Research and Development Activity

The Advanced Network Management Lab (ANML) performs research and development related to several important areas of network management including:

•    Graph-based analysis of network data. ANML researchers work to develop methods and models to analyze patterns in network flow data in order to better understand internet user behavior and web traffic. Analyzing network flow is useful to network security, helping to identify unusual and potentially harmful network activity. It can also be used to model the behavior of network users; modeling techniques can be useful to academic and business endeavors ranging from network optimization to social science and market research. 

•    Supporting and fortifying national research networks. The ANML is involved in several projects that support network performance and security for national networking projects such as Internet2, to which IU is a contributing partner.

•    Network security. ANML research in the area of network security includes a collaborative project with the University of Michigan funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security focusing on “botnets”, networks of infected or compromised computers under the control of an unauthorized individual or individuals. Botnets are problematic because they are used to launch “denial of service” attacks against important hosts such as network nameservers, popular search engines and other critical Web infrastructure. This is a serious concern both for research and large commercial web sites. A system under development by the ANML merges network information from many sources into a daily report of potentially compromised systems so quick action can be taken by network engineers.

•    Protecting user privacy. The ANML is actively involved in projects that help to protect a user’s privacy while using the Internet.  ANML researchers have developed a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) based anonymity system to protect an individual’s privacy during online interactions.  ANML technologists also work on projects to combat “phishing”, a technique used by criminals to harvest personal or financial information about another individual on a network.