Zili Meng

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | UST · Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering

The modularization of Service Function Chains (SFCs) in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) could introduce significant performance overhead and resource efficiency degradation due to introducing frequent packet transfer and consuming much more hardware resources. In response, we exploit the reusability, lightweightness and individual scalability...

Efficiently scheduling data processing jobs on distributed compute clusters requires complex algorithms. Current systems use simple, generalized heuristics and ignore workload characteristics, since developing and tuning a scheduling policy for each workload is infeasible. In this paper, we show that modern machine learning techniques can generate...

While deep learning (DL)-based networked systems have shown great potential in various applications, a key drawback is that Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) in DL are blackboxes and nontransparent for network operators. The lack of interpretability makes DL-based networked systems challenging to operate and troubleshoot, which further prevents DL-based...

Major commercial client-side video players employ adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms to improve user quality of experience (QoE). With the evolvement of ABR algorithms, increasingly complex methods such as neural networks have been adopted to pursue better performance. However, these complex methods are too heavyweight to be directly implemented in...

The modularization of Service Function Chains (SFCs) in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) could introduce significant performance overhead and resource efficiency degradation due to introducing frequent packet transfer and consuming much more hardware resources. In response, we exploit the \textit{lightweight} and \textit{individually scalable}...

We introduce Zhuge, a novel approach to reducing tail latency in wireless networks by minimizing the control loop for congestion feedback. Wireless networks often suffer from transient congestion due to sudden drops in available bandwidth, causing high end-to-end latency. Existing solutions are limited by the delayed feedback loop inherent in curre...

When the optimization goal of interactive multimedia streaming applications shifts to tail latency, the main contributors of latency are no longer the same as the contributors of median latency in the original architecture. In this chapter, we focus on analyzing where the end-to-end latency fluctuations come from in the existing interactive multime...

This chapter delves into how to optimize the transport layer for interactive multimedia streaming, focusing on differentiating retransmissions to enhance real-time performance. We explore both congestion control and packet loss recovery mechanisms and emphasize recent academic and industry proposals. A key highlight is Hairpin, a novel approach tha...

This chapter delves into the challenges and solutions related to managing network layer congestion to ensure low-latency interactive multimedia streaming. It reviews various approaches, including Active Queue Management (AQM), queue size optimization, and end-to-end message passing. The discussion highlights the difficulties in deploying these solu...

This chapter explores the application layer of data paths with a focus on Adaptive Frame-Rate (AFR) in interactive multimedia streaming. We examine key components such as codec optimization, adaptive bitrate algorithms, and multimedia transmission protocols. By analyzing existing solutions and their limitations, we highlight the importance of manag...

In this chapter, we introduce Metis, a framework designed to convert complex interactive multimedia streaming systems into human-readable control policies. Leveraging decision tree conversion methods, Metis addresses the drawbacks of current decision-making systems, such as their heavyweight nature, incomprehensible structure, and non-adjustable po...

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the only inter-domain routing protocol that plays an important role on the Internet. However, BGP suffers from route leaks, which can cause serious security threats. To mitigate the effects of route leaks, accurate and timely route leak locating is of great importance. Prior studies leverage AS business relationship...

Real-time communication (RTC) applications demand consistent low latency to ensure a smooth and interactive user experience. However, wireless networks, including WiFi and cellular, although they provide satisfactory median latency, often suffer from significant tail latency due to the highly variable network bandwidth. We observe that the control...

To improve the performance of mobile web services, a new transport protocol, QUIC, has been recently proposed as a substitute for TCP. However, with pros and cons of QUIC, it is challenging to decide whether and when to use QUIC in large-scale real-world mobile web services. Complex temporal correlation of network conditions, high user heterogeneit...

Degradation or failure events in optical backbone networks affect the service level agreements for cloud services. It is critical to detect and troubleshoot these events promptly to minimize their impact. Existing telemetry systems rely on arcane tools (e.g., SNMP) and vendor-specific controllers to collect optical data, which affects both the flex...

The design methodology of congestion control algorithms (CCAs) has shifted from control-based to measurement-based in recent years. However, we find that measurement-based CCAs, although having better performance, are not robust enough in fluctuating network environments, which are increasingly common nowadays. In this paper, we propose PAD to make...

In network function virtualization (NFV), network functions (NFs) are chained as a service function chain (SFC) to enhance NF management with low cost and high flexibility. Recent NFV solutions indicate that the packet processing performance of SFCs can be significantly improved by offloading NFs to programmable switches. However, such offloading r...

Major commercial client-side video players employ adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms to improve the user quality of experience (QoE). With the evolvement of ABR algorithms, increasingly complex methods such as neural networks have been adopted to pursue better performance. However, these complex methods are too heavyweight to be directly deployed in...

2019 Association for Computing Machinery. Efficiently scheduling data processing jobs on distributed compute clusters requires complex algorithms. Current systems use simple, generalized heuristics and ignore workload characteristics, since developing and tuning a scheduling policy for each workload is infeasible. In this paper, we showthat modern...

Efficiently scheduling data processing jobs on distributed compute clusters requires complex algorithms. Current systems, however, use simple generalized heuristics and ignore workload structure, since developing and tuning a bespoke heuristic for each workload is infeasible. In this paper, we show that modern machine learning techniques can genera...

Network function virtualization (NFV) together with software defined networking (SDN) offers the potential for enhancing service delivery flexibility and reducing overall costs. Based on the capability of dynamic creation and destruction of network function (NF) instances, NFV provides great elasticity in NF control, such as NF scaling out, scaling...

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has the potential to enhance service delivery flexibility and reduce overall costs by provisioning software-based service function chains (SFCs) on commodity hardware. However, we observe that existing CPU-based SFC solutions cannot achieve both high performance and high elasticity simultaneously. To address su...

Recently SmartNICs are widely used to accelerate service chains in NFV. However, when the SmartNIC is overloaded, casually migrating vNFs away from SmartNIC to CPU may lead to additional packet transmissions between SmartNIC and CPU. To address this problem, we present PAM, push aside migration to effectively alleviate the hot spot on SmartNIC with...

The modularization of Service Function Chains (SFCs) in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) could introduce significant performance overhead and resource efficiency degradation due to introducing frequent packet transfer and consuming much more hardware resources. In response, we exploit the lightweight and individually scalable features of eleme...

We propose PRAM, a priority-aware flow migrating scheme to address the problem of which flows to migrate during dynamic scale in or out of network functions in NFV networks. We introduce the concept of Priority-Weighted Migration Time (PWMT), and use a greedy algorithm to minimize the PWMT, in order to exert the minimum impact on latency-sensitive...