Keith W. Ross

Leonard J. Shustek Professor of Computer Science

Department of Computer and Information Science
Polytechnic University
Six MetroTech Center
Brooklyn, NY 11201
phone: 718-260-3859
fax: 718-260-3609

e-mail:  ross@poly.edu

Biosketch

Professor Ross joined Polytechnic University as the Leonard J. Shustek Chair Professor in Computer Science in January 2003. Before joining Polytechnic University, he was a professor for five years in the Multimedia Communications Department at Eurecom Institute in Sophia Antipolis, France. From 1985 through 1997, he was a professor in the Department of Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He received a B.S.E.E from Tufts University, a M.S.E.E. from Columbia University,  and a Ph.D. in Computer and Control Engineering from The University of Michigan.

Professor Ross has worked in peer-to-peer networking, Internet measurement, video streaming, Web caching, multi-service loss networks, content distribution networks, network security, voice over IP, optimization, queuing theory, and Markov decision processes. He is an IEEE Fellow, and is currently associate editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. He has served as an advisor to the Federal Trade Commission on P2P file sharing.

Professor Ross is co-author (with James F. Kurose) of the popular textbook, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet, published by Addison-Wesley (preliminary edition in 1999, first edition in 2000, second edition in 2002, third edition 2004, fourth edition 2007). The textbook is the most popular textbook on computer networks in CS departments, both nationally and internationally; it has been translated into twelve languages. Professor Ross is also the author of the research monograph, Multiservice Loss Models for Broadband Communication Networks, published by Springer in 1995.

From July 1999 to July 2001, Professor Ross took a leave of absence to found and lead Wimba, an Internet technology start-up. Wimba develops and markets Java-based asynchronous and synchronous voice-over-IP technologies, primarily for the on-line education and language learning markets. Wimba is now headquartered in NYC and has more than 80 employees worldwide. A personal account of asynchronous voice and the early days of Wimba can  be found here.

Publications

Peer-to-peer
Caching and content distribution
Streaming video
Video on demand
Multimedia messaging
QoS in packet-switched networks
Monte integration for product-form loss and queuing networks
Efficient simulation of Markov processes
Loss networks
Markov decision processes
 

Research Team

Di Wu, Postdoc
Angela Wang, PhD student
Prithula Dhungel, PhD student
Chao Zhang, PhD student
Pratik Mehta, Master's student
Salil Siddhaye, Master's student
Yao-Chin Wu, Master's student

Former PhD Students

Jian Liang, Falconstor
Rakesh Kumar, Bloomberg
Philippe de Cuetos, ENST, Paris
Jussi Kangasharju, Unviersity of Darmsadt
David Turner, California State University
Despina Saparilla, Cisco Systems
Martin Reisslein, Arizona State University
Jean McManus, Verizon
Bill Liang, Tellme
Sanjay Gupta, Motorola
Jie Wang, Flash Networks
Shun-Ping Chung, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
Danny Tsang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Melike Baykal-Gursoy, Rutgers University
Ravi Varadarajan, Datek

Recent Press Articles Citing Research

Web users could slash cost of putting video online, New Scientist Tech, 11 September 2007,  http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn12625-web-users-could-slash-cost-of-putting-video-online.html

File-sharing sites are being subverted for web attacks, New Scientist Tech,  30 May 2007, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11949-filesharing-sites-being-subverted-for-web-attacks.html

Recent Courses at Polytechnic