Bibudh Lahiri ~~ projects

3125 Coover Hall
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa

(515) 451-0307 (M)
(515) 294-6503 (O)



Network Monitoring Data stream algorithms for monitoring TCP/IP networks for intrusion detection and traffic behavior characterization: Due to the ever-increasing size of the internet and the rapidly growing number of web applications, the volume of data exchanged over the internet today is enormous. Network monitoring applications constantly monitor computer networks for identification of slow or failing components, detection of possible intrusions like worms or Denial of Sevice attacks and characterization of usual network traffic behavior. A network flow is usually defined by the attributes like source IP address, destination IP address, source port, destination port and type of service. Network monitoring applications (e.g., products that implement the Cisco NetFlow protocol) collect these flow data by listening to network interfaces; and analyze these data to detect any potential threat to the network, by searching for patterns that are characteristic of typical exploits (worms or DoS attacks). Our goal is to design and implement efficient algorithms that work on massive volume of real network flow data, but require small space to mine different patterns (that characterize typical exploits) from this data.

Distributed Data Mining Computing Frequent Elements using Gossip: Due to the large scale of P2P and sensor networks, the values of aggregate functions over the data in the whole network are often more important than individual data at nodes. For example, in a P2P file-sharing network (like Gnutella or Napster), an administrator may be typically interested in identifying the most frequently accessed items over the whole network. Any reliance on central coordination limits the system’s scalability, therefore gossip-based protocols are emerging as an important communication paradigm. In gossip-based protocols, each node contacts one or a few nodes in each round (usually chosen at random), and exchanges information with these nodes. This mechanism leads to high fault-tolerance and self-stabilization. Our work is to design efficient distributed algorithms for identifying the frequently occurring data elements with probabilistic guarantees on accuracy, where the nodes would exchange small-sized "sketches" or synopses of their individual data sets through gossip algorithms.

Sensor Networks Development of Distributed, Lightweight, Secure Hierarchical Directories for Tracking Mobile Objects in Sensor Networks: The MTS300 Sensor BoardThe MICA2 mote Most practical techniques for locating remote objects in a distributed system suffer from problems of scalability and locality of reference. We are implementing the Arrow distributed directory protocol, a scalable and local mechanism for ensuring mutually exclusive access to mobile objects. This directory has communication complexity optimal within a factor of (1+MST-stretch(G))/2, where MST-stretch(G) is the minimum spanning tree stretch of the underlying network. In Arrow protocol, local change in the object’s position does not result in a global change in the network. This has been deployed on a fixed spanning-tree-based network of MICA2 motes, where the presence of the object is detected by measuring the amount of ambient light using MTS300 photo sensors, and the node detecting the object transmits this information to its neighbours so that the pointers are updated appropriately.

Business Applications DADS (DUoS and Associated Distribution Services): The goal of the DADS program was to meet the regulatory requirement to separate electricity distribution and supply businesses of United Utilities and develop an IT solution that will cater to the pure distribution business. The application developed by TCS provided a common web-based interface across all the distribution functions and it replaced a number of different legacy applications that were used for distribution billing previously.

Roles played:

  • Interacted with the onsite team in requirement collection
  • Developed prototypes using Dreamweaver MX 6.0, prepared specification documents for screens, batches and reports and Entity Relationship Diagram using System Architect
  • Developed web components for the Payment Management and Revenue Protection Service modules based on BC4J (Business Component for Java) framework using Oracle 9i JDeveloper 9.0.2
  • Developed Oracle-based reports using Oracle 9i Reports Developer
  • Developed batches and procedures on Oracle 9i database
  • Joined the project as a developer and later took the responsibility as a process owner of Payment Management and Revenue Protection Service modules
  • Involved in User Acceptance Test support for the Payment Management and Revenue Protection Service modules at the client site
  • Involved in development and timely execution of PL/SQL procedures on Oracle 9i for migrating data from legacy applications to DADS

Trailblazer (Acuity): This web-based application developed for McGraw-Hill Digital Learning enhanced the functionality of an existing application named TrailBlazer with creating test, exercise and assignments for students; scoring the students' response and generating predictive, diagnostic and summary reports. The system also monitors the structure of state curriculum and tracks the progress of a student in class.

Roles played:

  • Interacted with the onsite team in requirement collection
  • Developed the class and sequence diagrams using UML tool Enterprise Architect 6.0
  • Developed the application on Maverick framework using Eclipse 3.1



Bibudh Lahiri
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Iowa State University
3125 Coover Hall, Ames, Iowa