My picture

Robert G. Cole, Ph.D.
US Army CERDEC
328 Hopkins Road
APG-N, Maryland, USA 21005
+1.410.278.6779 (office)
+1.410.278.1821 (fax)
robert.g.cole@us.army.mil


Contents:
Positions
Current Research Interests

Publications


Positions

JHU Department of Computer Science

I currently hold an Adjunct Research Faculty position in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. I am using this as an opportunity to research new capabilities in challenged networks, including a) scalable routing, robustness and security in highly dynamic environments, b) verifiable configuration management in Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs) and tactical Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), and c) new Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for resilient networking in a wireless environments using Game Theoretic derivations and implementations through a GNU-Radio prototype platform.

US Army CERDEC

I joined the US Army Communications Electronics Research and Development Center (CERDEC) in February 2010. I am currently the Deputy Director of the Army Research Laboratory's Network Science - Collaborative Technology Alliance (NS-CTA). The focus of my work on the NS-CTA is to promote transition of research into Army systems. As such, I am an active participant in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), where my work focuses on MANET systems and resilient configuration and performance management of mobile systems.

JHU Applied Physics Laboratory

Prior to joining the US Army CERDEC, I was a Senior Professional Staff member in the Milton Eisenhower Research Center at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) / Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). I joined JHU/APL in 2003. The focus of my work at APL was the performance analysis of and enhancements to data communications networks. In this context, I was an active participant in the Global Information Grid (GIG) Quality of Service (QoS) Working Group. I worked on routing and security in tactical Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), inter-domain routing in the context of mobility extensions to the GIG, architectures and behaviors which support joint Precedence and Preemption (P&P) and QoS transport in general data networks, and developing large scale simulation tools and models of the GIG.

AT&T Bell Laboratories

Prior to working at JHU/APL, I worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories for roughly twenty years. While at Bell Laboratories, I worked in the areas of performance support to data network fast packet switch product development, enterprise data network performance assurance and analysis, frame relay, ATM and IP service development, Fortune 500 sales and customer technical support, design, prototyping, development and deployment of performance monitoring tools, and performance analysis consulting.

Current Research Interests

My current research interests are in the general area of data networking performance and evaluation and related protocol enhancements to improve overall system performance and reliability. Specific topic areas of current study include:

Resilient Network Management in MANETs and DTNs

Server model

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) and Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs) pose unique challenges to network management systems and architectures. Due to their mobility, they are typically bandwidth limited and often disconnected from the management application. Current management architectures rely upon autocratic configuration management, rely upon high frequent interactions (polling) for performance management and depend upon out-of-band mechanisms for fault tolerance to configuration errors. Our work attempts to give some level of autonomy to remote devices to control their configuration, to limit interactions over the network do to limited bandwidth and limited connectivity and to develop interaction models which match well with bundled transport protocols designed for DTNs.

Some papers, abstracts and conference activity related to this work include:

Precedence and Preemption in Data Networks

Two queues

Military networks rely upon the concept of precedence level to indicate the importance of the information content of the message. This differs from the data networking concept of Quality of Service (QoS), which deals with the presentation of the information to specific applications to ensure their proper operation. The bulk of expertise in supporting Precedence and Preemption (P&P) is in the context of telephony services, e.g., voice. There is a need to generalize this capability to general data network applications. It is all to common to find networks with claims of precedence handling based upon Differentiated Services techniques. But these are bound to failure. I am particularly interested in new per hop behaviors for wireless networks supporting joint application QoS and information content P&P. I am analyzing these in the context of simulation models and queuing theory, specifically stochastic diffusion models. I am also interested in security aspects to P&P packet handling, packet level authentication and access controls and plan to experiment in this area in the context of our GNU-Radio prototyping platform.

Some papers, abstracts and conference activity related to this work include:

Worm Propagation and Mitigation in Tactical MANETs

Wireless Taps

Much work is found in the literature related to computer worm propagation and mitigation in the general Internet. The analysis is often after-the-fact and the mitigation techniques are encumbered by limitations imposed by the scale and heterogeneity of the Internet. Much less work has focused on propagation and mitigation in tactical Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). I am investigating the differences between propagation in the Internet versus tactical MANETs. I am using the lessons learned to propose and analyze mitigation techniques specific to tactical MANETs. My collaborators and I have proposed a particular mitigation system which we refer to as the Wireless Taps Mitigation Architecture (WTMA). The WTMA relies on the presence of non-addressable, wireless monitors, i.e., Taps, to develop performance signatures of mission critical applications and to use these signatures to detect anomalous behavior due to computer infections. These Taps periodically broadcast network health reports including recommendations for software rejuvenation. We are currently analyzing this system's performance using analytic and discrete event simulation models.

Some technical reports, abstracts and papers related to this work include:

Routing Security, Scalability and Trust in MANETs

Model of dynamics

For an individual, organization or country which is not capable of matching the military power of its adversaries, it may instead invest in technologies to disrupt their adversaries' ability to communicate. The tactical MANET component of an adversary often represents the most vulnerable and challenging component of the warfighters' communications capability. I am interested in tools and techniques to improve the scalability of routing in tactical networks, in particular their scalability across ground, air and space-based components. Further, I am interested in methods to harden the routing infrastructure of networks drawing from methods develop to address Byzantine attacks. I am currently investigating the performance of reputation based systems for protection against insider attacks. This is driving towards the design of methods for shared learning and trust relationship development in distributed network environments. I am also investigating the application of Beacon-Based Routing Protocols in Tactical deployments and in the use as gateways for integration into extremely large scale tactical deployments.

Some technical reports, papers and abstracts related to this work include:

Large Scale Simulation Models of the GIG

Stochastic dynamics

The Global Information Grid (GIG) is an all IP network which is unique in several aspects. Notably, the GIG relies heavily on wireless links, e.g., satellite and radio channels, and is expected to operate under extremely harsh networking environments, e.g., high levels of network damage. Hence, this deployment is dramatically different from the deployment of the Internet and the experiences gained in managing the Internet may not apply to the operational behavior of the GIG. For these reasons, I believe that large scale simulation studies of the GIG under expected operational conditions are necessary to gain pre-deployment experience of GIG behavior. I have begun initial development of an NS-2 simulation model of the GIG. This work is in its initial phases due to the extremely large level of effort required to develop an operational picture of the GIG, including realistic traffic models, network deployments and topologies, protocol configurations and attack scenarios. The NS-2 GIG simulation model relies upon the BGP++ module to incorporate the inter-domain routing aspects of the network.

Future work on building a large scale GIG simulation model includes:

Important to the development of high fidelity simulation models of the GIG, are tools and techniques which allow for the development of scalable simulation models. Techniques to implement parallel network simulations have not performed well. My colleagues and I have embarked on a project to incorporate stochastic analytic models of queues and networks of queues into event driven network simulations. This allows for improved scalability by analytically modeling background traffic while explicitly handling foreground traffic as discrete events.

Some technical reports, papers and abstracts related to this work include:

Publications

  1. Herberg, U., Clausen, T. and R.G. Cole, MANET Network Management and Performance Monitoring for NHDP and OLSRv2, submitted to the CSNM Conference, Niageria Falls, NY, September (2010).
  2. Cole, R.G., Riley, G. and D. Cansever, Scaling Network Simulation Technologies Through Network Science, abstract submitted to the Army Science Conference (ASC'10), Orlando, FL, December (2010).
  3. Cole, R.G., Incompatibility Between Differentiated Services and precedence and Preemption in Multi-Service IP Networks., abstract submitted to the Army Science Conference (ASC'10), Orlando, FL, December (2010).
  4. Kumar, S., Cole, R.G. and A. Mishra, Network Management for DTNs, submitted to Globecom 2010, Miami, FL, (2010).
  5. Avritzer, A., Cole, R.G. and E. Weyuker, Methods and Opportunities for Rejuvenation in Aging Distributed Software Systems, to appear in the Journal of Systems and Software, Elsevier, (2009).
  6. Avritzer, A., Tanikella, R., James, K., Cole, R.G. and E. Weyuker, Monitoring Security Intrusion using Performance Signatures, Proceedings of the first joint WOSP/SIPEW International Conference on performance Engineering, San Jose, CA, (2010).
  7. Herberg, U., Cole, R.G. and T. Clausen, Definition of Managed Objects for the MANET Optimized Link State Routing Protocol version 2, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), draft-ietf-manet-olsr-mib-02.txt, March (2010).
  8. Herberg, U., Cole, R.G. and I. Chakeres, Definition of Managed Objects for the MANET Neighbor Discovery Protocol, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), draft-ietf-manet-nhdp-mib-04.txt, March (2010).
  9. Harnedy, S., Cole, R.G. and I. Chakeres, Definition of Managed Objects for the MANET DYMO Routing Protocol, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), draft-ietf-manet-dymo-mib-03.txt, March (2010).
  10. Harnedy, S., Cole, R.G., Macker, J., Adamson, B. and S. Harnedy, Definition of Managed Objects for the MANET Scalable Multicast Framework, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), draft-ietf-manet-smf-mib-02.txt, March (2010).
  11. Cole, R.G., Macker, J. and A. Morton, Definition of Managed Objects for Performance Reporting, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), draft-ietf-manet-report-mib-00.txt, June (2010).
  12. Cole, R.G., Romascanu, D. and A. Bierman, A Verification Procedure for Configuration Management within NETCONF, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), draft-cole-netconf-verify-00.txt, June (2010).
  13. Cole, R.G., Romascanu, D. and A. Bierman, A Transaction Test Module for the NETCONF Verify Operation, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), draft-cole-netconf-transaction-test-00.txt, June (2010).
  14. Cole, R.G. and B. Awerbuch, Multicast and Unicast Beacon-Based Routing Protocols for MANETS, invited talk at IEEE PACRIM'09, Victoria, BC, Canada, August (2009).
  15. Avritzer, A., Cole, R.G. and E. Weyuker, Methods, Opportunities and Applications of Software Rejuvenation, First ACM International Workshop on Software Aging and Rejuvenation, Seattle, WA, November (2008).
  16. Cole, R.G., Benmohamed, L., Cansever, D., Doshi, B. and B. Awerbuch, Gateways for Mobile Routing in Tactical Network Deployments, IEEE MILCOM'08, San Diego, CA, USA, October (2008).
  17. Benmohamed, L., Cole, R.G. and B. Doshi, Scalable Inter-Domain Routing for the Global Information Grid, IEEE MILCOM'08, San Diego, CA, USA, October (2008).
  18. Cole, R.G., Precedence-enabled per-hop behavior: impact on TCP and UDP flows, IET Journal of Communications, The Institute of Engineering and Technology, (2008).
  19. Cole, R.G., Riley, G., Cansever, D. and W. Yurcik, Stochastic Process Models for Packet/Analytic-Based Network Simulations, ACM/IEEE Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulations (PADS'08), Rome, Italy (2008).
  20. Cole, R.G., Awerbuch, B., Benmohamed, L., Cansever, D. and B. Doshi, Gateways for Mobile Routing in Tactical Network Deployments, invited talk at IEEE MILCOM'08, Orlando, FL, USA, October (2008).
  21. Cole, R.G., Riley, G., Cansever, D. and W. Yurcik, Stochastic Process Models for Packet/Analytic-Based Network Simulations, The Kobayashi Workshop, Princeton, NJ, May (2008).
  22. Cole, R.G., A Precedence and Preemption Enabled Per-Hop Behavior: Impact on TCP and UDP , submitted to the IET Journal on Communications, March (2008).
  23. Cole, R.G. and B.S. Farroha, Implications of Precedence and Preemption Requirements on Packet Based Transport Architectures, IEEE MILCOM'07, Orlando, FL, USA, October (2007).
  24. Cole, R.G., Impact of Precedence Enabled Per Hop Behaviors on TCP Flows, invited talk at IEEE MILCOM'07, Orlando, FL, USA, October (2007).
  25. Awerbuch, B., Holmer, D., Rubens, H. and R.G. Cole, Beacon-Based Routing for Tactical Networks, IEEE MILCOM'07, Orlando, FL, USA, October (2007).
  26. Awerbuch, B., Holmer, D., Rubens, H. and R.G. Cole, Analysis of Multiple Trees on Path Discovery for Beacon-Based Routing Protocols, invited talk at IEEE PACRIM'07, Victoria, BC, Canada, August (2007).
  27. Farroha, B.S., R.G. Cole, Farroha, D.L. and A. DeSimone, An Investigative Analysis of Information Assurance Issues Associated with the GIG's P&P Architecture, SPIE'07, Orlando, FL, USA, April (2007).
  28. Avritzer, A., R.G. Cole and E.J. Weyuker, Using Performance Signatures and Software Rejuvenation for Worm Mitigation in Tactical MANETs, Workshop on Software Performance (WOSP'07), Buenos Aires, Argentina, February (2007).
  29. Chimento, P. and R.G. Cole, Modeling and Simulation Studies for Packet-Based Precedence and Preemption for FCS Communications, Army Science Conference 2006, Orlando, FL, November (2006).
  30. Awerbuch, B., Curtmola, R., Holmer, D., Rubens, H. and R.G. Cole, Dynamics of Learning Algorithms for the On-Demand Byzantine Secure Routing Protocol, ESAS 2006, Hamburg, Germany, September (2006).
  31. Cole, R.G., Kandaswamy, S. and A. Clark, Studies Toward Improved VoIP Services for Future Army Combat Systems, invited talk, IEEE MILCOM, Atlantic City NJ, October (2005).
  32. Benmohamed, L., Doshi, B., DeSimone, A. and R.G. Cole, Quality of Service Enhancements to BGP for the Global Information Grid (GIG), IEEE MILCOM, Atlantic City NJ, October (2005).
  33. Cole, R.G., Benmohamed, L., DeSimone, A. and B. Doshi, Initial Investigations of BGP Performance on a Global Information Grid Simulation Platform, IEEE MILCOM, Atlantic City NJ, October (2005).
  34. Cole, R.G., Benmohamed, L., DeSimone, A. and B. Doshi, Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP4) Performance over Intermittent Satellite Links, invited talk, IEEE PacRim Conference on Communications, Vancover BC, August (2005).
  35. Dietz, R. and R.G. Cole, A MIB for Transport Performance Monitoring, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC 4150, July (2005).
  36. Kalbfleisch, C., Cole, R.G. and D. Romascanu, A MIB for Synthetic Sources for Performance Monitoring, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC 4149, July (2005).
  37. Cole, R.G., Phamdo, N., Rajab, M.A. and A. Terzis, Requirements on Worm Mitigation Technologies in MANETS, ACM/IEEE Parallel and Distributed Simulation (PADS), Monterey CA, June (2005).
  38. Cole, R.G., Studies of Worm Propagation in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks for Future Combat Systems, Army Science Conference 2004, Orlando FL, December (2004).
  39. Choudhury, G. and R.G. Cole, Design and Analysis of Optimal Adaptive De-jitter Buffers, Journal of Computer Communications, 27 (6), pp 529-537 (2004).
  40. Cole, R.G., H. Lang, and E. Woerner, "Monitoring System for SLA Compliance in VoIP Services", AT&T Patent Application, June (2004).
  41. Friedman, T., et al, RTP Control Protocol Extended Reports (RTCP XR), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC 3611, November (2003).
  42. Waldbusser, S., Cole, R.G., Kalbfleisch, C. and D. Romascanu, Introduction to the Remote Monitoring (RMON) Family of MIB Modules, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC 3577, August 2003.
  43. Choudhury, G. and R.G. Cole, Design and Analysis of Optimal Adaptive De-jitter Buffers, Presentation to ITCOM 2002, Boston MA, July (2002).
  44. Choudhury, G. and R.G. Cole, "A Method and Apparatus for Dynamically Adjusting Voice over Packet Dejitter Buffers", AT&T Patent Application, July (2001).
  45. Glenn, P. and R.G. Cole, "Achieving Toll Quality Voice over IP Networks", a presentation to the 6th Alliance Engineering Symposium, April (2001).
  46. Cole, R.G., Hosseini-Nasab, M. and C. Appel, "Service-View Performance Monitoring of Content Distribution Networks", AT&T Patent Application, June (2001).
  47. Cole, R.G. and J. Rosenbluth, Voice Over IP Performance Monitoring, Journal of Computer Communications Review, vol. 4, no. 3, April (2001).
  48. Cole, R.G., Dietz, R., Kalbfleisch, C. and D. Romascanu, "A Framework for Synthetic Sources for Performance Monitoring", Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Draft, draft-cole-sspm-03.txt, July 2001 (officially expired) and BOF at IETF in Adelaide Australia, March 2001.
  49. Amster, J.A., Cole, R.G. and J. Rosenbluth, "Technique for Monitoring Conversational Voice Over Packet", AT&T Patent Application 2000-0518, September (2000).
  50. Cole, R.G., and Ramaswamy, R., http://www.amazon.com/books.html Performance Engineering Wide Area Data Networks, Artech House Publishing, Norwood, MA, 1999.
  51. Kinnear, K., Cole, R.G., Droms, R., "An Inter-server Protocol for DHCP", Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Draft, draft-ietf-dhc-interserver-02.txt, September 1997. (officially expired)
  52. Cole, R.G., Shur, D.R., and Villamizar, C., IP over ATM: A Framework Document, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Informational RFC 1932, (1995).
  53. Coffield, D., Cole, R.G. and Saksena, V.R., "The Leading Edge in High-Speed Data Communications Services: The InterSpan Asynchronous Transfer Mode Service", AT&T Technical Journal, vol. 74, pp. 38-49, July/August (1995).
  54. Cole, R.G., "Architectures and Issues in Mapping IP onto ATM Networks", Invited Talk at the IETF IP over ATM Working Group and MBONE broadcast, Houston, TX (1994).
  55. Rodrigues, M., Cole, R.G., and Fendick, K., "Flexible Service Guarantees in ATM Networks", presented at the 3rd AT&T Performance Symposium.
  56. Cole, R.G., Fendick, K, and Rodrigues, M., "Service Guarantees/Congestion Control in High Speed data Networks", Patent Award Number 5,335,224 (1994).
  57. Cole, R.G., "Complexities in ATM Service Development", Invited Talk at the AIE Broadband Networking Conference, Denver, CO (1993).
  58. Kumar, A., Cole, R.G., "Comparative Performance of Interleaved and Non-interleaved Pipelining in ATM Terminal Adapters", Journal on Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, vol.27, pp. 521-535 (1995),
  59. Kumar, A. and Cole, R.G., "Comparative Performance of Interleaved and Non-Interleaved Pipelining in LAPD Terminal Adapters", presented at INFOCOM'90 (1990).
  60. Cole, R.G., "Performance Modeling of 3270 BSC Virtual Private Lines over Frame Relay Networks", AT&T Technical Journal, vol. 67, pp. 41-56, September/October (1988).
  61. Cole, R.G. and Keyes, T., "The Velocity Correlation Function for the Lorentz Gas", J. Statistical Physics, vol. 51, no.1 / 2, pp.275 (1988).
  62. Cole, R.G. and Keyes, T., "The Enskog Repeated Ring Equations for Tagged Molecular Motion and Variational Solutions", J. Statistical Physics, vol. 51, no.1 / 2, pp.249 (1988).
  63. Cole, R.G., Mazur, E., and Mason, E.A., "Theory of Thermomagnetic Effects in the Transition Regime", J. Chemical Physics, vol. 87, pp. 2236 (1987).
  64. Cole, R.G. and Evans, G.T., "Dynamics in Polyatomic Fluids: A Kinetic Theory Approach", Ann. Rev. Phys. Chem, vol. 37, pp. 105 (1986).
  65. Cole, R.G., Evans, D.R., and Hoffman, D.K., "A Renormalized Kinetic Theory of Dilute Molecular Gases: Chattering", J. Chemical Physics, vol. 82, pp. 2061(1985).
  66. Cole, R.G. and Keyes,T., "Enskog Theory and the Kirkwood Instability", J. Chemical Physics, vol. 83, pp. 906 (1985).
  67. Cole, R.G., Protopopescu, V., and Keyes, T., "Stationary Transport with Partial Reflecting Boundary Conditions II", J. Chemical Physics, vol. 83, pp. 2384 (1985).
  68. Cole, R.G., Protopopescu, V., and Keyes, T., "Stationary Transport with Partial Reflecting Boundary Conditions I", J. Chemical Physics, vol. 81, pp. 2771 (1984).
  69. Cole, R.G., Hoffman, D.K., and Evans, G.T., "Kinetic Theory of the Depolarized Light Scattering R Parameter II: Explicit Results", J. Chemical Physics, vol. 80, pp. 5375 (1984).
  70. Cole, R.G., Hoffman, D.K., and Evans, G.T., "Kinetic Theory of the Depolarized Light Scattering R Parameter I: Formal Theory", J. Chemical Physics, vol. 80, pp. 5365 (1984).
  71. Evans, G.T., Cole, R.G., and Hoffman, D.K., "A Kinetic Theory Calculation of the Orientational Correlation Time of a Rotorlike Molecule in a Dense Fluid of Spheres", J. Chemical Physics, vol. 80, pp. 5365 (1984).