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2005 USENIX Annual Technical Conference
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Technical Sessions: Wednesday, April 13 | Thursday, April 14 | Friday, April 15 | All in one file
FREENIX Track | Invited Talks Track | Guru is in Sessions

Thursday, April 14, 2005
9:00 a.m.–10:30 a.m. Thursday
GENERAL TRACK
Salon E

Defending Against Attacks
Session Chair: David Andersen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Active Internet Traffic Filtering: Real-Time Response to Denial-of-Service Attacks
Katerina Argyraki and David R. Cheriton, Stanford University

Building a Reactive Immune System for Software Services
Stelios Sidiroglou, Michael E. Locasto, Stephen W. Boyd, and Angelos D. Keromytis, Columbia University

Attrition Defenses for a Peer-to-Peer Digital Preservation System
T.J. Giuli, Stanford University; Petros Maniatis, Intel Research; Mary Baker, Hewlett-Packard Labs; David S. H. Rosenthal, Stanford University; Mema Roussopoulos, Harvard University

INVITED TALKS
Salon F

NFSv4
Spencer Shepler, Sun Microsystems

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With NFS version 4, the IETF has provided the first openly defined filesystem protocol. NFSv4 draws upon previous versions of NFS along with characteristics of other distributed filesystems to provide a useful, flexible framework for today's client and server environments. NFSv4 provides strong security through the use of either Kerberos V5, SPKM-3, or LIPKEY. NFSv4 combines the previously disparate set of protocols surrounding NFS into a single protocol. NFSv4 also allows for adaptation to future needs via minor versioning. The details of these features and the rest of the protocol will be reviewed as well as the performance characteristics of today's NFSv4 environment.

FREENIX TRACK
Salon G/H/J/K

Invited Talk
Under the Hood: Open Source Business Models in Context
Stephen R. Walli, Consultant

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People debate regularly about whether or not open source software is "good for business," and how one makes money on something given away "for free." They raise concerns over the commoditization effects and portray a gloomy future where open source software will "eat its way" up a stack of functionality until software is valueless.

This talk looks at historical open source companies, then steps back to look under the hood at a broader business context for the dynamics at work to provide a business model for open source software. Part of the story behind Microsoft's community projects will be told along the way.

GURU SESSIONS
Salon 4

Kerberos 5, LDAP, and Samba
Gerald Carter, Samba Team/Hewlett-Packard

Gerald Carter has been a member of the Samba Development Team since 1998. He has published articles with various Web-based magazines and teaches courses as a consultant for several companies. Currently employed by Hewlett-Packard as a Samba developer, Gerald has written books for SAMS Publishing and is the author of the recent LDAP System Administration for O'Reilly Publishing.

10:30 a.m.–11:00 a.m.   Break  
11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Thursday
GENERAL TRACK
Salon E

Improving Data Movement
Session Chair: Lucy Cherkasova, Hewlett-Packard Labs

Peer-to-Peer Communication Across Network Address Translators
Bryan Ford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Pyda Srisuresh, Caymas Systems, Inc.; Dan Kegel

Maintaining High-Bandwidth Under Dynamic Network Conditions
Dejan Kostic, Ryan Braud, Charles Killian, Erik Vandekieft, James W. Anderson, Alex C. Snoeren, and Amin Vahdat, University of California, San Diego

Server Network Scalability and TCP Offload
Doug Freimuth, Elbert Hu, Jason LaVoie, Ronald Mraz, Erich Nahum, Prashant Pradhan, and John Tracey, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

INVITED TALKS
Salon F

10–20x Faster Software Builds
John Ousterhout, Electric Cloud, Inc.

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Almost all software projects with more than a few dozen developers are plagued by slow builds that sap productivity, extend release schedules, and impact product quality. Parallel builds offer the potential of significant speedups, but previous attempts at parallelizing builds have had only modest success, primarily due to the lack of complete dependency information. In this talk I will present the architecture of Electric Cloud, a gmake-compatible build system that uses clusters of inexpensive servers to run massively parallel builds. The key to the Electric Cloud approach is that it deduces dependencies on the fly by monitoring file accesses during the build, so that it knows when it is or isn't safe to run build steps in parallel. I will also describe other aspects of the system, such as its versioning network file system and its use of peer-to-peer protocols for moving file data efficiently. Finally, I will compare Electric Cloud to other approaches such as distcc.

FREENIX TRACK
Salon G/H/J/K

Security Visualization
Session Chair: Crispin Cowan, Immunix

Ourmon and Network Monitoring Performance
James R. Binkley and Bart Massey, Portland State University

Brooery: A Graphical Environment for Analysis of Security-Relevant Network Activity
Christian Kreibich, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory

NetState: A Network Version Tracking System
Nancy Durgin, Yuqing Mai, and Jamie Van Randwyk, Sandia National Laboratories

GURU SESSIONS
Salon 4

VoIP with Asterisk
Heison Chak, SOMA Networks Inc.

Heison Chak is a systems and network administrator who works for SOMA Networks, focusing on network management and performance analysis of data and voice networks. Heison has been an active member of the Asterisk community and has delivered tutorials and articles for USENIX since 2004.

12:30 p.m.–2:00 p.m.   Lunch (on your own)  
2:00 p.m.–3:30 p.m. Thursday
GENERAL TRACK
Salon E

Short Papers I
Session Chair: Atul Adya, Microsoft Research

A Hierarchical Semantic Overlay Approach to P2P Similarity Search
Duc A. Tran, University of Dayton

A Parts-of-File File System
Yoann Padioleau and Olivier Ridoux, Campus Universitaire de Beaulieu

BINDER: An Extrusion-Based Break-In Detector for Personal Computers
Weidong Cui and Randy H. Katz, University of California, Berkeley; Wai-tian Tan, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

Proper: Privileged Operations in a Virtualised System Environment
Steve Muir, Larry Peterson, and Marc Fiuczynski, Princeton University; Justin Cappos and John Hartman, University of Arizona

AMP: Program Context Specific Buffer Caching
Feng Zhou, Rob von Behren, and Eric Brewer, University of California, Berkeley

Automatic Synthesis of Filters to Discard Buffer Overflow Attacks: A Step Towards Realizing Self-Healing Systems
Zhenkai Liang, R. Sekar, and Daniel C. DuVarney, Stony Brook University

INVITED TALKS
Salon F

Thin Clients: Past, Present, and Future
Jason Nieh, Columbia University

View presentation slides (PDF)

Exponential improvements in networking and the management cost and complexity of PCs are driving the reemergence of thin clients. But this is not a return to the past of dumbed-down terminals interfaces and limited functionality. Modern thin clients can provide rich PC application functionality and enable new application services while simplifying system administration and improving system security. These benefits arise from a model of running all application logic on servers which then simply send display updates to the clients. I will examine how thin clients can address today's IT infrastructure problems and I will then discuss challenges and opportunities.

FREENIX TRACK
Salon G/H/J/K

Invited Talk
Mac OS X Tiger: What's New for UNIX Users?

Dave Zarzycki, Senior Engineer, BSD Technology Group, Apple Computer

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Mac OS X "Tiger" contains hundreds of new features, many of them in the open-source UNIX "underpinnings" of the system. This talk will discuss new features in the Kernel, new support for rapid indexing and searching of filesystem data, extended file attribute management, strategies for increased performance and 64 bit application support, various software development tool updates, and Tiger's new subsystems for application logging and daemon/service control.

GURU SESSIONS
Salon 4

Startup Strategy
Stephen Walli, Optaros, Inc.

Stephen Walli is Vice President of Open Source Development Strategy for Optaros, Inc., a consulting services startup. He formerly toiled at Microsoft after founding and working as R&D VP at Softway Systems, another venture capital-backed startup.

3:30 p.m.–4:00 p.m.   Break  
4:00 p.m.–5:30 p.m. Thursday
GENERAL TRACK
Salon E

Short Papers II
Session Chair: Atul Adya, Microsoft Research

Facilitating the Development of Soft Devices
Andrew Warfield, Steven Hand, Keir Fraser, and Tim Deegan, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory

Implementing Transparent Shared Memory on Clusters Using Virtual Machines
Matthew Chapman and Gernot Heiser, University of New South Wales and National ICT Australia

Measuring CPU Overhead for I/O Processing in the Xen Virtual Machine Monitor
Ludmila Cherkasova and Rob Gardner, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

Fast Transparent Migration for Virtual Machines
Michael Nelson, Beng-Hong Lim, and Greg Hutchins, VMware, Inc.

Performance of Multithreaded Chip Multiprocessors and Implications for Operating System Design
Alexandra Fedorova, Harvard University and Sun Microsystems; Margo Seltzer, Harvard University; Christopher Small and Daniel Nussbaum, Sun Microsystems

Hyper-Threading Aware Process Scheduling Heuristics
James R. Bulpin and Ian A. Pratt, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory

INVITED TALKS
Salon F

Enhancing Network Security through Competitive Cyber Exercises
Colonel Daniel Ragsdale, Ph.D., United States Military Academy

View presentation slides (PDF)

Listen in MP3 format

The security of our information systems is constantly under attack. We propose that to make them safer, we should attack them even more. Setting up a competition where two or more sides try to defend their network against an adversarial team will provide an outlet for new and emerging defensive technologies and techniques. This competition will provide an environment where new defensive tactics can be deployed against real hackers. Two similar events that have been publicized recently are the DEFCON "capture the flag" competition and the military Cyber Defense Exercise. The two competitions follow different paradigms. The DEFCON event set all teams to be both attackers and defenders, while the Cyber Defense Exercise focuses the teams on defensive operations only.

The Cyber Defense Exercise (CDX), an annual competition between students at the five U.S. Service Academies, has developed into an extraordinary exercise where defensive technologies are implemented and tested. During the four years that this exercise has been conducted, the skill and the knowledge levels of the participants has improved so dramatically over the past three years that the CDX has become an excellent testing ground for new and emerging concepts in information assurance.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS REPORTS (WIPS)
Salon G/H/J/K

Session Chair: David Andersen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Short, pithy, and fun, Work-in-Progress reports introduce interesting new or ongoing work. If you have work you would like to share or a cool idea that's not quite ready for publication, send a one- or two-paragraph summary to usenix05wips@usenix.org. We are particularly interested in presenting students' work. A schedule of presentations will be posted at the conference, and the speakers will be notified in advance. Work-in-Progress reports are five-minute presentations; the time limit will be strictly enforced.

GURU SESSIONS
Salon 4

Open Source vs. Corporate Intellectual Property
Stormy Peters, Hewlett-Packard

Stormy Peters works at Hewlett-Packard in Fort Collins, Colorado where she is responsible for HP's open source strategy, policy, and business practices. She works with people inside and outside of HP to determine how open source software is changing the industry. Peters founded HP's Open Source Review Board (HP currently has over 200 products that contain open source software). The division reviews an average of 5 new projects a week that will use open source software.

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Last changed: 29 April 2005 aw