Professor Jennifer Rexford

Digital Library

ACM Athena Lecturer Award

USA - 2016

citation

For innovations that improved the efficiency of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) in routing Internet traffic, for laying the groundwork for software-defined networks (SDNs), and for contributions in measuring and engineering IP networks.

Press Release

ACM Fellows

USA - 2008

citation

For contributions to network control and management systems.

ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award

USA - 2004

citation

For models, algorithms, and deployed systems that assure stable and efficient Internet routing without global coordination.

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the glue that holds the disparate parts of the Internet together. However, the rapid commercialization of the Internet in the last decade has put a significant strain on the interdomain-routing system. Unlike traditional routing protocols, BGP allows the operators of each domain to design policies for selecting paths to reach the Internet's many destinations and deciding which other networks may use these paths.

BGP offers significant flexibility in selecting policies, but these policies have (at best) an indirect influence on where the traffic goes. Jennifer Rexford's work has addressed these problems through deep understanding and innovation across Computer Science theory, networking protocols, Internet economics, and ISPs' operational practices.

Dr. Rexford's work with Lixin Gao was the first to recognize that business relationships in the Internet have a profound influence on the behavior of the underlying protocols. This work identified simple policy guidelines that ensure the global routing system converges while remaining faithful to the economic incentives of each domain. Dr. Rexford's work with Nick Feamster provided an efficient algorithm for modeling the effects of BGP policy changes on the flow of traffic through a domain. The operators of each domain can use the algorithm to select routing policies that maximize user performance and balance network load. Hence Dr. Rexford's work identified how each domain should constrain its policies to meet the overarching goal of the stability of the Internet, as well as the concrete methods each domain can apply to satisfy its own engineering goals within those constraints.

ACM Council on Women Hails Leader in Data Networking

Princeton's Rexford Created Models of Network-Wide Traffic Flows and Measurement that Revolutionized Research, Industry

Jennifer Rexford of Princeton University has been named as the 2016-2017 ACM-W Athena Lecturer. Rexford was cited for innovations that improved the efficiency of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) in routing Internet traffic, for laying the groundwork for software-defined networks (SDNs) and for contributions in measuring and engineering IP networks. These contributions greatly enhanced the stability and flow of Internet transmissions, and make data networks easier to design, understand and manage.

“BGP is the ‘glue’ that binds the Internet together and Jennifer’s innovations have vastly improved the BGP’s effectiveness,” said Judith Olson, who heads the ACM-W awards committee. “Her work played an important role as the Internet became a worldwide phenomenon, and she continues pioneering work to address the growing challenges presented by issues such as scalability and security.”

Networks facilitate communications between computing devices, but to be able to communicate, computers or applications need to use the same communication protocols. In the field of Internet interdomain routing, Rexford’s work has had a substantial impact on the BGP, a framework that makes routing decisions based on paths, network policies or rule-sets configured by a network administrator. BGP supports flexible policies for how traffic flows through the Internet, but conflicting policies in different networks can easily lead to instability. Rexford’s research showed that the local economic incentives that drive operational routing policies lead to a stable global routing system. More recently, Rexford has designed incrementally-deployable extensions to BGP to greatly improve both the security and the scalability of Internet routing.

Rexford also made major advances in laying the foundation for software-defined networking (SDN). A traditional problem in data networking has been the tight coupling of proprietary control software with the underlying network devices, stifling innovation. In her seminal work, “Design and Implementation of a Routing Control Platform,” Rexford proposed a way to separate a network’s control software from its data functions. Her framework laid the groundwork for today’s software-defined networking. More recently, Rexford's collaborations with programming languages researchers created powerful new abstractions for designing new network control applications. SDN enables new degrees of innovation within the network and has revolutionized networking research and industry.

The 2016-2017 Athena Lecturer will be formally recognized at the ACM Annual Awards Banquet, June 11, in San Francisco, California. Rexford’s Athena Lecture will be delivered at an event to be determined.

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