Jon Crowcroft

Bio: Jon Crowcroft is an academic researcher from University of Cambridge. The author has contributed to research in topics: The Internet & Multicast. The author has an hindex of 87, co-authored 672 publications receiving 38848 citations. Previous affiliations of Jon Crowcroft include Memorial University of Newfoundland & Information Technology University.

Beyond COVID-19: network science and sustainable exit strategies

Abstract: On May 28th and 29th, a two day workshop was held virtually, facilitated by the Beyond Center at ASU and Moogsoft Inc. The aim was to bring together leading scientists with an interest in network science and epidemiology to attempt to inform public policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Epidemics are at their core a process that progresses dynamically upon a network, and are a key area of study in network science. In the course of the workshop a wide survey of the state of the subject was conducted. We summarize in this paper a series of perspectives of the subject, and where the authors believe fruitful areas for future research are to be found.

Experiments in Mobile Social Networking

Abstract: Number: CR-PRL-2008-02-0003Date: February 7th 2008Abstract: In this report we consider a mobile ad hoc network settingwhere users of Bluetooth enabled devices meet and communicate op-portunistically as when random people meet in a cafe, or researchersmeet at a conference. Ad hoc opportunistic contacts are built on thebasis of pre-defined relationships in online social networks. Our ap-proach distinguishes itself from previous work in the area by threecharacteristics: the removal of a need for a central server to conductexchanges, the focus on the transitive closure of relationships, andthe use of existing social networks as a reference point for under-standing whether an exchange is desirable. We design MobiClique,a social interaction communication software package that we imple-ment on smartphones. We develop three applications: ad hoc socialconnections, epidemic newsgroups and asynchronous messaging. Wedescribe our experience with 28 users at a networking conference. Wediscover that despite the usual experimental hazards, MobiClique wassuccessful at building a local social network and delivering more than300 user generated messages over 3 days through multi-hop epidemiccommunication.

Connecting the Edges: A Universal, Mobile-Centric, and Opportunistic Communications Architecture

Abstract: The Internet has crossed new frontiers with access to it getting faster and cheaper Considering that the architectural foundations of today's Internet were laid more than three decades ago, the Internet has done remarkably well until today coping with the growing demand However, the future Internet architecture is expected to support not only the ever growing number of users and devices, but also a diverse set of new applications and services Departing from the traditional host-centric access paradigm, where access to a desired content is mapped to its location, an information-centric model enables the association of access to a desired content with the content itself, irrespective of the location where it is being held UMOBILE tailors the information-centric communication model to meet the requirements of opportunistic communications, integrating those connectivity approaches into a single architecture By pushing services near the edge of the network, such an architecture can pervasively operate in any networking environment and allows for the development of innovative applications, providing access to data independent of the level of end-to-end connectivity availability

Location based placement of whole distributed systems

Abstract: The high bandwidth and low latency of the modern internet has made possible the deployment of distributed computing platforms. The XenoServe platform provides a distributed computing platform open to all and presents three major new challenges for resource discovery: Firstly, network location is key for effectively provisioning services, to mitigate against high-latency, high-load or component failure. Secondly, many services require a presence on several servers, with inter-related requirements. Finally, as the platform is open with respect to users and servers, large numbers of queries and updates are expected.To address these requirements we introduce and evaluate XenoSearch, a new distributed service for selecting the machines to host components of multi-node distributed systems and which is uniquely able to express and efficiently answer complex queries with inter-related location constraints. We demonstrate that XenoSearch represents a trade-off between accuracy and query time which avoids exhaustive search and supports multiple resources. In addition the performance of the algorithm and the quality of its server selections is investigated and the performance of the distributed service shown to be invariant as the number of nodes or items indexed increases.

Bridging the gap between internet standardization and networking research

Abstract: The participation of the network research community in the Internet Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) has been relatively low over the recent years, and this has drawn attention from both academics and industry due to its possible negative impact. The reasons for this gap are complex and extend beyond the purely technical. In this editorial we share our views on this challenge, based on the experience we have obtained from joint projects with universities and companies. We highlight the lessons learned, covering both successful and under-performing cases, and suggest viable approaches to bridge the gap between networking research and Internet standardization, aiming to promote and maximize the outcome of such collaborative endeavours.

I and i

Abstract: There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality. Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

Community detection in graphs

Abstract: The modern science of networks has brought significant advances to our understanding of complex systems. One of the most relevant features of graphs representing real systems is community structure, or clustering, i. e. the organization of vertices in clusters, with many edges joining vertices of the same cluster and comparatively few edges joining vertices of different clusters. Such clusters, or communities, can be considered as fairly independent compartments of a graph, playing a similar role like, e. g., the tissues or the organs in the human body. Detecting communities is of great importance in sociology, biology and computer science, disciplines where systems are often represented as graphs. This problem is very hard and not yet satisfactorily solved, despite the huge effort of a large interdisciplinary community of scientists working on it over the past few years. We will attempt a thorough exposition of the topic, from the definition of the main elements of the problem, to the presentation of most methods developed, with a special focus on techniques designed by statistical physicists, from the discussion of crucial issues like the significance of clustering and how methods should be tested and compared against each other, to the description of applications to real networks.