John Lane
Department of Computer Science
The Johns Hopkins University
John Lane
313 NEB
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21212
johnlane at jhu dot edu
Resume
I am interested in large-scale distributed systems, and I currently work in
the Distributed Systems and Networks Lab at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Yair Amir is my
PhD adviser. My dissertation work is on survivable replication systems that
scale to wide-area networks. These systems use distributed algorithms to
establish a total agreed order on updates submitted by clients. Each replica
executes the same ordered stream of updates. I have also worked on a reliable
multicast system that scales to large numbers of groups.
In addition to protecting against external attacks, survivability
engineering focuses on preserving system functionality when security fails and
an attacker gains control of one or more parts of the system. A malicious
adversary may attempt to use the servers that he has compromised to disrupt the
system. Servers controlled by an attacker are referred to as Byzantine. Our
group developed Steward, the first Byzantine fault-tolerant replication
architecture suitable for deployment in multiple local-area sites distributed
across a wide-area network (i.e., Internet scale). The physical machines in
each site function as a logical entity or logical machine. Each logical
machine plays the role of a single participant in a benign fault-tolerant
wide-area replication protocol. The machines in each site use several
Byzantine fault-tolerant local protocols to agree on the content of outgoing
wide-are messages. Threshold cryptography prevents malicious servers
from misrepresenting a site. Steward has been tested in an eighty server
deployment and it underwent a successful DARPA evaluation during which an
independent team of attackers attempted to break the system. Steward survived
all attempted attacks.
We have also developed a new architecture that achieves performance only
slightly worse than Steward while cleanly separating the protocol used to
implement the logical machine and the wide-area protocol run on top of the
logical machines. One of the main benefits of this architecture is that it
provides customizability of the fault-tolerance approach used within and among
the sites. This architecture leverages the state-machine approach to construct
logical machines and uses several optimizations to reduce wide-area bandwidth
consumption and amortize the cost of computationally intensive
cryptography.
Claudiu Danilov
and I are developing and adding a reliable multicast protocol to Spines, an overlay network
created by Claudiu and Yair Amir. Our multicast service will provide reliable
FIFO ordering. We are focusing on scaling to thousands of groups each having a
relatively small number of members. We hope to include this service in a future
version of Spines.
I received my BA from Cornell University in 1992 with a major in
Biology and a concentration in Neurobiology and Behavior. During my time at
Cornell, I worked with Dr. Owen Hamill studying the effects of a series of
diuretics on stretch activated ion channels using patch-clamping. After
graduation, I went to Johns Hopkins University to work in a systems
neuroscience lab run by Dr. Ken Johnson and Dr. Steven Hsiao at the Krieger
Mind Brain Institute. They study the somatosensory (tactile sensory) system in
both humans and animals, and specialize in the development of complex data
collection systems and robotic tactile stimulators. I transitioned from conducting
experimental work to designing and building data analysis tools and research
infrastructure. In 2003, I entered the PhD program in Computer Science at Johns
Hopkins.
- BA, Cornell University, Phi Beta Kappa, High Honors, Deans
Scholar, Hughes Scholar, 1992
- Began Masters Program, Part Time, Johns Hopkins University,
Computer Science, 2001
- Began PhD Program, Full Time, Johns Hopkins University, Computer
Science, 2003
- Yair Amir, Brian Coan, Jonathan Kirsch, and John Lane.
Byzantine Replication
Under Attack Accepted to the 38th IEEE/IFIP International Conference
on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2008), Anchorage, Alaska.
- Yair Amir, Brian Coan, Jonathan Kirsch, and John Lane.
Customizable Fault Tolerance For Wide-Area Byzantine Replication
In the Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Reliable Distributed
Systems (SRDS 2007), Beijing, China.
- Yair Amir, Claudiu Danilov, Danny Dolev, Jonathan Kirsch, John Lane,
Cristina Nita-Rotaru, Josh Olsen, and David Zage.
STEWARD: Scaling
Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Replication to Wide Area Networks, Technical Report
CNDS-2006-2 Obsoletes Technical Report CNDS-2005-3.
- Yair Amir, Claudiu Danilov, Danny Dolev, Jonathan Kirsch, John Lane,
Cristina Nita-Rotaru, Josh Olsen, David Zage.
Scaling Byzantine
Fault-Tolerant Replication to Wide Area Networks.In the Proceedings of the
IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN06), pages
105-114, Philadelphia, June 2006.
- Lane JW, McBride DW Jr, Hamill OP. Amiloride block of the mechanosensitive
cation channel in Xenopus oocytes. J Physiol. 1991
Sep;441:347-66.
- Lane JW, McBride DW Jr, Hamill OP. Structure-activity relations of
amiloride and its analogues in blocking the mechanosensitive channel in Xenopus
oocytes. Br J Pharmacol. 1992 Jun;106(2):283-6.
- Hamill OP, Lane JW, McBride DW Jr. Amiloride: a molecular probe for
mechanosensitive channels. Trends Pharmacol Sci. 1992
Oct;13(10):373-6.
- Lane JW, McBride DW Jr, Hamill OP. Ionic effects on amiloride block of the
mechanosensitive channel in Xenopus oocytes. Br J Pharmacol. 1993
Jan;108(1):116-9.
- DiCarlo JJ, Lane JW, Hsiao SS, Johnson KO. Marking microelectrode
penetrations with fluorescent dyes. J Neurosci Methods. 1996
Jan;64(1):75-81.
- Fitzgerald PJ, Lane JW, Hsiao SS Attentional effects in somatosensory cortex
during an orientation discrimination task. Society for Neuroscience Poster
Presentation. 1998.
- Fitzgerald PJ, Lane JW, Yoshioka T, Nakama T, Hsiao SS Multi-digit
receptive field structures and orientation tuning properties of neurons in SII
cortex of the awake monkey. Society for Neuroscience Poster
Presentation. 1999.
- T. Nakama*; J.W. Lane; P.J. Fitzgerald; A. Sripati; K.O. Johnson; S.
Yantis; S.S. Hsiao Attentional Modulation Of Bilateral Neuronal Responses in
the Secondary Somatosensory Cortex During an Orientation Discrimination Task.
Society For Neuroscience Presentation. 2000.
- T. Nakama*; J.W. Lane; P.J. Fitzgerald; K.O. Johnson; S.S. Hsiao. Linear
Regression Analysis of Bimanual Neuronal Responses to Oriented Bars in the
Second Somatosensory Cortex. Society For Neuroscience Presentation. 2001.
- S.S. Hsiao*; D. Pawluk; A. Byrne; J. Lane Effects of Changes in Hand
Conformation on Neural Responses in Areas 3B, 1 and 2 of the Awake Behaving
Monkey. Society For Neuroscience Poster Presentation. 2002.
- S.S. Hsiao, A.M. Waters, A.H. Byrne, J.W. Lane, K.O. Johnson. A Psychophysical
and Neurophysiological Study of the Spatial Interactions of Stimuli Presented
to Adjacent Fingers on the Same Hand. Society for Neuroscience Poster
Presentation. 2003.
- Hsiao SS, Lane J, Fitzgerald P. Representation of orientation in the
somatosensory system. Behav Brain Res. 2002 Sep 20;135(1-2):93-103.
Review.