Internet Design | Ramesh Govindan

Our interests range from network verification and synthesis to network function virtualization, the design of measurement systems, and large-scale measurement studies of the Internet.

SIGCOMM
Near-optimal Online Traffic Engineering

Arvin Ghavidel, Pooria Namyar, Nikolai Matni, and 2 more authors

In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2026 Conference, 2026

Abs Bib Link

Most deployed WAN Traffic Engineering (TE) systems use a logically centralized controller that periodically gathers traffic demands, runs a TE optimization or heuristic, and then programs the network. At scale, these solutions are often suboptimal and can take minutes to react to demand changes or failures. In this paper, we introduce OnlineTE, a system that reacts immediately to demand changes and failures and delivers near-optimal solutions within seconds of a change. OnlineTE builds on the theory of optimization decomposition to devise scalable, near-optimal, distributed TE solvers for path-based MLU and Max-Flow problems. In OnlineTE, switches each solve a local subproblem, and a central coordinator coordinates their convergence. As such, a switch can trigger a re-optimization as soon as it detects a demand change or failure, enabling high reactivity. OnlineTE scales to large WANs, and its computational requirements are well within the capabilities of modern WAN switches. It also enables a novel paradigm, edge-based TE, which can utilize resources more efficiently than today’s path-based approaches. On a testbed emulation of a 750-node WAN topology, OnlineTE outperforms the state-of-the-art by up to an order of magnitude.
@inproceedings{ghavidel2026, author = {Ghavidel, Arvin and Namyar, Pooria and Matni, Nikolai and Willinger, Walter and Govindan, Ramesh}, title = {Near-optimal Online Traffic Engineering}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2026 Conference}, year = {2026}, series = {SIGCOMM '26}, pages = {1024–1045}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, isbn = {9798400724671}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3789240.3829123}, doi = {10.1145/3789240.3829123}, numpages = {22}, keywords = {traffic engineering, wide-area networks, network optimization, distributed and parallel algorithms}, location = {Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO, USA}, topics = {dcn,measure} }
Sigmetrics
Tiered Cloud Routing: Methodology, Latency, and Improvement

Shihan Lin, Yi Zhou, Xiao Zhang, and 3 more authors

Proc. ACM Meas. Anal. Comput. Syst., Mar 2025

Abs Bib Link

Large cloud providers including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer two tiers of network services to their customers: one class uses the providers’ private wide area networks (WAN-transit) to carry a customer’s traffic as much as possible, and the other uses the public internet (inet-transit). Little is known about how each cloud provider configures its network to offer different transit services, how well these services work, and whether the quality of those services can be further improved. In this work, we conduct a large-scale study to answer these questions. Using RIPE Atlas probes as vantage points, we explore how traffic enters and leaves each cloud’s WAN. In addition, we measure the access latency of the WAN-transit and the inet-transit service of each cloud and compare it with that of an emulated performance-based routing strategy. Our study shows that despite the cloud providers’ intention to carry customers’ traffic on its WAN to the maximum extent possible, for about 12% (Azure) and 13% (Google) of our vantage points, traffic exits the cloud WAN early at cloud edges more than 5000km away from the vantage points’ nearest cloud edges. In contrast, more than 84% (AWS), 78% (Azure), and 81% (Google) of vantage points enter a cloud WAN within a 500km radius of their respective locations. Moreover, we find that cloud providers employ different routing strategies to implement the inet-transit service, leading to transit policies that may deviate from their advertised service descriptions. Finally, we find that a performance-based routing strategy can significantly reduce latencies in all three cloud providers for 4% to 85% of vantage point and cloud region pairs.
@article{lin.s.zhou.y.ea:tiered, author = {Lin, Shihan and Zhou, Yi and Zhang, Xiao and Arnold, Todd and Govindan, Ramesh and Yang, Xiaowei}, title = {Tiered Cloud Routing: Methodology, Latency, and Improvement}, journal = {Proc. ACM Meas. Anal. Comput. Syst.}, year = {2025}, volume = {9}, number = {1}, month = mar, issue_date = {March 2025}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3711705}, doi = {10.1145/3711705}, articleno = {12}, numpages = {41}, topics = {dcn,measure}, keywords = {bgp, cloud routing, internet routing, wide area network} }

ANRW

Tools for disambiguating RFCs

Jane Yen, Ramesh Govindan, and Barath Raghavan

In ANRW ’21: Applied Networking Research Workshop, Virtual Event, USA, July 24-30, 2021, Mar 2021

Bib Link

@inproceedings{yen.j.govindan.r.ea:tools-for-disambiguating-rfcs,
  author = {Yen, Jane and Govindan, Ramesh and Raghavan, Barath},
  title = {{Tools for disambiguating RFCs}},
  booktitle = {{ANRW} '21: Applied Networking Research Workshop, Virtual
  		  Event, USA, July 24-30, 2021},
  pages = {85--91},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year = {2021},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3472305.3472314},
  doi = {10.1145/3472305.3472314},
  timestamp = {Wed, 28 Jul 2021 11:43:15 +0200},
  topics = {measure},
  biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/anrw/YenGR21.bib}
}

SIGCOMM

Semi-automated protocol disambiguation and code generation

Jane Yen, Tamás Lévai, Qinyuan Ye, and 3 more authors

In ACM SIGCOMM 2021 Conference, Virtual Event, USA, August 23-27, 2021, Mar 2021

Bib Link

@inproceedings{yen.j.levai.t.ea:semi-automated,
  author = {Yen, Jane and L{\'{e}}vai, Tam{\'{a}}s and Ye, Qinyuan and Ren, Xiang and Govindan, Ramesh and Raghavan, Barath},
  editor = {Kuipers, Fernando A. and Caesar, Matthew C.},
  		  generation},
  booktitle = {{ACM} {SIGCOMM} 2021 Conference, Virtual Event, USA,
  		  August 23-27, 2021},
  pages = {272--286},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year = {2021},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3452296.3472910},
  doi = {10.1145/3452296.3472910},
  timestamp = {Wed, 11 Aug 2021 15:56:33 +0200},
  topics = {measure},
  biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/sigcomm/YenLY0GR21.bib}
}

CoNEXT

Meeting SLOs in Cross-Platform NFV

Jane Yen, Jianfeng Wang, Sucha Supittayapornpong, and 3 more authors

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies, Mar 2020

Bib Link

@inproceedings{yen.j.wang.j.ea:meeting,
  author = {Yen, Jane and Wang, Jianfeng and Supittayapornpong, Sucha and Vieira, Marcos A M and Govindan, Ramesh and Raghavan, Barath},
  title = {Meeting SLOs in Cross-Platform NFV},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3386367.3431292},
  doi = {10.1145/3386367.3431292},
  isbn = {9781450379489},
  year = {2020},
  date = {2020-01-01},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on
  		  Emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies},
  pages = {509–523},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {Barcelona, Spain},
  series = {CoNEXT '20},
  keywords = {},
  topics = {measure},
  pubstate = {published},
  tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}

SIGCOMM

WebPerf: Evaluating “What-If” Scenarios for Cloud-hosted Web Applications

Yurong Jiang, Lenin Ravindranath, Suman Nath, and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the ACM Conference of the Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM ’16) , au 2016

Bib

@inproceedings{jiang.y.ravindranath.l.ea:webperf--evaluating-what-if-scenarios-for-cloud-hosted-web-applications,
  author = {Jiang, Yurong and Ravindranath, Lenin and Nath, Suman and Govindan, Ramesh},
  title = { {WebPerf: Evaluating “What-If” Scenarios for
  		  Cloud-hosted Web Applications} },
  booktitle = { Proceedings of the ACM Conference of the Special Interest
  		  Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM '16) },
  month =  au,
  location = { Florianópolis, Brazil },
  topics = {measure},
  year = {2016}
}

SIGCOMM

Trumpet: Timely and Precise Triggers in Data Centers

Masoud Moshref, Minlan Yu, Ramesh Govindan, and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the ACM Conference of the Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM ’16) , au 2016

Bib

@inproceedings{moshref.m.yu.m.ea:trumpet--timely-and-precise-triggers-in-data-centers,
  author = {Moshref, Masoud and Yu, Minlan and Govindan, Ramesh and Vahdat, Amin},
  title = { {Trumpet: Timely and Precise Triggers in Data Centers} },
  booktitle = { Proceedings of the ACM Conference of the Special Interest
  		  Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM '16) },
  month =  au,
  location = { Florianópolis, Brazil },
  year = {2016},
  topics = {measure},
  		  },
  projects = { Software-definedMeasurement }
}

SIGCOMM

Evolve or Die: High-Availability Design Principles Drawn from Google’s Network Infrastructure

Ramesh Govindan, Ina Minei, Mahesh Kallahalla, and 2 more authors

In Proceedings of the ACM Conference of the Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM ’16) , au 2016

Bib

@inproceedings{govindan.r.minei.i.ea:evolve-or-die--high-availability-design-principles-drawn-from-googles-network-infrastructure,
  author = {Govindan, Ramesh and Minei, Ina and Kallahalla, Mahesh and Koley, Bikash and Vahdat, Amin},
  title = { {Evolve or Die: High-Availability Design Principles Drawn
  		  from Google’s Network Infrastructure} },
  booktitle = { Proceedings of the ACM Conference of the Special Interest
  		  Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM '16) },
  month =  au,
  location = { Florianópolis, Brazil },
  topics = {dcn,measure},
  year = {2016}
}

NSDI

A General Approach to Network Configuration Analysis

A. Fogel, S. Fung, L. Pedrosa, and 4 more authors

In Proc. Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), au 2015

Bib

@inproceedings{fogel.a.fung.s.ea:a-general-approach-to-network-configuration-analysis,
  author = {Fogel, A. and Fung, S. and Pedrosa, L. and Walraed-Sullivan, M. and Govindan, R. and Mahajan, R. and Millstein, T.},
  title = {{A General Approach to Network Configuration Analysis}},
  booktitle = {Proc. Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and
  		  Implementation (NSDI)},
  topics = {measure},
  year = {2015}
}

CoNEXT

SCREAM: Sketch Resource Allocation for Software-defined Measurement

Masoud Moshref, Minlan Yu, Ramesh Govindan, and 1 more author

In ACM International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT) , de 2015

Bib

@inproceedings{moshref.m.yu.m.ea:scream--sketch-resource-allocation-for-software-defined-measurement,
  author = {Moshref, Masoud and Yu, Minlan and Govindan, Ramesh and Vahdat, Amin},
  title = { {SCREAM: Sketch Resource Allocation for Software-defined
  		  Measurement} },
  booktitle = { ACM International Conference on emerging Networking
  		  EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT) },
  month =  de,
  topics = {measure},
  location = { Heidelberg, Germany },
  year = {2015}
}

NSDI

Analyzing Protocol Implementations for Interoperability

L. Pedrosa, A. Fogel, N. Kothari, and 3 more authors

In Proc. Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), de 2015

Bib

@inproceedings{pedrosa.l.fogel.a.ea:analyzing-protocol-implementations-for-interoperability,
  author = {Pedrosa, L. and Fogel, A. and Kothari, N. and Govindan, R. and Mahajan, R. and Millstein, T.},
  title = {{Analyzing Protocol Implementations for
  		  Interoperability}},
  booktitle = {Proc. Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and
  		  Implementation (NSDI)},
  topics = {measure},
  year = {2015}
}

CoNEXT

Magus: Minimizing Cellular Service Disruption during Planned Upgrades

Xing Xu, Ioannis Broustis, Zihui Ge, and 4 more authors

In ACM International Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies (CoNEXT) , de 2015

Bib

@inproceedings{xu.x.broustis.i.ea:magus--minimizing-cellular-service-disruption-during-planned-upgrades,
  author = {Xu, Xing and Broustis, Ioannis and Ge, Zihui and Govindan, Ramesh and Mahimkar, Ajay and Shankaranarayanan, N. K. and Wang, Jia},
  title = { {Magus: Minimizing Cellular Service Disruption during
  		  Planned Upgrades} },
  booktitle = { ACM International Conference on emerging Networking
  		  Experiments and Technologies (CoNEXT) },
  month =  de,
  topics = {measure},
  location = { Heidelberg, Germany },
  year = {2015},
  projects = { }
}