Distributed Systems

From the way they interact with one another to how they operate and control critical infrastructure systems, distributed and networked systems play an increasingly essential role.

WSU research emphasizes the development of needed technologies for secure, high-speed communication systems. Applications range from general-purpose business networking to specialized systems for improving the efficiency and reliability of the electric power grid.

Research Projects

• The GridStat project is developing fundamental data delivery technologies that will enable the smart electric power grid to make use of thousands of sophisticated sensors and control devices. GridStat is a collaborative effort of distributed systems and electric power researchers at WSU, with strong connections to national research programs such as Trusted Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG). In this project, we work on performance-related aspects of data delivery as well as on techniques for ensuring secure communications and trustworthy communicating entities.
• The GridSim project is developing a distributed, hybrid simulation system for modeling the dynamics of the power grid and its supporting communication system.
• Researching network traffic classification to increase classifier capacity by speeding up fundamental classification algorithms and by using parallel hardware-based approaches. Protecting a network from potentially-disruptive data traffic requires that every arriving data packet be inspected and, based on its content, classified as either potentially threatening or not. As network speeds increase, these decisions need to be made more quickly.
• WSU researchers are working to model various real-world mixtures of benign and malicious traffic to better assess intrusion detection and prevention algorithms.