Computer Science Seminar by Oliver Michel: Network Systems for Optimizing Video-Conferencing Applications
Speaker:
Title: Network Systems for Optimizing Video-Conferencing Applications
Abstract
Over the past five years, video-conferencing applications (VCAs) have experienced explosive growth and play an essential role in our society. VCAs are increasingly complex, latency-sensitive, and resource-hungry. These trends do not only challenge the wide range of networks these applications run over (e.g., campus networks or cellular access networks), but also their core infrastructure that relays media streams among meeting participants. Starting with a unique cross-layer measurement approach, I dissect the operation of Zoom in a large campus network. Based on insights gathered through this study, I uncover various optimization opportunities for VCAs. Specifically, I first show how to improve the scalability of the core infrastructure of VCAs by up to two orders of magnitude by offloading the majority of media-relay and media-adaptation tasks to modern, programmable, and hardware-based packet processors. Second, I reveal specific mismatches between the traffic patterns in VCAs and the scheduling and capacity-allocation schemes that 5G wireless networks employ, leading to compromised Quality of Experience for users. I show how cross-layer optimizations can address these mismatches, advocating for tighter integration between access networks and latency-sensitive and demanding interactive applications.
Bio
Oliver Michel is an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University working with Professor Jennifer Rexford. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado Boulder, advised by Professor Eric Keller, and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Vienna. His research focuses on measuring and optimizing networks for emerging, low-latency, interactive networked applications, such as AR/VR and video conferencing. His measurement studies and system designs span the entire stack from rich, user-facing applications to the physical-layer intricacies of wireless access networks. Dr. Michel鈥檚 work has been published in top-tier venues, including IMC, NSDI, ATC, and HotNets.