HotNets

HotNets
Name	HotNets
Discipline	Computer networking
Abbreviation	HotNets
Start date	2002
Organizers	ACM SIGCOMM, USENIX Association
Frequency	Biennial / Annual
Location	Rotating venues (United States, occasionally international)
Website	(archived)

HotNets HotNets is an annual academic workshop focused on innovative, provocative, and early-stage research in computer networking, distributed systems, and cybersecurity. The meeting emphasizes short, discussion-driven papers and presentations intended to spur debate among researchers from institutions such as MIT, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, and ETH Zurich. HotNets has attracted participants from industry labs like Bell Labs, Microsoft Research, Google Research, IBM Research, and AT&T Labs.

Overview

HotNets foregrounds speculative proposals and contrarian viewpoints in areas including Internet Engineering Task Force, IEEE, IETF working groups, and standards-related work. The workshop format encourages interaction among faculty from Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and University of Michigan as well as researchers from Facebook, Amazon, Apple Inc., Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks. Historically, attendees and authors have included members affiliated with DARPA, NSF, European Research Council, and industrial consortia such as ETSI and W3C.

History

HotNets was founded in the early 2000s by networking researchers associated with institutions like AT&T Labs Research, Xerox PARC, Bell Labs Innovations, Microsoft Research Redmond, and Intel Labs. Early program committees drew on academics from University of California, San Diego, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Washington, and Cornell University. Over time the venue rotated through sites connected to universities such as University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Maryland. The workshop’s proceedings and dialogues influenced work cited by projects at ARPA, NSF-funded NetSE, European Commission, and research groups at Siemens, Ericsson Research, Nokia Research, and Huawei Technologies.

Prominent early participants included researchers with ties to awards and bodies like the ACM SIGCOMM Award, IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award, Turing Award winners, and investigators from labs that produced influential systems such as TCP/IP, BGP, DNS, HTTP, and VoIP innovations. The workshop persisted alongside conferences such as SIGCOMM, NSDI, SOSP, OSDI, NSDI 200x and cross-listed with symposia including CHI, USENIX Security Symposium, and IEEE INFOCOM.

Topics and Themes

HotNets covers topics that intersect with work done at CERN, MIT CSAIL, SRI International, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory. Recurring themes include novel architectures influenced by proposals from Purdue University, University of California, Santa Barbara, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rice University, and Duke University; security-driven designs referenced by USENIX, Black Hat, DEF CON communities; privacy proposals echoed by Electronic Frontier Foundation and policy discussions involving Federal Communications Commission and European Data Protection Board; and deployment studies involving operators like Verizon Communications, Comcast, Sprint Corporation, and T-Mobile US.

Specific technical emphases span routing and addressing work similar in spirit to BGP Route Reflection and research at RIPE NCC, APNIC, ARIN; transport-layer experiments akin to QUIC and TCP Cubic; measurement campaigns resonant with efforts by CAIDA, RIPE Atlas, Netalyzr researchers; and systems work related to overlays, middleboxes, and content distribution linked to Akamai Technologies and Content Delivery Network research.

Format and Structure

The workshop typically uses short paper submissions and invited talks by scholars from Princeton, Caltech, Imperial College London, University College London, and ETH Zurich. Sessions feature panel discussions with participants from IETF RFC authors, program committee members from ACM SIGCOMM, and program chairs who have served on committees for IEEE INFOCOM and USENIX. The structure fosters debate through poster sessions, lightning talks, and breakout groups often attended by representatives of Google, Facebook, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, and startup hubs linked to Y Combinator and Startup Weekend.

HotNets papers are typically non-archival opinion or position pieces, although several have influenced archival publications in venues such as SIGCOMM 20xx, NSDI 20xx, SOSP 20xx, and OSDI 20xx. The program committees have included faculty and researchers from University of Toronto, McGill University, University of British Columbia, Monash University, and University of Sydney.

Notable Papers and Impact

Influential contributions debuted at HotNets later shaped work by teams at Google Chrome, Mozilla Foundation, Apple WebKit, IETF QUIC WG, and research projects at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center adjacent labs. Papers have addressed topics that later matured into widely cited work on censorship resistance related to efforts by Tor Project, on middlebox interactions studied by ICSI Berkeley researchers, and on Naming and Addressing influenced by initiatives like Named Data Networking and projects at University of California, Irvine.

Several HotNets-originated ideas informed standards discussions at IETF standards track and experimental deployments used by carriers such as Deutsche Telekom, Orange S.A., and NTT Communications. Authors who presented at HotNets later published in journals associated with IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, ACM Computing Surveys, and conference proceedings at SIGMETRICS, PODC, MobiCom.

Community and Influence

The HotNets community mixes academics from Brown University, Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, Stony Brook University, and University of Arizona with industry researchers from Nokia Bell Labs, Broadcom, Qualcomm, ARM Limited, and Texas Instruments. Alumni of HotNets often serve on program committees for SIGCOMM, NSDI, SOSP, OSDI, MobiSys, MobiCom, and advisory panels for funding agencies such as National Science Foundation and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Through informal networks linking labs like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, Microsoft Research, and university groups, HotNets has sustained cross-pollination between prototype proposals and larger-scale research initiatives at organizations including Cisco Research, Google Brain (networking-adjacent teams), Facebook Connectivity, LinkedIn Research, and cloud providers. The workshop remains a venue where contrarian ideas are incubated before migration to mainstream venues such as SIGCOMM and IEEE INFOCOM.

Category:Computer networking conferences