Robert G. Cole, Ph.D.
US Army CERDEC
328 Hopkins Road
APG-N, Maryland, USA 21005
+1.410.278.6779 (office)
+1.410.278.1821 (fax)
robert.g.cole@us.army.mil
Contents:
Positions
Current Research Interests
Publications
Positions
JHU Department of Computer Science
I currently hold an Adjunct Research Faculty position in the Department of
Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.
I am using this as an opportunity to research new capabilities in challenged
networks, including
a) scalable routing, robustness and security in highly dynamic environments,
b) verifiable configuration management in Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs) and
tactical Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), and
c) new Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols
for resilient networking in a wireless environments
using Game Theoretic derivations and implementations through
a GNU-Radio prototype platform.
US Army CERDEC
I joined the US Army Communications Electronics Research and Development Center (CERDEC)
in February 2010. I am currently
the Deputy Director of the Army Research Laboratory's
Network Science - Collaborative Technology Alliance (NS-CTA).
The focus of my work on the NS-CTA is to promote transition of
research into Army systems.
As such, I am an active participant in the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
where my work focuses on MANET systems and resilient configuration
and performance management of mobile systems.
JHU Applied Physics Laboratory
Prior to joining the US Army CERDEC, I was a Senior Professional Staff member in
the Milton Eisenhower Research Center at
the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) / Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
I joined JHU/APL in 2003.
The focus of my work at APL was the performance analysis of and
enhancements to data communications networks.
In this context,
I was an active participant in the Global Information Grid (GIG)
Quality of Service (QoS) Working Group.
I worked on routing and security in tactical Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
(MANETs), inter-domain routing in the context of mobility extensions
to the GIG, architectures
and behaviors which support joint Precedence and Preemption (P&P) and
QoS transport in general data networks, and developing large
scale simulation tools and models of the GIG.
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Prior to working at JHU/APL, I worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories for roughly
twenty years.
While at Bell Laboratories, I worked in the areas of performance support
to data network fast packet switch product development, enterprise data
network performance assurance and analysis, frame relay, ATM and IP service
development, Fortune 500 sales and customer technical support,
design, prototyping, development and deployment
of performance monitoring tools,
and performance analysis consulting.
Current Research Interests
My current research interests are in the general area
of data networking performance and evaluation and related protocol
enhancements to improve overall system performance and reliability.
Specific topic areas of current study include:
Resilient Network Management in MANETs and DTNs
Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) and Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs)
pose unique challenges to network management systems and architectures.
Due to their mobility, they are typically bandwidth limited and often
disconnected from the management application.
Current management architectures rely upon autocratic configuration
management, rely upon high frequent interactions (polling) for performance management
and depend upon out-of-band mechanisms for fault tolerance to configuration errors.
Our work attempts to give some level of autonomy to remote devices to
control their configuration, to limit interactions over the network
do to limited bandwidth and limited connectivity and to develop
interaction models which match well with bundled transport protocols
designed for DTNs.
Some papers, abstracts and conference activity related to this work include:
Precedence and Preemption in Data Networks
Military networks rely upon the concept of precedence level
to indicate the importance of the
information content of the message.
This differs from the data networking concept of
Quality of Service (QoS), which deals
with the presentation of the information to specific applications
to ensure their proper operation.
The bulk of expertise in supporting Precedence and Preemption (P&P)
is in the context of telephony services, e.g., voice.
There is a need to generalize this capability to general data network applications.
It is all to common to find networks with claims of precedence handling
based upon Differentiated Services techniques. But these are bound to failure.
I am particularly interested in new per hop behaviors
for wireless networks supporting joint application
QoS and information content P&P.
I am analyzing these in the context of simulation models
and queuing theory, specifically stochastic diffusion models.
I am also interested in security aspects to
P&P packet handling, packet level authentication
and access controls and plan to experiment in this area in the
context of our GNU-Radio prototyping platform.
Some papers, abstracts and conference activity related to this work include:
Worm Propagation and Mitigation in Tactical MANETs
Much work is found in the literature related to computer
worm propagation and mitigation in the general Internet.
The analysis is often after-the-fact and the mitigation
techniques are encumbered by limitations
imposed by the scale and heterogeneity of the Internet.
Much less work has focused on propagation and mitigation in
tactical Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs).
I am investigating the differences between propagation in the
Internet versus tactical MANETs.
I am using the lessons learned to propose and
analyze mitigation techniques specific to tactical MANETs.
My collaborators and I have proposed a particular mitigation system which we refer to
as the Wireless Taps Mitigation Architecture (WTMA).
The WTMA relies on the presence of non-addressable, wireless monitors, i.e., Taps,
to develop performance signatures
of mission critical applications and to use these signatures
to detect anomalous behavior due to computer infections.
These Taps periodically broadcast network health reports
including recommendations for software rejuvenation.
We are currently analyzing this system's performance using analytic
and discrete event simulation models.
Some technical reports, abstracts and papers related to this work include:
Routing Security, Scalability and Trust in MANETs
For an individual, organization or country which is not
capable of matching the military power of its adversaries,
it may instead invest in technologies to disrupt
their adversaries' ability to communicate.
The tactical MANET component of an adversary often represents the most vulnerable
and challenging component of the warfighters' communications capability.
I am interested in tools and techniques to improve the
scalability of routing in tactical networks, in particular
their scalability across ground, air and space-based components.
Further, I am interested in methods to harden the
routing infrastructure of networks drawing
from methods develop to address Byzantine attacks.
I am currently investigating the performance of
reputation based systems for protection against insider attacks.
This is driving towards the design of methods for shared learning
and trust relationship development in distributed network environments.
I am also investigating the application of Beacon-Based
Routing Protocols in Tactical deployments and in the use as gateways
for integration into extremely large scale tactical deployments.
Some technical reports, papers and abstracts related to this work include:
- Multicast and Unicast
Beacon-Based Routing Protocols for MANETS,
- presents a simple and scalable multicast and unicast routing
capability in MANETs.
-
Gateways for Mobile Routing in Tactical Network Deployments,
- proposes and analyzes an inter-domain routing architecture for
tactical MANETs.
- Beacon-Based Routing for Tactical Networks
- a paper presented at IEEE MILCOM'07, Orlando, FL, USA, October (2007).
- Analysis of Multiple Trees on Path
Discovery for Beacon-Based Routing Protocols
- an invited talk at IEEE PACRIM'07, Victoria, BC, Canada, August (2007).
- Dynamics of Learning
Algorithms for the On-Demand Byzantine Secure Routing Protocol
- a paper presented at ESAS 2006, Hamburg, Germany, September (2006).
- Convergence Studies of Network
Based Learning Algorithms and Trust Relationships
- a technical report which presents an analysis of
specific trust relationships and learning algorithms in the
context of routing in networks.
Large Scale Simulation Models of the GIG
The Global Information
Grid (GIG) is an all IP network which is
unique in several aspects. Notably, the GIG relies heavily on wireless links, e.g.,
satellite and radio channels, and is expected to operate
under extremely harsh networking environments,
e.g., high levels of network damage.
Hence, this deployment is dramatically different from the deployment
of the Internet and the experiences gained in managing the Internet may not apply to the
operational behavior of the GIG.
For these reasons, I believe that large scale simulation studies
of the GIG under expected operational conditions are necessary
to gain pre-deployment experience
of GIG behavior. I have begun initial development of an
NS-2
simulation model of the GIG.
This work is in its initial phases due to the extremely large
level of effort required to develop an
operational picture of the GIG, including realistic traffic models,
network deployments and topologies,
protocol configurations and attack scenarios.
The NS-2 GIG simulation model relies upon the
BGP++
module to incorporate the inter-domain routing aspects of the network.
Future work on building a large scale GIG simulation model includes:
- development of improved traffic models,
- development of network attack models,
- integration of the BGP++ routing with the NS-2 routing capabilities,
- improvement of automatic simulation configuration scripts
to model large scale GIG topologies,
- improvements to the NS-2 MANET networking models, and
- numerous other enhancements and developments.
Important to the development of high fidelity simulation models of the GIG,
are tools and techniques which allow for the development of scalable simulation models.
Techniques to implement parallel network simulations have not performed well.
My colleagues and I have embarked on a project to incorporate stochastic
analytic models of queues and networks of queues into event driven network simulations.
This allows for improved scalability by analytically modeling background
traffic while explicitly handling foreground traffic as discrete events.
Some technical reports, papers and abstracts related to this work include:
- Scaling Network Simulation Technologies
Through Network Science,
- an abstract discussing further work on improved Brownian motion
models for scalable network simulations.
- Mixed Stochastic and Event Flows:
Brownian Motion Modeling for Simulation Dynamics,
- our first paper proposing, developing and analyzing the use
of Brownian Motion (and other stochastic) models for improved
network simulations.
- Quality of Service Enhancements to BGP for
the Global Information Grid (GIG),
- IEEE MILCOM, Atlantic City NJ, October (2005).
- Initial Investigations of BGP Performance on
a Global Information Grid Simulation Platform,
- IEEE MILCOM, Atlantic City NJ, October (2005).
- Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP4) Performance over
Intermittent Satellite Links,
- an article discussing some results from our participation in the
DARPA Network Modeling and Simulation program.
-
Investigations into the Application of NMS Tools to Modeling
of the Global Information Grid (GIG)
- a DARPA report which presents a discussion of the application
of the DARPA Network Modeling and Simulation (NMS) tools to modeling the
GIG. Also, discusses initial test cases in implementation of
these tools to GIG-like simulation studies.
Publications
- Herberg, U., Clausen, T. and R.G. Cole,
MANET Network Management and Performance Monitoring for NHDP and OLSRv2,
submitted to the CSNM Conference, Niageria Falls, NY, September (2010).
- Cole, R.G., Riley, G. and D. Cansever,
Scaling Network Simulation Technologies
Through Network Science,
abstract submitted to the Army Science Conference (ASC'10),
Orlando, FL, December (2010).
- Cole, R.G.,
Incompatibility Between Differentiated Services and
precedence and Preemption in Multi-Service IP Networks.,
abstract submitted to the Army Science Conference (ASC'10),
Orlando, FL, December (2010).
- Kumar, S., Cole, R.G. and A. Mishra,
Network Management for DTNs,
submitted to Globecom 2010, Miami, FL, (2010).
- Avritzer, A., Cole, R.G. and E. Weyuker,
Methods and Opportunities for
Rejuvenation in Aging Distributed Software Systems,
to appear in the Journal of Systems and Software, Elsevier, (2009).
- Avritzer, A., Tanikella, R., James, K., Cole, R.G. and E. Weyuker,
Monitoring Security Intrusion using
Performance Signatures,
Proceedings of the first joint WOSP/SIPEW International Conference
on performance Engineering, San Jose, CA, (2010).
- Herberg, U., Cole, R.G. and T. Clausen,
Definition of Managed Objects for the MANET
Optimized Link State Routing Protocol version 2,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
draft-ietf-manet-olsr-mib-02.txt, March (2010).
- Herberg, U., Cole, R.G. and I. Chakeres,
Definition of Managed Objects for the MANET
Neighbor Discovery Protocol,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
draft-ietf-manet-nhdp-mib-04.txt, March (2010).
- Harnedy, S., Cole, R.G. and I. Chakeres,
Definition of Managed Objects for the MANET
DYMO Routing Protocol,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
draft-ietf-manet-dymo-mib-03.txt, March (2010).
- Harnedy, S., Cole, R.G., Macker, J., Adamson, B. and S. Harnedy,
Definition of Managed Objects for the MANET
Scalable Multicast Framework,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
draft-ietf-manet-smf-mib-02.txt, March (2010).
- Cole, R.G., Macker, J. and A. Morton,
Definition of Managed Objects for Performance Reporting,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
draft-ietf-manet-report-mib-00.txt, June (2010).
- Cole, R.G., Romascanu, D. and A. Bierman,
A Verification Procedure for Configuration Management within
NETCONF,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
draft-cole-netconf-verify-00.txt, June (2010).
- Cole, R.G., Romascanu, D. and A. Bierman,
A Transaction Test Module for the NETCONF Verify Operation,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
draft-cole-netconf-transaction-test-00.txt, June (2010).
- Cole, R.G. and B. Awerbuch,
Multicast and Unicast
Beacon-Based Routing Protocols for MANETS,
invited talk at IEEE PACRIM'09, Victoria, BC, Canada, August (2009).
- Avritzer, A., Cole, R.G. and E. Weyuker,
Methods, Opportunities and Applications
of Software Rejuvenation,
First ACM International Workshop on Software Aging and Rejuvenation,
Seattle, WA, November (2008).
- Cole, R.G., Benmohamed, L., Cansever, D., Doshi, B. and B. Awerbuch,
Gateways for Mobile Routing in Tactical Network Deployments,
IEEE MILCOM'08, San Diego, CA, USA, October (2008).
- Benmohamed, L., Cole, R.G. and B. Doshi,
Scalable Inter-Domain Routing for the
Global Information Grid,
IEEE MILCOM'08, San Diego, CA, USA, October (2008).
- Cole, R.G.,
Precedence-enabled per-hop behavior:
impact on TCP and UDP flows,
IET Journal of Communications, The Institute of Engineering and Technology,
(2008).
- Cole, R.G., Riley, G., Cansever, D. and W. Yurcik,
Stochastic Process Models for
Packet/Analytic-Based Network Simulations,
ACM/IEEE Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulations (PADS'08),
Rome, Italy (2008).
- Cole, R.G., Awerbuch, B., Benmohamed, L., Cansever, D. and B. Doshi,
Gateways for Mobile Routing in Tactical Network Deployments,
invited talk at IEEE MILCOM'08, Orlando, FL, USA, October (2008).
- Cole, R.G., Riley, G., Cansever, D. and W. Yurcik,
Stochastic Process Models for
Packet/Analytic-Based Network Simulations,
The Kobayashi Workshop, Princeton, NJ,
May (2008).
- Cole, R.G.,
A Precedence and Preemption Enabled Per-Hop
Behavior: Impact on TCP and UDP ,
submitted to the IET Journal on Communications, March (2008).
- Cole, R.G. and B.S. Farroha,
Implications of Precedence and Preemption
Requirements on Packet Based Transport Architectures,
IEEE MILCOM'07, Orlando, FL, USA, October (2007).
- Cole, R.G.,
Impact of Precedence Enabled Per Hop
Behaviors on TCP Flows,
invited talk at IEEE MILCOM'07, Orlando, FL, USA, October (2007).
- Awerbuch, B., Holmer, D., Rubens, H. and R.G. Cole,
Beacon-Based Routing for Tactical Networks,
IEEE MILCOM'07, Orlando, FL, USA, October (2007).
- Awerbuch, B., Holmer, D., Rubens, H. and R.G. Cole,
Analysis of Multiple Trees on Path
Discovery for Beacon-Based Routing Protocols,
invited talk at IEEE PACRIM'07, Victoria, BC, Canada, August (2007).
- Farroha, B.S., R.G. Cole, Farroha, D.L. and A. DeSimone,
An Investigative Analysis of Information
Assurance Issues Associated with the GIG's P&P Architecture,
SPIE'07, Orlando, FL, USA, April (2007).
- Avritzer, A., R.G. Cole and E.J. Weyuker,
Using Performance Signatures and Software
Rejuvenation for Worm Mitigation in Tactical MANETs,
Workshop on Software Performance (WOSP'07), Buenos Aires, Argentina, February (2007).
- Chimento, P. and R.G. Cole,
Modeling and Simulation Studies for
Packet-Based Precedence and Preemption for FCS Communications,
Army Science Conference 2006, Orlando, FL, November (2006).
- Awerbuch, B., Curtmola, R., Holmer, D., Rubens, H. and R.G. Cole,
Dynamics of Learning Algorithms for the
On-Demand Byzantine Secure Routing Protocol,
ESAS 2006, Hamburg, Germany, September (2006).
- Cole, R.G., Kandaswamy, S. and A. Clark,
Studies Toward Improved VoIP Services
for Future Army Combat Systems,
invited talk, IEEE MILCOM, Atlantic City NJ, October (2005).
- Benmohamed, L., Doshi, B., DeSimone, A. and R.G. Cole,
Quality of Service Enhancements to BGP
for the Global Information Grid (GIG),
IEEE MILCOM, Atlantic City NJ, October (2005).
- Cole, R.G., Benmohamed, L., DeSimone, A. and B. Doshi,
Initial Investigations of BGP Performance
on a Global Information Grid Simulation Platform,
IEEE MILCOM, Atlantic City NJ, October (2005).
- Cole, R.G., Benmohamed, L., DeSimone, A. and B. Doshi,
Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP4)
Performance over Intermittent Satellite Links,
invited talk, IEEE PacRim Conference on Communications, Vancover BC, August (2005).
- Dietz, R. and R.G. Cole,
A MIB for Transport Performance Monitoring,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
RFC 4150, July (2005).
- Kalbfleisch, C., Cole, R.G. and D. Romascanu,
A MIB for Synthetic Sources for
Performance Monitoring,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
RFC 4149, July (2005).
- Cole, R.G., Phamdo, N., Rajab, M.A. and A. Terzis,
Requirements on Worm Mitigation Technologies
in MANETS,
ACM/IEEE Parallel and Distributed Simulation (PADS), Monterey CA, June (2005).
- Cole, R.G.,
Studies of Worm Propagation in Mobile
Ad-Hoc Networks for Future Combat Systems,
Army Science Conference 2004, Orlando FL, December (2004).
- Choudhury, G. and R.G. Cole,
Design and Analysis of
Optimal Adaptive De-jitter Buffers,
Journal of Computer Communications, 27 (6), pp 529-537 (2004).
- Cole, R.G., H. Lang, and E. Woerner,
"Monitoring System for SLA Compliance in VoIP Services",
AT&T Patent Application, June (2004).
- Friedman, T., et al,
RTP Control Protocol Extended Reports (RTCP XR),
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
RFC 3611, November (2003).
- Waldbusser, S., Cole, R.G., Kalbfleisch, C. and D. Romascanu,
Introduction to the Remote Monitoring
(RMON) Family of MIB Modules,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC 3577, August 2003.
- Choudhury, G. and R.G. Cole,
Design and Analysis
of Optimal Adaptive De-jitter Buffers,
Presentation to ITCOM 2002, Boston MA, July (2002).
- Choudhury, G. and R.G. Cole,
"A Method and Apparatus for Dynamically Adjusting Voice over Packet Dejitter Buffers",
AT&T Patent Application, July (2001).
- Glenn, P. and R.G. Cole,
"Achieving Toll Quality Voice over IP Networks",
a presentation to the 6th Alliance Engineering Symposium, April (2001).
- Cole, R.G., Hosseini-Nasab, M. and C. Appel,
"Service-View Performance Monitoring of Content Distribution Networks",
AT&T Patent Application, June (2001).
- Cole, R.G. and J. Rosenbluth,
Voice Over IP Performance
Monitoring,
Journal of Computer Communications Review, vol. 4, no. 3, April (2001).
- Cole, R.G., Dietz, R., Kalbfleisch, C. and D. Romascanu,
"A Framework for Synthetic Sources for Performance Monitoring",
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Draft, draft-cole-sspm-03.txt,
July 2001 (officially expired) and BOF at IETF in Adelaide Australia, March 2001.
- Amster, J.A., Cole, R.G. and J. Rosenbluth,
"Technique for Monitoring Conversational Voice Over Packet",
AT&T Patent Application 2000-0518, September
(2000).
- Cole, R.G., and Ramaswamy, R.,
http://www.amazon.com/books.html
Performance Engineering Wide Area Data Networks,
Artech House Publishing, Norwood, MA, 1999.
- Kinnear, K., Cole, R.G., Droms, R.,
"An Inter-server Protocol for DHCP",
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Draft,
draft-ietf-dhc-interserver-02.txt, September 1997. (officially expired)
- Cole, R.G., Shur, D.R., and Villamizar, C.,
IP over ATM: A Framework Document,
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Informational RFC 1932, (1995).
- Coffield, D., Cole, R.G. and Saksena, V.R.,
"The Leading Edge in High-Speed Data Communications Services:
The InterSpan Asynchronous Transfer Mode Service",
AT&T Technical Journal, vol. 74, pp. 38-49, July/August (1995).
- Cole, R.G.,
"Architectures and Issues in Mapping IP onto ATM Networks",
Invited Talk at the IETF IP over ATM Working Group and MBONE broadcast,
Houston, TX (1994).
- Rodrigues, M., Cole, R.G., and Fendick, K.,
"Flexible Service Guarantees in ATM Networks",
presented at the 3rd AT&T Performance Symposium.
- Cole, R.G., Fendick, K, and Rodrigues, M.,
"Service Guarantees/Congestion Control in High Speed data Networks",
Patent Award Number 5,335,224 (1994).
- Cole, R.G.,
"Complexities in ATM Service Development",
Invited Talk at the AIE Broadband Networking Conference, Denver, CO (1993).
- Kumar, A., Cole, R.G.,
"Comparative Performance of Interleaved and Non-interleaved Pipelining in ATM Terminal Adapters",
Journal on Computer Networks
and ISDN Systems, vol.27, pp. 521-535 (1995),
- Kumar, A. and Cole, R.G.,
"Comparative Performance of Interleaved and Non-Interleaved Pipelining in LAPD Terminal Adapters",
presented at INFOCOM'90 (1990).
- Cole, R.G.,
"Performance Modeling of 3270 BSC Virtual Private Lines over
Frame Relay Networks",
AT&T Technical Journal, vol. 67, pp. 41-56, September/October (1988).
- Cole, R.G. and Keyes, T.,
"The Velocity Correlation Function for the Lorentz Gas",
J. Statistical Physics, vol. 51, no.1 / 2, pp.275 (1988).
- Cole, R.G. and Keyes, T.,
"The Enskog Repeated Ring Equations for Tagged
Molecular Motion and Variational Solutions",
J. Statistical Physics, vol. 51, no.1 / 2, pp.249 (1988).
- Cole, R.G., Mazur, E., and Mason, E.A.,
"Theory of Thermomagnetic Effects in the Transition Regime",
J. Chemical Physics, vol. 87, pp. 2236 (1987).
- Cole, R.G. and Evans, G.T.,
"Dynamics in Polyatomic Fluids: A Kinetic Theory Approach",
Ann. Rev. Phys. Chem, vol. 37, pp. 105 (1986).
- Cole, R.G., Evans, D.R., and Hoffman, D.K.,
"A Renormalized Kinetic Theory of Dilute Molecular Gases: Chattering",
J. Chemical Physics, vol. 82, pp. 2061(1985).
- Cole, R.G. and Keyes,T.,
"Enskog Theory and the Kirkwood Instability",
J. Chemical Physics, vol. 83, pp. 906 (1985).
- Cole, R.G., Protopopescu, V., and Keyes, T.,
"Stationary Transport with Partial Reflecting Boundary Conditions II",
J. Chemical Physics, vol. 83, pp.
2384 (1985).
- Cole, R.G., Protopopescu, V., and Keyes, T.,
"Stationary Transport with Partial Reflecting Boundary Conditions I",
J. Chemical Physics, vol. 81, pp. 2771 (1984).
- Cole, R.G., Hoffman, D.K., and Evans, G.T.,
"Kinetic Theory of the Depolarized Light Scattering R Parameter II: Explicit Results",
J. Chemical Physics, vol. 80, pp. 5375 (1984).
- Cole, R.G., Hoffman, D.K., and Evans, G.T.,
"Kinetic Theory of the Depolarized Light Scattering R Parameter I: Formal Theory",
J. Chemical Physics, vol. 80, pp. 5365 (1984).
- Evans, G.T., Cole, R.G., and Hoffman, D.K.,
"A Kinetic Theory Calculation of the Orientational Correlation
Time of a Rotorlike Molecule in a Dense Fluid of Spheres",
J. Chemical Physics, vol. 80, pp. 5365 (1984).