List of Student Projects

Details: Project may be coordinated with a local nature preserve.

Details: The project is based on our on-going NG911 (next-generation 911) project and efforts by the US Federal Government to improve 911 service. The project will leverage existing SIP, RTP and LoST (location look-up) libraries to contact the right 911 center. The application may be used during NG911 demos and trials.

Prerequisites: Java; experience with Android or iPhone helpful, but not required.

Details: Java runtime and development environments on Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems are very mature at this point. This project investigates the state of affairs on two other important UNIX platforms for network devices--FreeBSD or OpenWrt (or both!) You will survey all available Java runtime and development environment on your chosen platform. Your investigation should include (but not limited to) relative performance by well-designed measurements, memory footprint of the runtime, degree of conformance to Java 2 Security framework, how Java thread is implemented in relation to OS threads, any available runtime optimization such as JIT, Java Native Interface (JNI) support, and the availability of recent features such as OSGi module framework, Java 2 libraries and DirectByteBuffer.

Prerequisites: Strong Java skill required; Familiarity with UNIX environment required; Working knowledge of C highly desirable; Must be analytical and organized; Must be a self-starter who requires minimal supervision.

Details: Bonjour, also known as Zeroconf, is a technology pioneered by Apple that lets local devices to be connected without the need for configuration by the users. SIP phones can use this technology to discover other SIP phones on the same network, the details of which are described in an Internet draft. This project will implement the spec on an existing open-source SIP phone.

Prerequisites: Strong programming skill required; Experience working with a large exiting code base is a definite plus; Familiarity with SIP and/or Bonjour is a plus but not required.

Details: For more information, please contact salman@cs.columbia.edu

Prerequisites: Computer Networks (desirable) iPhone API (desirable)

Details: For more information, please contact salman@cs.columbia.edu

Prerequisites: Computer Networks

Details: For more information, please contact salman@cs.columbia.edu

Prerequisites: Computer Networks

Details: For more information, please contact salman@cs.columbia.edu

Prerequisites: Computer networks (must) Network security (desirable)

Details: For more information, please contact Prof. Henning Schulzrinne.

Prerequisites: Computer Networks An iPhone or Symbian-phone

Details: For more information, please contact salman@cs.columbia.edu

Prerequisites: Computer Networks (desirable) Familiarity with SIP (desirable) An iPhone!

Details: NetServ is a new way to deploy services in the Internet, using the OSGI framework and the CLICK programmable router. Services might include service discovery, content distribution, peer-to-peer services, multicast, location-based services, and network diagnostics.

Prerequisites: Knowledge of Java; network background helpful.

Details: Location tracking is a very powerful application in many domains, such as healthcare, for following people and assets. A number of technologies are competing to provide the best solution. One such technology is Ultra Wideband (UWB), which can ideally provide an accuracy of within six inches. We have an UWB system installed in the CS Department conference room that uses sensors on the walls to locate small badges. There is also a video camera installed on the wall in the same room whose positioning can be controlled programatically. The two systems can be combined to make the camera focus on a specific person in the room. This is very desirable when meetings are held and remote viewers would like to see different participants (e.g., in a panel or a larger discussion group). The project student would be responsible for integrating these two systems through the use of existing APIs in order to demonstrate the aforementioned functionality. Presence technology used in VoIP is one possibility for communicating between the two systems.

Prerequisites: Some background in signal processing.

Prerequisites: Understanding of basic digital audio and video properties; COMS 6181

Details: Eager evaluation evaluates all header components and splits the body into parts, where needed. Lazy evaluation only parses headers required for initial processing and defers parsing other request parts until needed. compare fixed and variable header format. In a fixed format, all header and parameter names use standard capitalization, no spaces after the header field or parameter name and the equal sign, no spaces after the parameter-introducing semicolon,single line without continuation lines and a fixed order of header fields. Encode the same header information in XML, as is done in BEEP and XMPP (Jabber). Compare the text parsers to a TLV (type-length-value) binary encoding of the same information.

Prerequisites: C/C++; COMS 4119; some familiarity with XML

Prerequisites: COMS 4119 or equivalent; C/C++

Details: BASS Application Sharing System is efficient, reliable, independent of the operating system, scales well via heterogenous multicast, supports all applications, and features true application sharing. Currently, BASS has a Java client and Windows XP server. We've searched the possible ways to implement a MAC OS X server and found the required API methods. The student should implement a BASS Leopard server with objective C and Cocoa.

Prerequisites: Computer Networks, Cocoa, Objective C

Details: At conferences, students and researchers ask questions at a microphone, but the audience cannot always tell who is speaking. We propose to use RFID chip cards carried in name badges and a sensor installed at the audience microphone. The sensor reads the RFID card of the person at the microphone and sends a message with the unique identifier to a server. The server then translates the identifier into a name and affiliation, displaying it on a screen or submitting it to a chat room for the meeting. We plan to test the system at the IETF, a large meeting of network engineers that takes place every four months.

Prerequisites: Willingness to work with embedded systems.

Details: Based on either your own collection of spam or one provided, analyze how spam is delivered, i.e., via open relays or via "bots" and whether techniques such as SPF are deployed and helpful.

Prerequisites: COMS 4119 or equivalent.

Details: Build an architecture using a camera that automatically checks whether a document is real or fake.

Prerequisites: Network and basic security knowledge.

Details: The project should implement an automatic detection mechanism for wireless access points and other services, possibly using services such as Loki. Implementation can be either on an iPhone, MacOS, Linux or Windows platform.

Prerequisites: Knowledge of networking fundamentals.

Details: The tool can be developed on either the MacOS, Windows or Linux platform. Libraries are available

Prerequisites: C/C++; COMS 4118 and COMS 4119 or equivalent.

Details: The tool builds on existing network and codec (H.26x) libraries.

Prerequisites: C

Details: BASS Application Sharing System is efficient, reliable, independent of the operating system, scales well via heterogenous multicast, supports all applications, and features true application sharing. Currently, BASS has a Java client and Windows XP server. There is a working linux implementation but it requires some changes. The student will update&modify the old linux server implementation.

Prerequisites: Computer Networks

Details: The system is based on triangulation and (possibly) tightly synchronized clocks. The loudspeakers send out inaudible sounds that are picked up by the microphone and used to determine which room the person is in and where, approximately, within that room.

Prerequisites: System-level programming in C; statistics; undergraduate physics; COMS 4119 or equivalent

Details: For more information, please contact salman@cs.columbia.edu

Prerequisites: Strong programming skills Computer Networks

Details: (The implementation at Binghamton only works with very specific hardware, unfortunately.)

Prerequisites: Windows system programming; C/C++

Details: To participate in the project, students should be familiar with ns-2 simulator and network security. This project also requires programming.

Prerequisites: C/C++, Computer networks and Network security

Details: You will perform development on our lab's Mac machines. For more information, please contact salman@cs.columbia.edu

Prerequisites: Computer Networks

Details: Using a smartphone such as the iPhone or Android, gather presence information to generate rich presence data (RFC 4480). Examples include: an ambient sound detector to detect where the presentity was by analyzing ambient sounds; a motion detector to see if the presentity was sitting still or running/walking, or even ambling in a mall (would need some sort of a decision system to impart scores in a manner that would be consistent with the motion); aggregate data from a motion detector with an ambient sound card to derive rules (no motion and constant sound may indicate listening to music, no motion, no light -- need a light detector as well-- and variable sound may indicate in a movie or church, etc.); a motion detector and some rules to figure out if the presentity was "in-transit" (i.e., not driving a car, but a passenger), etc.

Details: BASS Application Sharing System is efficient, reliable, independent of the operating system, scales well via heterogenous multicast, supports all applications, and features true application sharing. Currently, BASS has a Java client and Windows XP server. Windows Vista's Aqua interface and other new features break the XP server implementation. The student will make the necessary changes to run the server on Vista

Prerequisites: Computer Networks

Details: The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) has been widely adopted by major standardization bodies as the core signaling protocol for Next General Networks. A SIP server can be overloaded by emergency-induced bulk calls, flash-crowd effects, and denial of service attacks. Without appropriate control, the performance of an overloaded SIP server may exhibit congestion collapse behavior. We investigate mechanisms to overcome this problem and contribute the results to the standardization bodies.

Prerequisites: C/C++ programing and basic networking knowledge.

Details: In today’s mobile networks, devices often move from one network to the next, forming transitory associations without a fixed support infrastructure. This scenario calls for new frameworks and applications that need to be aware of node transitions as well as peer metadata or properties.

Applications that fit this scenario include, but are not limited to: - an electronic BBS system with allows users to share information about events - a localized Twitter-like microblogging application - automatic file sharing and synchronization

Students are also encouraged to come up with their own ideas or concepts of useful applications.

Prerequisites: - Java (for Windows/Mac/Linux platforms) - Objective-C (for iPod/iPhone platforms) - Basic knowledge of networking concepts and programming (TCP, UDP, sockets) - Knowledge of service discovery and/or multicast a plus

Details: The slides are transmitted using JPEG over RTP. We plan to test the system at the IETF, a large meeting of network engineers that takes place every four months.

Prerequisites: Java or C/C++. Willingness to work on multiple OS platforms.

Details: The Zeroconf-to-Zeroconf Toolkit (z2z) is an open-source command line program that extends the reach of Apple Bonjour services beyond the usual local subnet by exporting and importing service announcements across the Internet. A popular usage of z2z is to share iTunes music libraries across the Internet. The current version of z2z uses a public peer-to-peer lookup service called OpenDHT (http://opendht.org). Benefits: Potentially become the author of one of the most popolar Facebook app!

Prerequisites: Strong Java skill required; C/C++ desirable; Network programming experience desirable; must be a self-starter who requires minimal supervision

Details: Today, users have dozens of passwords and often as many IDs, from credit cards and student IDs to drivers licenses and loyalty cards, such as those for frequent-flyer programs and grocery stores. Using the BlueTooth capability in most cell phones and the Java implementation, design a mobile wallet that can supplement or replace some of these cards. For example, the mobile phone can automatically produce a dynamic credit card validation code, the three-digit code printed on the back of the credit card.

Prerequisites: Java

Details: Software updates and web content synchronization consume significant amounts of bandwidth. One way to reduce the bandwidth consumption is to avoid transmitting whole files and send differences instead. One of the most popular synchronization mechanisms is rsync, which, roughly speaking, uses hashing on blocks to detect which blocks have changed. This mechanism works even if the client only has the old file and the server only has the new file. However, in many cases, the server has both old and new files, so it is likely that edit-based algorithms are more efficient. These algorithms directly apply insert, delete and other elementary string editing techniques on the remote file. For given data sets, compare the efficiency of both rsync-like and editing-based techniques. [Suitable for possible publication.]

Prerequisites: 4119 or equivalent.

Details: Using Linux netfilter or equivalent Windows functionality, detect whether applications are working correctly. For example, your module should detect whether DHCP, DNS, HTTP or SIP are succeeding or failing.

Prerequisites: Network knowledge

Prerequisites: C; COMS 4119

Prerequisites: C; willingness to learn Tcl/Tk or other graphics library; COMS 4119

Prerequisites: System programming; COMS 4119