CAREER: Argus: A Measurement-informed Learning Approach to Managing Multi-cloud Networks
Funding source: NSF CNS-2145813. Period of performance: 06/01/2022 -- 05/31/2027.Project Overview
Multi-cloud networks are federations of private network infrastructures from the distinct cloud and third-party providers, and serve as increasingly vital underlays for a range of application domains (e.g., genomics, healthcare, high performance computing). Unfortunately, this emerging connectivity paradigm poses significant management barriers to enterprises that seek to deploy overlays and applications due to providers' distinct operational practices, privacy concerns, egress costs, among others. This CAREER project will investigate a novel measurement-informed learning-based framework called Argus to significantly lower the management barriers faced by modern enterprises.
This project will focus on scientific inquiries in three synergistic thrusts to realize the Argus framework. First, it will design calibrated measurement tools and techniques, using which enterprises can gain unprecedented visibility into the federated underlays. Second, adhering to the privacy concerns of providers, it will investigate learning-based modeling capabilities, using which enterprises can accurately infer, localize, and attribute performance bottlenecks to appropriate providers. Third, it will take a principled approach to design a management capability, using which enterprises can effectively and efficiently navigate egress costs and operational goals while avoiding inferred performance bottlenecks.
This project will lower multi-cloud management barriers, enhance the operational productivity of enterprises, and foster breakthroughs in the aforementioned domains and beyond. These will have significant impacts on the economy and society. The research will be tightly integrated with education, emphasizing experiential learning. Activities include inviting underrepresented students from Lane Community College to participate in a mini-research experience, organizing virtual summer schools on project-related topics, involving undergraduates in research, and developing a curriculum on multi-cloud networks. The activities will catalyze community engagement and result in a globally competitive STEM workforce with the necessary skills in this emerging area.
People
- Sole PI: Ram Durairajan
- Ph.D. Students: Joseph Colton
Publications
- Bootstrapping Transparency in AI-Powered Network Operations: A Network Explanation Framework
Riya Ponraj, Yu Wang and Ramakrishnan Durairajan
In Proceedings of ACM (SIGKDD), Jeju, South Korea, August 2026.
[PAPER]
- Sustainability or Survivability? Eliminating the Need to Choose in LEO Satellite Constellations
Chris Misa and Ramakrishnan Durairajan
In Proceedings of ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets), College Park, MD, November 2025.
[PAPER]
- MCSim: A Discrete-Event Simulation Framework for Studying Multi-Cloud Networks
Joseph Colton and Ramakrishnan Durairajan
In Proceedings of IEEE 33rd International Symposium on the Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication System (MASCOTS '25), Paris, France, October 2025.
[PAPER] [CODE]
- Unveiling Submarine Cable Paths: A Self-Supervised Contrastive Learning Approach
Riya Ponraj, Alagappan Ramanathan, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, Amreesh Phokeer, Yu Wang and Ramakrishnan Durairajan
In Proceedings of ACM IMC 2025 Student Workshop (IMC-SW25), Madison, WI, October 2025.
[PAPER]
- Threading the Ocean: Mapping Digital Routes Across Submarine Cables using Calypso
Caleb Wang, Ying Zhang, Qianli Dong, Esteban Carisimo, Ramakrishnan Durairajan and Fabián E. Bustamante
In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM'25 (shorts), Coimbra, Portugal, September 2025.
[PAPER]
- Are Edge MicroDCs Equipped to Tackle Memory Contention?
Long Tran, River Bartz, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Uli Kremer and Sudarsun Kannan
In Proceedings of workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage '25)
co-located with ACM OSDI'25, Boston, MA, July 2025.
[PAPER]
- Enhancing Strategic Resilience of Subsea Cables in the Caribbean
Nicole Starosielski, Iago Bojczuk, John Hooft-Toomey, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Hannah Ellis, Erick Contag, and John Tibbles
In Proceedings of SubOptic '25, Lisbon, Portugal, June 2025.
[PAPER]
- Building Trust in Machine Learning-Powered Networking: The Network Explainer Framework
Riya Ponraj, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, and Yu Wang
In Proceedings of SIAM Data Mining (SDM '25) AI4TS workshop, Virginia, US, May 2025.
[PAPER]
- On the Impact of Submarine Cable Deployments on Multi-cloud Network Latencies
Joseph Colton, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Reza Rejaie and Walter Willinger
In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Cloud Networking (CloudNet '24), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 2024.
[PAPER] [CODE]
- Bootstrapping Trust in ML4Nets Solutions with Hybrid Explainability
Abduarraheem Elfandi, Hannah Sagalyn, Ramakrishnan Durairajan and Walter Willinger
In Proceedings of workshop on Practical Adoption Challenges of ML for Systems (PACMI)
co-located with ACM SOSP'24, Austin, TX, November 2024.
[PAPER]
- Redesigning Edge-Centric Micro-Datacenters for Efficient Multitenancy
Long Tran, River Bartz, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Uli Kremer and Sudarsun Kannan
In Proceedings of workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage '25)
co-located with ACM OSDI'25, Boston, MA, July 2025.
[PAPER]
- Enhancing Strategic Resilience of Subsea Cables in the Caribbean
Nicole Starosielski, Iago Bojczuk, John Hooft-Toomey, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Hannah Ellis, Erick Contag, and John Tibbles
In Proceedings of SubOptic '25, Lisbon, Portugal, June 2025.
[PAPER]
- On the Impact of Submarine Cable Deployments on Multi-cloud Network Latencies
Joseph Colton, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Reza Rejaie and Walter Willinger
In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Cloud Networking (CloudNet '24), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 2024.
[PAPER]
- Bootstrapping Trust in ML4Nets Solutions with Hybrid Explainability
Abduarraheem Elfandi, Hannah Sagalyn, Ramakrishnan Durairajan and Walter Willinger
In Proceedings of workshop on Practical Adoption Challenges of ML for Systems (PACMI)
co-located with ACM SOSP'24, Austin, TX, November 2024.
[PAPER]
- Schooling NOOBs with eBPF
Joel Sommers, Nolan Rudolph and Ramakrishnan Durairajan
In Proceedings of workshop on eBPF and Kernel Extensions
co-located with ACM SIGCOMM'23, New York, USA, August 2023.
[PAPER] [CODE]
- A Case for Performance- and Cost-aware Multi-cloud Overlays
Bahador Yeganeh, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Reza Rejaie and Walter Willinger
In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing, Illinois, USA, July 2023.
[PAPER] [DATASET]
- ARISE: A Multi-Task Weak Supervision Framework for Network Measurements
Jared Knofczynski, Ramakrishnan Durairajan and Walter Willinger
In IEEE JSAC Series on Machine Learning in Communications and Networks, July 2022.
[PAPER] [CODE]
- ELF: High-Performance In-band Network Measurement
Joel Sommers and Ramakrishnan Durairajan
In Proceedings of TMA'21, Virtual, September 2021.
[PAPER] [CODE]
- A First Comparative Characterization of Multi-cloud Connectivity in Today's Internet
Bahador Yeganeh, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Reza Rejaie and Walter Willinger
In Proceedings of PAM'20, Oregon, USA, March 2020.
[PAPER]