) and has served as an Associate Editor for several IEEE journals.

This book provides practical knowledge and skills on high-speed networks, emphasizing on Science Demilitarized Zones (Science DMZs). The Science DMZ is a high-speed network designed to facilitate the transfer of big science data which is presented in this book. These networks are increasingly important, as large data sets are now often transferred across sites. This book starts by describing the limitations of general-purpose networks which are designed for transferring basic data but face numerous challenges when transferring terabyte- and petabyte-scale data. 

This book follows a bottom-up approach by presenting an overview of Science DMZs and how they overcome the limitations of general-purpose networks. It also covers topics that have considerable impact on the performance of large data transfers at all layers: link layer (layer-2) and network layer (layer-3) topics such as maximum transmission unit (MTU), switch architectures, and router’s buffersize; transport layer (layer-4) topics including TCP features, congestion control algorithms for high-throughput high-latency networks, flow control, and pacing; applications (layer-5) used for large data transfers and for maintenance and operation of Science DMZs; and security considerations. Most chapters incorporate virtual laboratory experiments, which are conducted using network appliances running real protocol stacks. 

Students in computer science, information technology and similar programs, who are interested in learning fundamental concepts related to high-speed networks and corresponding implementations will find this book useful as a textbook. This book assumes minimal familiarity with networking, typically covered in an introductory networking course. It is appropriate for an upper-level undergraduate course and for a first-year graduate course. Industry professionals working in this field will also want to purchase this book.