Abstract: The centralized approach to content distribution has long been the exclusive purview of resource-rich content providers (Google, eBay, etc.) or the mark of unpopular content. Despite its allure with regards to content customization or safeguarding sensitive user data, content providers typically employ content distribution networks (CDNs) to meet their scaling and performance needs. The mutual exclusion of centralization and scalability is nearly unquestioned dogma, i.e. distributed schemes are nearly always better.

In this talk, I will discuss our work that shows that centralization and scalability can indeed play nice together without application-specific proxying. ScaleBox operates transparent to the client and network core offering scalable, centralized content distribution in the current Internet. To provide its performance, ScaleBox blends the novel contributions of stealth multicast, enhanced packet caching, TCP acceleration, and tail synchronization in an application-agnostic manner. The talk will give a detailed overview of ScaleBox and its components through both theoretical and general discussions. In particular, I will focus on the stealth multicast and TCP acceleration components and discuss our current implementation efforts regarding ScaleBox in both UNIX and the Intel IXP network processor.

Keywords: Multicast, Quality of Service, TCP, Multimedia, Caching

Short Bio: Dr. Aaron Striegel is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. in December 2002 in Computer Engineering at Iowa State University under the direction of Dr. G. Manimaran. His research interests include networking (bandwidth conservation, QoS), computer security, grid computing, and real-time systems. During his tenure as a student at Iowa State, he worked for various companies in research and development that included Sun Microsystems, Architecture Technology Corporation, and Emerson Process. He has received research and equipment funding from NSF, DARPA, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, Architecture Technology Corporation, and Intel. Dr. Striegel was the recipient of an NSF CAREER award in 2004.