STRESS: Systematic Testing of protocol Robustness by Evaluation of Synthesized Scenarios

DARPA Order No. G408 1998-2002 (STRESS was also funded by NASA/NSF grant 2002-2007)
Deborah Estrin (destrin@cs.ucla.edu), Sandeep Gupta (sandeep@poisson.usc.edu), Ahmed Helmy (helmy@usc.edu)

The overall objective of STRESS is to provide tools and methodologies

For systematic design and verification of networks to enable rapid deployment of robust network protocols
To increase the robustness of newly deployed protocols and applications through automated test generation and their integration with simulation tools.
To provide a more complete performance characterization of network and end-to-end protocols through sensitivity analysis.
For refined network planning models (for high performance and reliability)

Publications

Theses

Ph.D. Dissertation:
A. Helmy, "Systematic Test Synthesis for Multipoint Protocol Design", Ph.D. Dissertation, Advisors: Prof. Deborah Estrin (Chair), Prof. Sandeep Gupta, Prof. Ramesh Govindan, USC-CS-TR-99-716, Computer Science Department, University of Southern California, August 1999. [abstract] [Presentation slides (in power point) are available here.]
Ganesha Bhaskara Multicast Based Micro-Mobility: Design and Analysis, M.S. Thesis, EE Dept, USC, Aug 02. [Advisor: Ahmed Helmy].

Published Journal and Conference Papers

K. Seada, A. Helmy, " Fairness Evaluation Experiments for Multicast Congestion Control Protocols", IEEE GLOBECOM, Taipei, Taiwan, November 2002. [ Extended version.]
K. Seada, S. Gupta, A. Helmy, " Systematic Evaluation of Multicast Congestion Control Protocols", SCS International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (SPECTS), San Diego, July 02. [ Extended Version.] [Presentation slides (.PDF)]
A. Helmy, S. Gupta, D. Estrin, "The STRESS Method for Boundary-point Performance Analysis of End-to-end Multicast Timer-Suppression Mechanisms", Accepted for publication at the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN). To appear. [ACM-LANL-NCSTRL]
A. Helmy, D. Estrin, S. Gupta, "Systematic Testing of Multicast Routing Protocols: Analysis of Forward and Backward Search Techniques", The 9^th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (IEEE ICCCN 2000), October 2000. Abstract. (Extended version at: https://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/cs.NI/0007005).
A. Helmy, S. Gupta, D. Estrin, A. Cerpa, Y. Yu, "Systematic Performance Evaluation of Multipoint Protocols", Proceedings of FORTE/PSTV, IFIP, Kluwer Academic Publication, Pisa, Italy, October 2000. (Submitted version ps. Extended version pdf, also at: https://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/cs.NI/0006029).
S. Begum, M. Sharma, A. Helmy, S. Gupta, "Systematic Testing of Protocol Robustness: Case Studies on Mobile IP and MARS", Proceedings of the 25^th annual IEEE conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), Florida, November 2000.

Abstract

Long version

A. Helmy, D. Estrin, S. Gupta, "Fault-oriented Test Generation for Multicast Routing Protocol Design", Proceedings of Formal Description Techniques & Protocol Specification, Testing, and Verification (FORTE/PSTV), IFIP, Kluwer Academic Publication, Paris, France, p. 93-109, November 1998.
A. Helmy, D. Estrin, "Simulation-based `STRESS' Testing Case Study: A Multicast Routing Protocol", IEEE Sixth International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS), Montreal, Canada, July 1998. Abstract
A. Helmy, M. Jaseemuddin, Ganesha Bhaskara, "Efficient Micro-Mobility using Intra-domain Multicast-based Mechanisms (M&M)", ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review (CCR), October 2002.
F. Bai, N. Sadagopan, A. Helmy, " IMPORTANT: A framework to systematically analyze the Impact of Mobility on Performance of RouTing protocols for Adhoc NeTworks", IEEE INFOCOM (The 22nd Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies), March/April 2003, San Francisco. [Slides (.ppt)]
N. Sadagopan, F. Bai, B. Krishnamachari, A. Helmy, "PATHS: analysis of PATH duration Statistics and their impact on reactive MANET routing protocols", ACM MobiHoc (The Fourth ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing), June 2003.
F. Bai, N. Sadagopan, A. Helmy, "The IMPORTANT Framework for Analyzing the Impact of Mobility on Performance of Routing for Ad Hoc Networks", AdHoc Networks Journal - Elsevier Science, To appear Fall 2003 (In Press). [ Technical Report (.pdf) version].
A. Helmy, M. Jaseemuddin, Ganesha Bhaskara, "Multicast-based Mobility: A Novel Architecture for Efficient Micro-Mobility", (Accepted to appear in IEEE JSAC, 1st Q. 04).
G. Bhaskara, A. Helmy, S. Gupta, "Micro Mobility Protocol Design and Evaluation: A Parameterized Building Block Approach", IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC), October 2003.

Submitted Papers

F. Bai, N. Sadagopan, A. Helmy, "BRICS: A Building-block approach for analyzing RoutIng protoCols in Ad Hoc Networks - A Case Study of Reactive Routing Protocols", USC-CS-TR-02-775, November 2002. (Submitted for Review)
N. Sadagopan, F. Bai, B. Krishnamachari, A. Helmy, "PATHS: analysis of PATH duration Statistics and their impact on reactive MANET routing protocols", (Submitted to IEEE JSAC)
K. Seada, A. Helmy, S. Gupta, "Systematic Evaluation of Multicast Congestion Control Protocols", (Submitted to IEEE JSAC).
A. Helmy, S. Gupta, "STRESS: A Methodology for Systematic Testing of Multicast Routing Protocols", (Submitted).

Papers in Preparation

S. Begum, S. Gupta, A. Helmy, "Test Generation for MAC protocols in Ad Hoc Networks".
S. Ebrahimi, S. Gupta, A. Helmy, "Congestion Propagation and Attacks using short TCP flows".

[Note: In these publications at least one (or more) co-authors were at least partially funded by the STRESS project at some point. Many other projects were later inspired by STRESS, including realistic mobility modeling, robust geographic services, and security in wireless networks.]