My research interests include: networking, P2P systems, content delivery, distributed systems, coding theory, and probabilistic analysis. Where possible, I like to combine both systems and theory in a project, so that the ideas have a strong theoretical basis and can also be evaluated in practice.
My most recent research is on incentives and performance in Peer-to-Peer file-sharing and streaming systems. Check out the FairTorrent project page.
I used to run a coding theory seminar, which focused on the applications of coding theory in networking. The seminar page contains some useful links to research in coding theory.
Publications:
 | Alex Sherman, Jason Nieh and Clifford Stein, "FairTorrent: Bringing Fairness to Peer-to-Peer Systems", Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on Emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies (CoNEXT, 2009), Rome, Italy, December 1-4, 2009. [pdf][slides for Mac: pptx] |
| Alex Sherman, Angelos Stavrou, Jason Nieh, Angelos Keromytis and Clifford Stein, "Adding Trust to P2P Distributions of Paid Content", Proceedings of the 12th Information Security Conference (ISC 2009), Pisa, Italy, September 7-9, 2009, pp. 459-474 [pdf] |
| Alex Sherman, Phil Lisiecki, Andy Berkheimer and Joel Wein, "ACMS: Akamai Configuration Management System", Proceedings of the 2nd USENIX/ACM Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2005), Boston, MA, May 2-4, 2005 [pdf][html][NSDI presentation - ppt] |
| David Karger, Alex Sherman, Andy Berkheimer, Bill Bogstad, Riz Dhanidina, Ken Iwamoto, Brian Kim, Luke Matkins, Yoav Yerushalmi, "Web-Caching with Consistent Hashing", Proceedings of the 8th conference on World Wide Web, (WWW 1999), May 1999. [html][pdf] |
Workshops/Posters
| Alex Sherman, Jason Nieh and Clifford Stein, "Fair Distributed Scheduling Algorithm for a P2P System", in Models and Algorithms for Planning and Scheduling Problems (MAPSP, 2009), Abbey Rolduc, The Netherlands, June 29 - July 3, 2009. |
| Alex Sherman and Valerio Pascucci, "Evaluation of Data Layout Effects on Processing High-Definition Images", Lawrence Livermore National Lab, August 17, 2005 |
Technical Reports
| Alex Sherman, Angelos Stavrou, Jason Nieh and Cliff Stein, “Mitigating the Effects of Free-Riders in BitTorrent using Trusted Agents”, Janurary 25, 2008, TR CUCS-005-08[pdf] |
| Alex Sherman, Angelos Stavrou, Jason Nieh, Cliff Stein, Angelos Keromytis, “Can P2P Replace Direct Download for Content Distribution”, March 30, 2007, TR CUCS-020-07[pdf] |
| Alex Sherman, Japinder Chawla, Jason Nieh, Cliff Stein, Justin Sarma, “Aequitas: A Trusted P2P System for Paid Content Delivery”, March 30, 2007 TR CUCS-019-07[pdf] |
| Alex Sherman, Jason Nieh, Yoav Freund, “Feasibility of Voice over IP on the Internet”, June 9, 2006, TR CUCS-027-06 [pdf] |
People I worked with in the past:
| Yoav Freund |
| Mor Harchol-Balter |
| Angelos Keromytis |
| Tom Leighton |
| Jason Nieh |
| Valerio Pascucci |
| Angelos Stavrou |
| Cliff Stein |
| Joel Wein |