USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation

USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation
Name	USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation
Status	active
Genre	academic conference
Frequency	annual
First	2004
Organizer	USENIX Association
Discipline	Computer Networking, Distributed Systems, Operating Systems
Location	various

USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation is a premier annual forum for presentation of research on computer networking and distributed systems with strong connections to operating systems and storage systems. The symposium draws submissions and attendees from institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, and industry labs including Google, Microsoft Research, Facebook, Amazon Web Services, and Intel Corporation. Papers presented at the symposium often influence standards and deployments involving organizations such as Internet Engineering Task Force, IEEE, IETF, Linux Foundation, and OpenStack Foundation.

History

The symposium began in the early 2000s as a focused successor to broader USENIX venues and was established by the USENIX Association to address emergent challenges highlighted by work at DARPA, National Science Foundation, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and AT&T Labs Research. Early programs featured contributors from MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, UC San Diego, Princeton University, University of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Tsinghua University, University of Toronto, University of Washington, and Harvard University. Over time the event has been co-located with conferences such as Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, USENIX Security Symposium, Conference on File and Storage Technologies, and ACM SIGCOMM Conference, reflecting cross-pollination with communities including ACM, IEEE Communications Society, Association for Computing Machinery, and European Union research initiatives. Notable keynote speakers have included researchers affiliated with Bell Labs, Microsoft Research Redmond, Google Research, Facebook AI Research, Amazon Research, and institutions like Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Scope and Topics

The symposium covers design, implementation, and empirical evaluation of systems; topics often intersect work done at Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Netflix, Uber, LinkedIn, and Spotify. Typical subjects include performance evaluation for projects stemming from Linux kernel, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD; virtualization advances linked to Xen Project, KVM, Docker, and Kubernetes; storage and file-system innovations influenced by Ceph, HDFS, ZFS, and Btrfs; networked protocols related to TCP/IP, QUIC, HTTP/2, Multipath TCP, and BGP. Work on system scalability references techniques used at Google Data Center, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba Cloud while security and privacy contributions echo concerns addressed by National Institute of Standards and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, OpenSSL, and IETF TLS Working Group.

Conference Format and Organization

The symposium is organized by the USENIX Association with program committees drawn from faculty at MIT, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Princeton University, Cornell University, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, Columbia University, University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University, and researchers from Google, Microsoft Research, Apple Inc., IBM Research, NVIDIA Research, and Cisco Systems. The format typically includes peer-reviewed paper presentations, poster sessions, tutorials, and shepherding processes similar to those used by ACM SIGCOMM, USENIX Security Symposium, NSDI, and SOSP. Conference logistics have been managed in collaboration with venues in San Diego, Boston, Seattle, and Santa Clara and use submission systems like those used by EasyChair and HotCRP.

Notable Papers and Contributions

Papers from the symposium have introduced influential systems and ideas comparable to contributions from SOSP, OSDI, SIGCOMM, and FAST. Noteworthy contributions include novel measurement studies of HTTP and TCP performance similar to analyses from CAIDA, RIPE NCC, Akamai Technologies, and Cisco; storage-system innovations paralleling work at Google File System, MapReduce, Bigtable, Spanner, and Hadoop; and virtualization and containerization advancements related to LXC, runc, systemd, and CRI-O. Research on consensus and replication has cited foundations in Paxos, Raft, Zookeeper, and Chubby; network overlays and SDN work connect to OpenFlow, ONOS, OpenDaylight, and P4. Measurement-driven security studies reference datasets maintained by CAIDA, IETF],] and agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security.

Awards and Recognition

The symposium recognizes outstanding papers with best paper awards and shepherding commendations similar to awards at SOSP and OSDI; winners often include researchers from MIT CSAIL, Stanford DAWN, CMU Parallel Data Lab, and industrial teams at Google Brain, Azure Research, Facebook Core Data Infrastructure, Twitter Cortex, and Netflix Technology labs. Authors of influential works have received broader recognition through ACM Fellows, IEEE Fellows, Turing Award nominations, and honors from institutions such as National Academy of Engineering and Royal Society.

Community and Sponsorship

Sponsors have included major industry players and foundations such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, Meta Platforms, Inc., Cisco Systems, Oracle Corporation, Red Hat, VMware, Facebook, Akamai Technologies, NetApp, Samsung Electronics, Broadcom Inc., HP Enterprise, IBM, Qualcomm, ARM Holdings, Apple Inc., and research funders like National Science Foundation, European Research Council, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The community comprises academics from University of California, San Diego, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Texas at Austin, University of Maryland, Georgia Institute of Technology, Purdue University, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis, and practitioners from Dropbox, Salesforce, Shopify, Stripe, and Square.

Impact on Research and Industry

Work presented at the symposium has impacted standards and deployments across Internet Engineering Task Force, IEEE 802, Linux Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, OpenStack Foundation, and commercial products from Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud. The symposium's influence extends to curricula at MIT, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University and to open-source projects hosted by GitHub, GitLab, and Apache Software Foundation. Researchers who published at the symposium have gone on to roles at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and academic appointments at Princeton University, Yale University, Brown University, Duke University, Rice University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Chicago, and Columbia University.

Category:Computer networking conferences