I am a computer scientist interested in everything networked: from
protocols and applications to the hardware that carries our data across the Internet.
My goal is to make networks faster, more reliable, more secure, and more equitable.
My daughter Sonia was born four months after I last updated this webpage.
I got tenure!
Ray, Nirav, and Philip graduated and are off to incredible careers.
I have been on semi-sabbatical at Amazon learning about American football for the past year.
I have new aspirations to update this website with some frequency.
The I/O Driven Server
In the most recent edition of SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review, I talk about a radical shift occuring in datacenter server architectures which places network interface cards (NICs) in control of where compute takes place on the server. In this editorial, I both describe the changes that are happening due to SmartNICS and Data Processing Units, as well as open questions for the research community. Read on here.
Of Apples and Oranges
Many recent computer systems combine new software designs with novel harwdare components.
However, comparing two systems which use heterogeneous hardware is fundamentally different from comparing systems running on the same type of hardware.
This week at HotNets 2023, Hugo Sadok presents principles for writing research papers comparing the performance of systems using different hardware platforms.
Tigger, A Database Proxy that Bounces
Database proxies intermediate network connections for database management systems (DBMSes) by performing both network-layer and DBMS-specfic offloads.
Tigger, presented today at VLDB 2023 by Matt Butrovich, is a new database proxy which uses eBPF to push database functionality into the kernel, improving the efficiency of the proxy.
Learn more here about this epic crossover of database and networking research.
Enso wins Best Paper and Distinguished Artifact at OSDI 2023
Congratulations to Hugo Sadok and the Enso team for winning the Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award and the Distinguished Artifact Award at OSDI 2023! Hugo’s work shows how to improve communication between the network and the CPU to speed up applications I/O intensive applications by 1.5-6X. Read the paper or check out the open-source code.
I only review for conferences which (a) have an enforced anti-harassment policy, (b) use double-anonymous review, and (c) offer open-access proceedings.
Justine Sherry is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Her interests are in software and hardware networked systems at all layers.
Much of her research focuses on middleboxes and network functions, specialized devices that secure Internet connections and make data load more efficiently.
Together with her colleagues, she developed APLOMB, the first system to apply cloud computing principles to network functions; BlindBox, the first middlebox to scan the contents of encrypted traffic without decrypting it; and Pigasus, the first open-source intrusion detection system to operate over 100Gbps of data with a single server.
Dr. Sherry has received numerous awards including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Joel and Ruth Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the SIGCOMM Doctoral Dissertation Award.
She is a member of the ACM CoNEXT Steering Committee, an Amazon Scholar, and technical program committee co-chair for NSDI 2027. Finally, she is always on the lookout for a great cappuccino.