• Message from the General Chairs
• Message from the Program Chairs

Message from the General Chairs

Welcome to Boston, the intellectual hub and melting pot of the Universe, and welcome to the International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), the melting pot of ideas from networking researchers and practitioners interested in all aspects of computer network protocols from specification and design to analysis and verification, and from prototyping and implementation to testing and deployment.

Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and hosted by the Web and InterNetworking Group at Boston University, with generous support from the National Science Foundation and IBM, the 13th IEEE ICNP is held in Bostons historic Back Bay area, a stones throw away from where the first optical one-if-by-land-and-two-if-by-sea bit, the first telegraph, the first transatlantic radio message, and the first email all originated. Against the background of such rich traditions, it is befitting for ICNP 2005 to also be a conference with many firsts!

The ICNP conference has a long-standing track record of excellence and this year is no exception. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the technical program co-chairsProfessors Ibrahim Matta of Boston University and Mohamed Gouda of the University of Texas at AustinICNP 2005 is packed with an excellent mix of plenary sessions, technical sessions, work-in-progress sessions, tutorials, and for the first time this year an exciting pre-conference workshop on secure network protocols. On behalf of the ICNP steering committee and on behalf of all attendees, we thank Ibrahim and Mohamed and all members of the technical, tutorial, and workshop committees for producing such a wonderful program.

For the first time this year, and in an effort to reach out to a more diverse audience, we have been able to offer travel awards to encourage participation from constituents who otherwise are not able to attend the conference namely graduate students who are not presenting papers at the conference, and faculty members belonging to (or at institutions serving) under-represented groups. The inclusion in ICNP of a travel grant program targeting minorities and minority-serving institutions is the first such initiative in a major computer science/networking conference. These travel awards would not have been possible without the generous support of the NeTS program of the National Science Foundation. On behalf of the organizing committee and on behalf of all awardees, we extend our appreciation to NSF and in particular to Darleen Fisher who embraced the outreach goals underlying these awards.

Another first that we are proud to announce at ICNP 2005 is the institution of the ICNP Outstanding Technical Achievements Award, which aims to recognize and honor individuals who have made particularly significant and fundamental contributions to the art and science of networking protocol design, analysis, and implementation. We are thankful to the ICNP steering committee for their consideration and adoption of this idea and we look forward to celebrating the first administration of this award in ICNP 2006.

On behalf of all attendees, we would like to thank the staff of the IEEE Computer Society and the TC on Distributed Processing for their continued sponsorship of the conference. Special thanks are also due to the ICNP steering committee and in particular to Ken Calvert and David Lee for their invaluable advisory roles.  Last but not least, we wish to express our appreciation to the many members of the WING group and to the staff of the Computer Science Department at Boston University for their logistical and technical help, including the multicast of the ICNP technical presentations in real-time a first in ICNPs history. Special thanks are due to Ms. Ellen Grady for her hard work on local arrangements and registration, which have kept the registration fees for ICNP well below the norm for major conferences, especially in a prime location such as Bostons historic Back Bay area.

In closing, let us emphasize that one of the most important characteristics of ICNP is the truly open nature of its communitya community that welcomes and embraces new members. It is that welcoming and interactive nature of ICNP that makes it the perfect venue for introducing new comers to the networking community and for these new comers to forge meaningful networks. It is in that spirit that we welcome you to ICNP 2005, whether this is your first time or thirteenth time around. We hope that you will enjoy the program and the city of Boston, that you will make the most out of your participation, and that you will come back to ICNP for many years to come!

Azer Bestavros and Jim Kurose

ICNP 2005 General Co-Chairs

Message from the Program Chairs

It is with honor and privilege that we welcome you at ICNP 2005. On its thirteenth anniversary, ICNP is back in Boston for the second time. The first time ICNP was held in Boston was in 1994 and since then, the reputation of ICNP has rapidly grown and ICNP has become one of the premier conferences in the field of computer networking.

The goal of the conference is to present significant research contributions to the field of network protocols. The number and the quality of the submissions remained high, commensurate with the competitive nature of ICNP. In total we received 212 submissions from all over the world. During the first phase of the review process, each submission was assigned to at least three program committee members. During the second phase, the program committee members discussed the paper reviews online to resolve conflicts and reach consensus as much as possible. In the final phase of the review process, the program committee met on June 25, in Boston, to further discuss and make final decisions on the acceptance of papers. Additional reviews were obtained during and after the meeting, and so many papers ended up with a total of four or five reviews. This whole rigorous review process resulted in over 670 reviews. Finally, 36 full papers were selected for publication and presentation at ICNP 2005, resulting in an overall acceptance rate of about 17%. This means unfortunately that many high-quality papers could not be accommodated into the program.

The selected papers constitute a solid program of stimulating and timely topics on network protocols. They are organized in sessions on traffic engineering, sensor and ad-hoc protocols, routing in the Internet and ad-hoc networks, congestion control, peer-to-peer and overlay protocols, security and safety, wireless transport, and protocol implementation and analysis.

The technical sessions are supplemented by a student poster session, which had a separate call for submissions and review process. We thank Professor Michalis Faloutsos of UC Riverside for organizing this poster session, and also thank other members of the poster review committee.

In addition, the program features a keynote speech by Professor Larry Peterson of Princeton University on A Strategy for Continually Reinventing the Internet, and an invited talk by Darleen Fisher of the National Science Foundation on "NSF NeTS Initiatives on New Architectures and Protocols".

For the first time, the program also includes a timely workshop on "Secure Network Protocols (NPSec)" that is held together with the tutorials to precede the main conference. We would like to extend our special thanks to Professor Sonia Fahmy of Purdue University for serving as the NPSec 2005 general chair. She had skillfully put together an outstanding organizing committee and put in tremendous effort in all aspects, including producing the NPSec proceedings and ensuring a successful launch of this first ICNP workshop. We are thankful to Professor George Kesidis of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. Nicholas Weaver of the International Computer Science Institute for serving as the NPSec 2005 technical program co-chairs, and to all members of the NPSec 2005 organizing and technical program committees.

Many thanks go to Dr. Debanjan Saha of IBM research and Dr. Nina Taft of Intel Research for their hard work in seeking and reviewing tutorial submissions and putting together a high-quality and timely tutorial program.

It would have not been possible to put together such a strong program without the efforts and contributions of all the authors and speakers, all members of the steering and technical program committees, and the additional reviewers. We thank them all.

Last but not least, we would like to extend our special thanks to the general co-chairs, Professors Azer Bestavros of Boston University and Jim Kurose of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the executive committee chair, Professor David Lee of the Ohio State University, for their support. We also thank Dr. Milind Buddhikot of Bell Labs for his efforts as publicity chair, and Chani Johnson of Microsoft for his tremendous help in setting up and maintaining the web-based conference management system.

We hope that you will enjoy the ICNP 2005 program and that you will have some time to enjoy all what Boston has to offer!

Ibrahim Matta and Mohamed Gouda
ICNP 2005 Technical Program Co-Chairs

FURTHER INFORMATION:

Web site: http://csr.bu.edu/icnp2005

E-mail: icnp2005-org AT cs.bu.edu

Last update: Tuesday October 11, 2005
comments to: icnp2005-org AT cs.bu.edu