Austin Hounsel

304 Sherrerd Hall
Princeton University
ahounsel at cs princeton edu

I'm a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science department at Princeton University. My advisor is Nick Feamster.
Generally speaking, I'm interested in Internet performance, privacy, and censorship.

Publications

Encryption without Centralization: Distributing DNS Queries Across Recursive Resolvers
Austin Hounsel, Paul Schmitt, Kevin Borgolte, Nick Feamster
ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop
Virtual. July 2021.
Can Encrypted DNS Be Fast?
Austin Hounsel, Paul Schmitt, Kevin Borgolte, Nick Feamster
Passive and Active Measurement Conference
Virtual. March 2021.
Identifying Disinformation Websites Using Infrastructure Features
Austin Hounsel, Jordan Holland, Ben Kaiser, Kevin Borgolte, Nick Feamster, Jonathan Mayer
USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet
Virtual. August 2020.
Source code
Comparing the Effects of DNS, DoT, and DoH on Web Performance
Austin Hounsel, Kevin Borgolte, Paul Schmitt, Jordan Holland, Nick Feamster
The Web Conference
Taipei, Taiwan. April 2020.
Competition, Privacy, and Performance in the Internet Ecosystem: The Impact of Centralized DNS over HTTPS
Tithi Chattopadhyay, Paul Schmitt, Kevin Borgolte, Jordan Holland, Austin Hounsel, Nick Feamster
Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy
Washington, DC. September 2019.
Analyzing the Costs (and Benefits) of DNS, DoT, and DoH for the Modern Web
Austin Hounsel, Kevin Borgolte, Paul Schmitt, Jordan Holland, Nick Feamster
ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop
Montreal, Quebec, Canada. July 2019.
Automatically Generating a Large, Culture-Specific Blocklist for China
Austin Hounsel, Prateek Mittal, Nick Feamster
USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet
Baltimore, Maryland. August 2018.

Industry

Mozilla
Privacy, Networking & Security Intern
Summer 2019 & Summer 2020.

Teaching

COS 461: Computer Networks
Princeton University
Spring 2019.

Press

We Tested Facebook’s Ad Screeners and Some Were Too Strict
J. Nathan Matias, Austin Hounsel, Melissa Hopkins
The Atlantic
November 2018.

Education

Princeton University
Ph.D. Computer Science
2017 - Present.
Princeton University
M.A. Computer Science
2017 - 2019.
The University of Texas at Austin
B.S.A. Computer Science, Minor in German
2013 - 2017.