Research in Distributed Systems

I work with the Mace programming language toolkit.
I currently work on understanding and debugging performance of Distributed systems using Machine learning on logs. The NSDI 2012 paper describes some of our ideas in this direction. This has helped uncover interesting behaviors of two popular BitTorrent systems − Transmission & Azureus, and an open source implementation of BigTable − HBase.

Refereed conference publications

Karthik Nagaraj, Charles Killian, Jennifer Neville.

Structured Comparative Analysis of Systems Logs to Diagnose Performance Problems
at 9th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2012). San Jose, CA. 25-27 April, 2012.
Karthik Nagaraj, Hitesh Khandelwal, Charles Killian and Ramana Kompella.

Hierarchy-Aware Distributed Overlays in Data Centers using DC2
at 4th International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS 2012). Bangalore, India. 5-7 January, 2012. PDF Slides
Charles Killian, Karthik Nagaraj, Salman Pervez, Ryan Braud, James W. Anderson and Ranjit Jhala.

Finding Latent Performance Bugs in Systems Implementations
at 18th International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2010). Santa Fe, NM. 7-11 November, 2010. PDF ACM Portal
KC Sivaramakrishnan, Karthik Nagaraj, Lukasz Ziarek and Patrick Eugster.

Efficient Session Type Guided Distributed Interaction
at 12th International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages (COORDINATION 2010). Amsterdam, Netherlands. 7-10 June, 2010. PDF Springer

Technical Reports

Karthik Nagaraj, Charles Killian, Jennifer Neville. Structured Comparative Analysis of Systems Logs to Diagnose Performance Problems. TR-11-020.
Karthik Nagaraj, Hitesh Khandelwal, Charles Killian and Ramana Rao Kompella. Revisiting Overlay Multicasting for the Cloud. TR-10-011.

Posters

Karthik Nagaraj, Charles Killian, Jennifer Neville. Tracking Behavioral Changes in Distributed Systems using Distalyzer at 23rd ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP 2011). Cascais, Portugal. 23-26 October, 2011. Summary Poster
Karthik Nagaraj, Charles Killian, Jennifer Neville. Structured Comparative Analysis of Systems Logs using Distalyzer at 8th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2011). Boston, MA. 30 March - April 1, 2011.
Karthik Nagaraj, Hitesh Khandelwal, Charles Killian and Ramana Kompella. DC2: Scalable Distributed Communication Middleware for the Cloud at 7th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2010). San Jose, CA. 28-30 April, 2010. PDF
Karthik Nagaraj, Ramana Rao Kompella, Charles Killian. Distributed Social Networking at 6th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2009). Boston, MA. 22-24 April, 2009. PDF

Courses

Fall 2008:
Compiling and Programming Systems (CS502)
Data Communication and Computer Networks (CS536)
Datacenter Architecture (CS590N)

Spring 2009:
Introduction to Distributed systems (CS505)
Inter-networking (CS636)

Fall 2009:
Algorithm Design, Analysis and Implementation (CS580)
Advanced Topics in Distributed Systems (CS603)

Spring 2010:
Parallel Computing (CS525)

Fall 2010:
Data Mining (CS573)

Teaching

Spring 2010:
Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Distributed Systems (CS 505)