Debanjan Saha

1774 Casey Court
Mohegan Lake, NY 10547
 Email: dsaha@us.ibm.com
Phone: 914-784-7182, Fax: 914-784-6205

 

INTEREST

  
  • Network systems, including optical switches, IP routers, and Internet servers.
  • Network protocols for provisioning and restoration in IP and optical networks.
  • Network security, including firewalls, VPNs, secure multicast, and secure servers.
  • Network planning, traffic engineering, and quality of service.

 

 

EXPERTISE

  
  • Hands-on experience in designing and building optical cross-connects, IP/ATM switches, and UNIX servers. 
  • Extensive knowledge of protocols and services at different layers of public networks including Optical, SONET/SDH, ATM, IP, and application layer.
  • Active in industrial and academic conferences as panelists, tutorial speaker, invited lecturer. Active participant in IETF, OIF, and other standards bodies.
  • Experience in product planning & management.

 

 

EDUCATION

 

 

Ph.D. in Computer Science, Summer 1995.
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.  GPA 4.0/4.0

M.S. in Computer Science, Spring 1992.
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. GPA 4.0/4.0

B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering, Spring 1990.
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. GPA 9.7/10.0

 

 

AWARDS

 

  • Outstanding teaching assistantship award, University of Maryland, 1993

  • NSAS graduate fellowship award, 1993.

  • Graduate fellowship award, University of Maryland, 1994

  •  IBM Research technical achievement award, 1997

  •  IEEE Communication Society William Bennett prize paper award, 2003.

  • IBM Research Best Paper Award, 2003

PROFESSIONAL
EXPERIENCE

 

Research Staff Member, Network Software & Services
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, January 2003 to date
As a senior member of the research staff at IBM Watson I’m leading a number of projects in the area of network services, network data analysis, and network applications funded by IBM customers as well as different IBM business units.

Director, Business Applications, Tellium, NJ,
January 2002 to January 2003
In this role my team and I work with our customers, some of the largest service providers all around the world, to architect and design next generation optical networks. We also help our customers identify opportunities for cost savings and create new services using optical switches. We have developed a very sophisticated network planning and analysis tool to facilitate this process. Customer inputs are used for product planning and management.

Manager, Internetworking & Applications, Tellium, NJ,
September 2000 to January 2002.
In this role I lead a team of architects and engineers to develop network control and management software for Tellium's Aurora optical switches. Specifically, we developed an IP-centric control plane based on GMPLS (Generalized Multi-protocol Label Switching) and Optical UNI standards. As a part of these activities I represented Tellium in different standards bodies, including IETF, OIF and helped define various standards. I am one of the primary authors of GMPLS and Optical UNI. This work resulted in a number of well-referred publications.

Principal Architect, Tellium, NJ,
January 2000 to September 2000.
In this role I was the primary architect of Tellium's optical mesh provisioning and restoration platform. I developed protocols for mesh provisioning that ultimately made their way into IETF GMPLS standards. I also developed mesh restoration protocols that powers Tellium's StarNet mesh restoration platform.

Member of Technical Staff, Lucent Bell Labs Research, NJ,
June 1999 to January 2001.
During my brief stint at Bell Labs I worked on a multi-service metro switching platform.

Research Staff, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, NY,
September 1995 to June 1999.
As a member of the Network Services and Security department I worked with various IBM business units and played a leading role in a number of projects including:

  • MPLS Switch: Developed one of the first industry prototypes of a switch-router implementing MPLS (Tag switching). It was based on IBM 8260 ATM switch core fitted with PowerPC-based packet processing hardware.

  • Content aware Ethernet switch: The goal of this project was to develop a content aware layer 5/7 switch that can be used as a front-end load-distributor in a large server farm. We used network processors to snoop into application layer headers and payloads for intelligent re-direction of client connections to appropriate servers. The switch was used for redirection of HTTP and HTTPS requests.

  • Toolkit for secure multicast: We developed a toolkit that could be used to enhance/add security to multicast applications.  The toolkit, written entirely in Java, supports scalable key management, and secure transport services.

  • High-performance secure web servers: The goal of this project was to improve the SSL/TLS performance of large internet servers used by IBM customers. The work involved benchmarking SSL/TLS performance on large server clusters, identifying the root cause for performance bottlenecks, and improving performance through software and protocol enhancements. One of the publications (Securing Electronic Commerce: Reducing the SSL Overhead, IEEE Network, July 2000) that resulted from this work is one of the most well referred articles on this subject.

Research Intern, IBM T.J. Watson, NY, Summer 1994.
Developed a video conferencing system. As part of the project I wrote a driver for prototype card that combined a JPEG coder and an Ethernet interface. I also developed necessary AIX Kernel enhancement and application software.

Technical Consultant, Bellcore, NJ, Summer 1993.
Developed one of the first prototypes of IP over ATM including an ARP server.

Research Scientist, NASA, MD, Spring 1993.
Studied and modeled the storage infrastructure used NASA for collection of hundreds of gigabytes of terrestrial data collected by satellites.

Student Intern, Allied Signals Aerospace, MD, Summer 1992.
Implemented real-time scheduling algorithms for flight simulation.

Research Assistant, University of Maryland, MD, 1992 to 1995.
As a research assistant in the systems group I researched various topics of networking and real-time operating systems. I also helped write a number of grant proposals to NSF and DARPA.

Teaching Assistant, University of Maryland, MD, 1990 to 1992.
As a teaching assistant for two years I taught a number of undergraduate classes at all levels. I received a CS departmental award for teaching excellence.

PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES

 

Guest Editor
IEEE Network, Special issue on Protection & Restoration, January 2004
IEEE Network, special issue on IP over Fiber, July 2001.
IEEE JSAC, special issue on QoS in the Internet, Dec 2000.
Journal of High-speed Network, special issues on QoS Routing, 1998.
Journal of High-speed Network, special issues on Multimedia Networking, 1998.

Program Committee Member
IEEE Global Internet 2000, 2001, and 2002, 2004
IEEE INFOCOM 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004
SPIE MMCN 1998,1999,2000
IEEE ICDCS 1997,1999
IEEE RTAS 1997,1999
IEEE Multimedia Information Systems, 1999, 2001

Executive Committee Member
IEEE INFOCOM 2001 – Panel Chair
IEEE INFOCOM 2002 – Tutorial Chair

Graduate Student Mentors
Mentored and served on the Ph.D. thesis committee of Prashant Pradhan, PhD 2001, SUNY Stonybrook.
Mentored Wu-chang Feng, PhD 1999, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

INVITED
LECTURES

 

Panels
QoS in Distributed Applications, ICDCS 1997
Can Internet be Secured?,  INFOCOM 1999
Optical Networking Technology,  Globecomm 2000
Core Network Evolution, Telecom Asia 2000
All-Optical Networks: Fact or Fiction, INFOCOM 2001
Future of Optical Networks, Wharton Technology Conference, 2001
Optical Standards Roundtable, IEC Technical Conference, 2001

Tutorials
IP-Centric Control and Management of Optical Networks, NANOG 2000.
Control and Management of Optical Networks, Hot Interconnect 2001
Control and Management for Optical Networks, INFOCOM 2001
IP Centric Control Architecture Optical Networks, Opticom 2001
 State of the Standards in Optical Networks, ECOC 2002

Invited Talks
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, Spring 1995.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Spring 1995.
Columbia University, New York City, New York, Spring 1995.
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, Fall 1997.
Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea, Fall 1997.
AT&T Labs, Florham Park, New Jersey, Spring 1998.
Carnegie Melon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Fall 1998.
Lucent Bell Labs, Holmdel, New Jersey, Spring 1999.

BOOKS

 

Control and Management of Modern Optical Networks, (with Greg Bernstien and Bala Rajagopalan), Addison Wesley, August 2003.

JOURNAL
PAPERS

1.       Optical Network Control Plane: State of the Standards and Deployment, IEEE Communications, August 2003 (with Bala Rajagopalan and Greg Bernstein).

2.       Switched Optical Backbone for Cost-Effective Scalable Core IP Networks, IEEE Communications, June 2003 (with Sudipta Sengupta and Vijay Kumar).

3.       Inter-carrier Bandwidth Exchange: An Engineering Framework, IEEE Communications, January 2003 (with Subir Biswas and Nitish Mandal).

4.       Blue: A New Class of Active Queue Management Algorithms, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, October 2002 (with Wu-chang Feng, Dilip Kandlur, and Kang G. Shin). Winner of IEEE Communication Society 2002 William Bennett award.

5.       Converging Optical and IP: Can GMPLS Take Control?, Communications Systems Design, February 2002.

6.       Scalable Flow Control for Multicast ABR Services in ATM Networks, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, February 2002, (with Xi Zhang; Kang G. Shin; Dilip Kandlur).

7.       Capacity Performance of Dynamic Provisioning in Optical Networks, Journal of Lightwave Technology, January 2001, (with Ramu Ramamurthy et al). 

8.       IP-centric Control and Management of Optical Transport Networks, IEEE Communications, October 2000, (with Greg Bernstein, and Jennifer Yates).

9.       IP over Optical Networks: Architectural Aspects, IEEE Communications, September 2000,  (with Bala Rajagopalan, Dimitrios Pendarakis, Ramu Ramamoorthy, and Krishna Bala).

10.   Securing Electronic Commerce: Reducing the SSL Overhead, IEEE Network, July 2000, (with George Apostolopoulos, Vinod Peris, Prashant Pradhan).

11.   Adaptive Packet Marking for Providing Differentiated Services in the Internet, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, October 1999,  (with Wu-chang Feng, Dilip Kandlur, and Kang G. Shin).

12.   Understanding and Improving TCP Performance over Networks with Minimum Rate Guarantees, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, April 1999,  (with Wu-chang Feng, Dilip Kandlur, and Kang G. Shin).

13.   A Distributed Scheduling Algorithm for Real-Time Communication on Slotted Shared Medium, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, July 1999, (with Sarit Mukherjee, Manas C. Saksena, and Satish Tripathi).

14.   Design and Implementation of a QoS Capable Switch-Router, Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, January 1999, (with Erol Basturk et. al.).

15.   Carry Over Round Robin: A Simple Cell Scheduling Mechanism for ATM Networks, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, December 1998, (with Sarit Mukherjee and Satish Tripathi).

16.   Design and Implementation of an RSVP based Quality of Service Architecture for Integrated Services Internet, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, September 1996, (with Dilip Kandlur, and Marc Willebeek-LeMair).

17.   Protocol Architecture for Multimedia Applications over ATM Networks, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, May 1998, (with Tsipora Barzilai, Dilip Kandlur, and Ashish Mehra).

18.   Multirate Scheduling of VBR Video Traffic in ATM Networks, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, August 1997, (with Sarit Mukherjee and Satish Tripathi).

19.   An Analysis of the Average Message Overhead in Replica Control Protocols, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, October 1996, (with Sampath Rangarajan, and Satish Tripathi).

20.   A Preemptive Protocol for Voice-Data Integration in Ring-Based LAN: Performance Analysis and Comparison. Performance Evaluation, 1995, (with Sarit Mukherjee and Satish Tripathi).

21.   Static and Dynamic Processor Scheduling Disciplines in Heterogeneous Parallel Architectures, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, July 1995, (with Daniel Menasce et al).

22.   IP on ATM LANs, IEEE Communications, August 1994, (with Dipak Ghosal, Jonathan Chao, and Satish Tripathi).

 

CONFERENCE
PAPERS

1.       A Geographic Redirection Service for On-line Games, to appear in the proceedings of ACM Multimedia 2003, (with Chris Chambers, Wu-chi Feng, Wu-chang Feng).

2.       A Service Platform for Online Games, in the proceedings of NetGames 2003 (with Sambit Sahu and Anees Shaikh).

3.       Routing and Grooming in Two-tier Survivable Optical Mesh Networks, IWQoS 2003, (with Somdip Dutta, Subir Biswas, and Sudipta Sengupta).

4.       A GMPLS-based Control Plane for Optical Networks: An Implementation Experience, in the proceedings of SPIE ITCOM 2002, (with Hang Liu et. al.).

5.       Protecting IP Backbone: Optical vs. MPLS Restoration, European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) 2002, (with Sudipta Sengupta and Srinivas Bontu).

6.       Optical Backbone Architectures for Interconnecting Gigabit IP Routers: A Business Perspective, in the proceedings of NFOEC 2002,  (with Sudipta Sengupta and Srinivas Bontu)

7.       Mining Services From the Optical Layer, in the proceedings of NFOEC 2002, (with Steve French and Dimitris Pendarakis).

8.       Analysis of Enhanced OSPF for Routing Lightpaths in Optical Mesh Networks, in the proceedings of IEEE ICC 2002, (with Sudipta Sengupta and Sid Chaudhuri).

9.       Blue: An Alternative Approach To Active Queue Management, in the proceedings of IEEE NOSSDAV 2001, (with Wu-chang Feng, Dilip Kandlur, and Kang G. Shin).

10.   Stochastic Fair Blue: A Queue Management Algorithm for Enforcing Fairness, in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2001, (with Wu-chang Feng, Dilip Kandlur, and Kang G. Shin).

11.   Design, Implementation, and Performance of a Content Based Switch, in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2000, (with George Apostolopoulos, Vinod Peris, and Prashant Pradhan).

12.   A Self-Configuring RED Gateway, in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 1999, (with Wu-chang Feng, Dilip Kandlur, and Kang G. Shin).

13.   Transport Layer Security: How much does it really cost?, in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 1999, with (George Apostolopoulos, and Vinod Peris).  

14.   Key management for Secure Internet Multicast using Boolean Function Minimization Techniques, in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 1999, (with Isabel Chang, Robert Engel, Dilip Kandlur, and Dimitrios Pendarakis).

15.   Scalable Flow Control for Multicast ABR Services, in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 1999, (with Xi Zhang; Kang Shin, and Dilip Kandlur).  

16.   Adaptive Packet Marking for Providing Differentiated Services in the Internet, in the proceedings of IEEE ICNP 1998, (with Wu-chang Feng; Dilip Kandlur, and Kang Shin).

17.   Exploring the Performance Impact of QoS Support in TCP/IP Protocol Stacks, in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 1998, (with Robert Engel, Dilip Kandlur, and Ashish Mehra). 

18.   Using Network Layer Anycast for Load Distribution in the Internet, in the proceeding of IEEE Global Internet 1998, (with Erol Basturk, Robert Engel, Robert Haas, and Vinod Peris).

19.   Understanding TCP Dynamics in an Integrated Services Internet, in the proceedings of IEEE NOSSDAV 1997, (with Wu-chang Feng, Dilip Kandlur, and Kang G. Shin).  

20.   Design and Implementation of a QoS Capable Switch-router, in the proceedings of International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks 1997, (with Erol Basturk et al).

21.   Design and Implementation of an RSVP-based Quality of Service Architecture for Integrated Services Internet, in the proceedings of IEEE ICDCS 1997, (with Tsipora Barzilai, Dilip Kandlur, Ashish Mehra, and Steve Wise).

22.   Carry-over Round Robin: A Simple Cell Scheduling Mechanism for ATM networks, in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 1996, (with Sarit Mukherjee and Satish Tripathi).  

23.   Multirate Scheduling for Guaranteed and Predictive Services in ATM networks, in the proceedings of IEEE RTSS 1996, (with Sarit Mukherjee and Satish K. Tripathi).

24.   A Video Conferencing Testbed on ATM: Design, Implementation and Optimizations, in the proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems 1995, (with Dilip Kandlur, Tsipora Barzilai, Z. Shae, and Marc Willebeek-LeMair).

25.   On Guaranteed Delivery of Time-critical Messages in DQDB, in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 1994, (with Manas Saksena, Sarit Mukherjee, and Satish Tripathi).  

26.   Multi-rate Traffic Shaping and End-to-end Performance Guarantees in ATM Networks, in the proceedings of the IEEE ICNP 1994, (with Sarit Mukherjee and Satish Tripathi).  

27.   A Design for Implementation of the Internet Protocol in a Local ATM Network, in the proceedings of SUPERCOMM/ICC 1994, (with Dipak Ghosal and Jonathan Chao).

28.   A Bandwidth Allocation scheme for Time Constrained Message Transmission on a Slotted Ring LAN, in the proceedings of IEEE RTSS 1993, (with Sarit Mukherjee, Manas Saksena, and Satish Tripathi).

29.   Average Message Overhead of Replica Control Protocols, in the proceedings of IEEE ICDCS 1993, with (Sampath Rangarajan and Satish Tripathi).

30.   Signature Analyzers based on Additive Cellular Automata, in the proceedings of IEEE FTCS 1990, (with Aloke Das et al.).

 

 

STANDARDS
CONTRIBUTIONS

1.       Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) Architecture, IETF work in progress, draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-architecture-01.txt, , March 2002.

2.       GMPLS Extensions for SONET and SDH Control, IETF work in progress,
draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-sonet-sdh-extensions-00.txt, March 2002.

3.       Link Management Protocol (LMP), IETF work in progress,
draft-ietf-ccamp-lmp-02.txt, March 2002.

4.       Routing Extensions in Support of Generalized MPLS, IETF work in progress,
draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-routing-02.txt, March 2002.

5.       OSPF Extensions in Support of Generalized MPLS, IETF work in progress,
draft-ietf-ccamp-ospf-gmpls-extensions-04.txt, March 2002.  

6.       ISIS Extensions in Support of Generalized MPLS, IETF work in progress,
raft-ietf-isis-gmpls-extensions-08.txt, March 2002.  

7.       Generalized MPLS Signaling - CR-LDP Extensions, IETF work in progress,
draft-ietf-mpls-generalized-cr-ldp-05.txt,  March 2002.  

8.       Generalized MPLS Signaling - RSVP-TE Extensions, IETF work in progress, 
draft-ietf-mpls-generalized-rsvp-te-06.txt,  March 2002.  

9.       Generalized MPLS - Signaling Functional Description, IETF work in progress, 
draft-ietf-mpls-generalized-signaling-07.txt, March 2002.

10.   GMPLS Extensions for SONET and SDH Control, IETF work in progress, 
draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-sonet-sdh-02.txt, March 2002

PATENTS PENDING

 

1.       Key Distribution Mechanism for Secure Multicast over a Network, (with Isabel Chang, Robert Engel, Dilip Kandlur, and Dimitrios Pendarakis).

2.       A Mechanism for Watermarking Digital Media for Distribution using Multicast, (with Isabel Chang, Robert Engel, Dilip Kandlur, and Dimitrios Pendarakis).

3.       Mechanisms for Mesh Restoration in an Optical Network, (with Bala Rajagopalan).