Independent Research Topics:

1. NETWORKING: Better network gaming with purpose-built overlay technology. Build a better network using PlanetLab to support competitions for FPS games such as Counter Strike, Quake III, Half-Life, etc. This project involves implementing overlay protocols tailored for network games that will run on PlanetLab computers throughout the world, which will be used by real games players on the Internet.
2. PROGRAMMING TOOLS: Better management of Linux kernel code variability with aspect-oriented programming. If the Linux kernel is a brain and its developers are brain surgeons, then these surgeons are using the equivalent of electric mixers to do surgery. We need better tools! Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) for C/C++ code may just be it. This project involves both (1) refactoring Linux kernel modules (e.g., CKRM, LSM, ALSA, BOOSA, Vserver, etc.) to an AOP model and (2) developing new tools that hopefully make AOP a viable option to the Linux kernel community.
3. OPERATING SYSTEMS: Better resource management for the PlanetLab Linux kernel with Class-based Kernel Resource Management (CKRM). PlanetLab currently has nearly 500 computers located in over 20 countries that are used by 400 researchers conducting nearly 300 research projects. Linux's egalitarian approach to sharing system resources, i.e., CPU time, memory, I/O bandwidth, disk space, etc., simply does not work. PlanetLab will use IBM's CKRM framework to obtain additional resource management knobs, called controllers, in Linux. This project involves both (1) writing additional controllers for the kernel and (2) a "goal-oriented workload manager" that uses these controllers to both fairly and efficiently share the system's resources among PlanetLab users.