University of Auckland (UA)

Partner description

The University of Auckland was founded in 1883, is now the country’s largest university with 38,500 students, nearly 10,000 of whom graduate annually.  It has a strong international focus and is the only New Zealand member of Universitas 21 and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, two international consortia of research-led universities.  As well as being New Zealand’s top university, The University of Auckland is the country’s largest, and has the most comprehensive range of courses in the country with teaching and research conducted over eight faculties and two large-scale research institutes. The University of Auckland is New Zealand’s pre-eminent research-led institution. Of the 600 researchers in the entire New Zealand tertiary system ranked as being of top international quality in the Government’s latest Performance-Based Review Fund (PBRF) report, one-third are at The University of Auckland.  The University of Auckland also has the largest graduate school in the country, the largest annual number of postgraduate research student completions and the highest level of research income.
The Network Research Group within our Computer Science Department has been active in various aspects of networking for more than ten years, particularly in network measurement and the Domain Name System.  It, together with the University’s central Network Services Support Group, was instrumental in deploying and testing of KAREN, New Zealand’s Research and Education network in 2007.  Today we maintain a close relationship with REANNZ (the company responsible for KAREN) as well as network researchers in the other New Zealand Universities.

As a Collaborating Institution in mPlane, The University of Auckland will contribute with its expertise in network measurement systems, by providing a node capable of running components of the developing mPlane platform.  This node will have the potential for passive and/or active measurement of selected performance parameters. >

Role in mPlane

The University of Auckland will be mainly involved in the following WPs:

• WP1 - Use Cases, Requirements and Architecture:  The University of Auckland mPlane node will be used both for research on collected performance data in collaboration between mPlane partners and the University of Auckland, as well as for research and development of the mPlane control interface(s). Estimation of the allocated effort: approximately 1.5 PM
• WP5: Integration, Deployment, Data Collection, and Evaluation: In addition to the above, the University of Auckland will collaborate in examining existing network performance monitoring and systems on its own and affiliated networks, both as part of a study of existing systems as inputs to the mPlane architecture work package, and as part of a study into how such existing systems can be best integrated into the mPlane platform.Estimation of the allocated effort: approximately 2.5 PM

Key Personnel

Assoc. Prof Nevil Brownlee: Nevil has been an Associate Professor in The University of Auckland's Computer Science Department since 2004; his teaching and research focuses on the Internet, especially on Internet data collection and Measurement and - more recently - the analysis of unsolicited traffic.  Nevil managed the University's campus network from its beginnings in 1985, its connection to the Internet in 1989, and its further development to about 1998, thus gaining experience in operating a medium-sized (14,000 hosts) network.  Since 2000 Nevil has been associated with CAIDA (the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis); his work there includes measurement and analysis of Internet traffic flows, and of the behaviour of the global Domain Name System (DNS).  He is also associated with the WAND Network Research group at the University of Waikato.  Nevil has taken an active part in the IETF since 1992.  From 2000 to the present he has been co-chair of the IPFIX (IP Flow Information Export) Working Group, and from 2012 he has co-chaired the EMAN (Energy Management) Working Group.  As well, since February 2010 he has been the RFC Editor for Independent Submissions; he is also a member of RSOC, the IETF's RFC Series Oversight Committee.