Interview with Ratul Mahajan, NSDI '14 co-chair

As we're finalizing plans for FAST '14 later this month, we're also looking ahead toward upcoming USENIX conferences. In this interview, program co-chair Ratul Mahajan offers a preview of what to expect at the 11th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI ’14), which will be held April 2-4 in Seattle, Washington.

Rikki: Who should attend and why?

Ratul: Researchers, engineers, and operators that are interested in the field of networked systems. It is a great opportunity to learn about the latest developments, network with like-minded people, and meet students (i.e., potential recruits).

Rikki: What can attendees expect to get from the event? And which talks or speakers stand out to you this year?

Ratul: We have a diverse program with 38 excellent papers. Ion [NSDI '14 program co-chair] and I are particularly excited about the “operational systems” session. It is new this year and is intended for a different breed of papers. Rather than pure research results, the papers describe the design and experience with large-scale, operational systems and networks. They offer a behind-the-scenes look at real networked systems, which is otherwise hard to come by. This year’s sessions includes papers that describes the design of Nicira/VMWare’s network virtualization system, experience with disk imaging in a multi-tenant data center, and design and experience with operating a VPN-based peer-to-peer system to bypass government censors.

Rikki: What else should we know about the event?

Ratul: It might rain. Bring your umbrella!

Interested in participating? There will be a poster and demo session during the Wednesday evening reception. Submissions are due February 7, 2014; see the Call for Posters for more information.

Register online and book your travel by March 10, 2014, for the greatest savings. See you in Seattle!

USENIX members support open access, including access to NSDI '13 archive videos like these:

Opening Remarks and Awards NSDI '13

Expanding Rural Cellular Networks with Virtual Coverage

Dasu: Pushing Experiments to the Internet’s Edge

Scaling Memcache at Facebook

P3: Toward Privacy-Preserving Photo Sharing

Find out more about USENIX membership benefits: https://www.usenix.org/membership-services