{"id":2,"date":"2018-04-10T15:10:25","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T15:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/zguo\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2024-06-30T01:39:01","modified_gmt":"2024-06-30T01:39:01","slug":"sample-page","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/1RQE8z_vQu0\">Watch the 25-year retrospective on our creation of the world&#8217;s first edge, CDNs, and edge computing services and how they have transformed the internet since!<\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/1RQE8z_vQu0\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-845\" src=\"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/07\/Story-of-the-Edge-Slide-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/07\/Story-of-the-Edge-Slide-1.png 960w, https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/07\/Story-of-the-Edge-Slide-1-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/07\/Story-of-the-Edge-Slide-1-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">Biography (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.umass.edu\/gateway\/article\/pioneering-faster-more-reliable-internet\">A Profile<\/a>) (<a href=\"https:\/\/dailycollegian.com\/2021\/11\/faculty-spotlight-professor-ramesh-sitaraman\">Another Profile<\/a>)<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">Prof. Sitaraman is currently a Distinguished University Professor and the Associate Dean for Educational Programs and Teaching in the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a title=\"http:\/\/www.cs.umass.edu\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.umass.edu\/\">College of Information and Computer Sciences<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0at the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a title=\"http:\/\/www.umass.edu\" href=\"http:\/\/www.umass.edu\/\">University of Massachusetts at Amherst<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">. \u00a0He is best known for pioneering <a href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/DMPPSW02.pdf\">content delivery networks<\/a>\u00a0(CDNs) and <a href=\"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/03\/network_overview_osr.pdf\">edge computing services<\/a> that currently deliver much of the world\u2019s web, videos, edge applications, and online services. As a principal architect, he helped create the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a title=\"http:\/\/www.akamai.com\" href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/network_overview_osr.pdf\">Akamai network,<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0the world&#8217;s first major\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">content delivery network<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0(CDN) and edge computing service. He retains a part-time role as Akamai&#8217;s Chief Consulting Scientist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;font-family: -webkit-standard\"><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">Prof. Sitaraman&#8217;s<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0research spans all aspects of Internet-scale distributed systems, including algorithms, architectures, performance, and energy efficiency. He<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0directs the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a href=\"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/lids-lab\/\">Laboratory for Internet-Scale Distributed Systems (LIDS),<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"> is a member of the\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a title=\"http:\/\/theory.cs.umass.edu\" href=\"https:\/\/theory.cs.umass.edu\/people.html\">Theoretical Computer Science<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0group, and is the founding director of the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cics.umass.edu\/informatics\">Informatics Program.<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0He received a B.Tech. in electrical engineering from the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a title=\"http:\/\/www.iitm.ac.in\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.iitm.ac.in\/\">Indian Institute of Technology, Madras<\/a>,<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0and a Ph.D. in computer science from\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a title=\"http:\/\/www.cs.princeton.edu\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.princeton.edu\/\">Princeton University<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"color: #000000;font-family: -webkit-standard\" \/>\n<h3><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">Select Honors<\/span><\/h3>\n<h4><em><strong>Research<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong>Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2023.<\/strong> For distinguished contributions to distributed systems and algorithms, for pioneering work in internet content delivery and scalable edge computing services, and for broadening computing education.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong>IEEE William R. Bennett Prize, 2023.<\/strong> For work on <a href=\"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/07\/09110784.pdf\">BOLA<\/a>, a widely-deployed adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithm that enhances the quality of experience of billions of video users daily.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong>Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2019.<\/strong> <em>For contributions to content delivery networks, distributed systems, and scalable internet services. <\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong>Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2019.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em>For contributions to content delivery, internet performance, and distributed systems.<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong>Inaugural ACM SIGCOMM Networking Systems Award, 2018.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em>For the\u00a0<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/network_overview_osr.pdf\">Akamai Content Delivery Network (CDN)<\/a><\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">Excellence in DASH Award (First Place), 2018.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em>For our\u00a0<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/abr-dashjs.pdf\">work on\u00a0adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms<\/a><\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em>\u00a0that are now part of the MPEG-DASH video player reference standard and widely used in commercial video streaming.<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em>Teaching<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n<ul style=\"color: #000000;font-family: -webkit-standard\">\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong>Distinguished Teaching Award (DTA), UMass, Amherst, 2020.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>University&#8217;s highest recognition for teaching. Four selected each year from across the university with 1450+ faculty. Third Computer Scientist to win the award since it was established in 1962.<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong>College Outstanding Teacher Award (COTA), College of Natural Sciences, UMass, Amherst, 2014.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em>One of two chosen that year from the college with 550 faculty in 13 departments and 2 schools.<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr style=\"color: #000000;font-family: -webkit-standard\" \/>\n<h3><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">Real-world Impact<\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;font-family: -webkit-standard\"><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">Over the past two decades, our research has transformed the online experience of billions of internet users daily, whether they read the news, watch videos, shop online, use social networks, or interact with mobile applications. Our research has helped create two major industry sectors, content delivery and edge computing, and their allied technologies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;font-family: -webkit-standard\"><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong>1) Content Delivery.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">In the late 1990&#8217;s, we helped pioneer\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/DMPPSW02.pdf\">content delivery networks.<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"> The \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/network_overview_osr.pdf\">Akamai network<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0enabled web pages to download faster, and videos to start quickly and play at higher qualities without interruptions. \u00a0The\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/network_overview_osr.pdf\">Akamai network<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0also incorporated a \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em>cloud storage<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"> service and an <\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><em>edge computing<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"> service, early examples of both types of services. More than two decades later, CDNs\u00a0now deliver a majority of the web, video, and application traffic on the Internet. The creation of the Akamai network also helped spawn the multi-billion-dollar CDN industry. Our describes the edge computing architecture and some of the first applications.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>2) Edge computing.\u00a0<\/strong>While CDNs pushed content to the edge close to the users, a natural next step was to push computation and its associated data to the edge. The result was the first edge computing service that hosted hosted enterprise applications at edge. The service was\u00a0built and operational at Akamai (circa) 2001. The term &#8220;edge computing &#8221; itself was coined as the <a href=\"https:\/\/trademarks.justia.com\/781\/97\/edgecomputing-78197911.html\">name and trademark<\/a> for this service, though it has now come to denote any similar service that executes applications at the edge. The first edge computing service hosted a rich variety of edge applications that performed distributed data aggregation, offloaded computation from client devices and the origin, enabled faster application responses times, etc. The architecture and some of the early applications hosted on the service are described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/network_overview_osr.pdf\">paper (Section 6)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;font-family: -webkit-standard\"><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong>3) Video performance analytics.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">In 2000, we created one of the earliest <\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a href=\"https:\/\/patents.google.com\/patent\/US7010598B2\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">distributed analytics services for measuring video delivery quality<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">. Rather than use network-level metrics like packet loss and jitter, the service pioneered user-perceived metrics extracted from actual video players deployed around the world. Such metrics included time for the video to start up, effective bitrate of the video seen by the viewer, and rebuffer events where the video stalled. More than two decades later, similar methodology and metrics are widely used in academic research and in the video analytics industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>4) Adaptive Bitrate Video Streaming. \u00a0<\/strong>Adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms run inside video players and control the quality-of-experience of a video playback by adapting the bitrate of the video segment to the available network bandwidth. Our Lyapunov-based ABR algorithm\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/12\/BOLA-Near-optimal-bitrate-adaptation-for-online-videos.pdf?_gl=1*14g4454*_ga*OTc2Mzc2Mjk5LjE2NTYzMDE3NjM.*_ga_21RLS0L7EB*MTY2MDQ5MjcwMi4xMTUuMS4xNjYwNDkyNzI5LjA.&amp;_ga=2.188068264.1674564709.1659913774-976376299.1656301763\">BOLA<\/a>\u00a0and its variants are part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/abr-dashjs.pdf\">MPEG-DASH reference video player<\/a> standard \u00a0and are widely used by major video providers such as Orange, BBC, CBS, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cics.umass.edu\/news\/sitaraman-receives-amazon-research-award-adaptive-bitrate-video-streaming-research\">Amazon Prime Video<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;font-family: -webkit-standard\"><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><strong style=\"font-size: inherit\">5) Distributed Algorithms and Architectures.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">CDNs are among the largest distributed systems in the world with potentially quarter-a-million servers deployed in a 1000+ locations around the world. CDNs use\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a style=\"font-size: inherit\" href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/CCRpaper_1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">sophisticated algorithms<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0and architectures to provide scalable internet services. Examples of our research deployed in production systems include (i) <\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a style=\"font-size: inherit\" href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/KSWHKMSS04.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a highly-scalable transport layer for streaming live video content<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u00a0that carried the largest online events of the day, such as the Super Bowl and World cup soccer, (ii)\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a style=\"font-size: inherit\" href=\"https:\/\/people.cs.umass.edu\/~ramesh\/Site\/PUBLICATIONS_files\/eum_embedded.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">mechanisms for routing user requests to a proximal server<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">, and (iii) <\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\"><a style=\"font-size: inherit\" href=\"https:\/\/www.akamai.com\/it\/it\/multimedia\/documents\/technical-publication\/footprint-descriptors-theory-and-practice-of-cache-provisioning-in-a-global-cdn.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tools for provisioning caches in edge servers<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"color: #000000;font-family: -webkit-standard\" \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watch the 25-year retrospective on our creation of the world&#8217;s first edge, CDNs, and edge computing services and how they have transformed the internet since! Biography (A Profile) (Another Profile) Prof. Sitaraman is currently a Distinguished University Professor and the Associate Dean for Educational Programs and Teaching in the\u00a0College of Information and Computer Sciences\u00a0at the\u00a0University &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","no-sidebar","hfeed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":234,"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":887,"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/ramesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}