Annual Report 2010 - Fachgruppe Informatik an der RWTH Aachen ...

Overview
In 2010 the former Chair Informatik 4 and its associated Research Group on Distributed
Systems merged to form the new Chair of Communication and Distributed Systems.
This merger followed the appointment of Klaus Wehrle, former Head of the Distributed
Systems Group, as new Chairholder. The two entities merged on 1 August 2010.
The research focus of the former Chair Informatik 4 was on the design and evaluation of
communication networks and distributed systems, with a particular emphasis on traffic
engineering, mobile and ad-hoc networks, agents, and security aspects. In particular, this
included:
• Mobile and Wireless Networks (Security Management, Traffic Models, Mobile
Internetting, Mobile Middleware, Mobile Ad-hoc Networks)
• Network Management (Mobility Management, Quality-of-Service Support, Cooperative
Management, Traffic Engineering, Differentiated Services)
• Mobile and Intelligent Agents (Agents in Telecommunications and Health Care, Agents in
Mobile Telecommunication Networks)
• Security in Networks (Anonymity Protocols, Intrusion Detection)
• Standardisation Research
The vision of the Distributed Systems Group was the development of flexible, scalable &
resilient communication systems and the required models, methods, and tools to design,
analyze, realize, and evaluate these systems.
The range of systems considered covered complex and massively distributed Peer-to-Peersystems,
traditional Internet-based communication systems, highly mobile, ubiquitous
devices, embedded systems, and highly integrated Microsystems, such as sensor nodes.
With flexibility, scalability, mobility and resilience as key challenges in mind, they identified
three important research areas:
• Protocol- and Systems-Engineering:
– Engineering of Resilient and Flexible Communication Systems
– Structured Engineering of Protocols and (Embedded) Systems
– Models, Methods and Tools for Protocol and Systems Development
– Verification and Validation of Protocols and Communication Systems
• Self-Organization and Coordination in (Massively) Distributed Systems:
– Scalability and Resilience in Massively Distributed Systems
– Structured Peer-to-Peer-Systems, Distributed Hash-Tables (DHTs)
– Self-Organization in Massively Distributed Systems
– Load-Balancing and Resilience in Structured P2P-Systems
– Security, Trust and Anonymity in Massively Distributed Systems
– Infrastructure Services in/for Massively Distributed Systems
• New Network Architectures:
– Flexible and Scalable Communication Support in/for Distributed Systems
– Support for Various Communication Forms
– Mobility Support for Distributed Systems
– Support for Services in the Network and their Composition
– Bridging the Limitations/Heterogeneity of Today's Internet
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