My research interests focus on networking, network management and service engineering, including aspects such as network dimensioning, traffic engineering, quality of service management, ad hoc/mesh/sensor networks, policy-based systems, au tonomic networking, multimedia service control and object-oriented communications middleware. Current and completed research projects related to my research activities are, in reverse chronological order: Cisco hICN Mapping and Interoperability, Cisco hICN Scalable on Demand Routing, KCN, UMOBILE, CONCERT, COMIT, FLAMINGO, Green ICN, CDAX, COMET, UniverSelf, QinetiQ ESII, EMANICS, ENTHRONE-2, AGAVE, PAQMAN, PAN, MESCAL, ANWIRE, TEQUILA, PRO-NET, MANTRIP, VESPER, Mobile VCE Core 2, MIAMI, FlowThru, IthACI, REFORM, VITAL, ICM.

My early research work focused on the OSI upper layers emerging at the time, including the Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) and OSI Systems Management (X.700). Work on the latter led to generic object-oriented infrastructure, the OSIMIS platform. This introduced concepts that preceded general-purpose distributed object technologies such as CORBA, it was used in many research projects and influenced commercial products, including those by companies such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

Research work in parallel adressed network and service management architectures and frameworks, focusing especially on the Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) architecture, and became input to ITU-T. The relevant concepts were validated through case studies on ATM resource management. These led to integrated control and management architectures, based on open programmable ATM switches and the use of distributed object technologies for both the control and management planes. This integrated approach subsequently led to the subsequently led to the Telecommunication Information Networking Architecture (TINA) for multimedia multiparty service engineering. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) today reintroduces some the concepts of programmable networks and the integration of control and management outside the basic network fabric.

The advent of the Java programming language in the mid 1990s made possible the use of mobile, execute anywhere, code and this possibility opened new avenues in related technologies for network and service management and control (management by delegation, mobile agents, programmable networks). These technologies, together with reusable software components (CORBA components, Java beans) and policy-based approaches have been used towards flexible network management and service engineering systems.

When I moved to Surrey in 1998, my research areas have expanded to include networking aspects, always though from the point of view of services that use network resources. I looked at intra- and inter-donain quality of service support in IP Differentiated Services networks through MPLS and IP-based traffic engineering. Relevant services are based on Service Level Agreements, resulting in service-drived traffic engineering. Related areas are admission control and policy-based resource management. I have also addressed multicast support for multimedia services. And finally, given that Surrey has a long tradition in satellite communications, I have also looked at routing and transport protocols over satellite networks.

While at Surrey I also addressed service management and engineering for personal communication services beyond 3G. Subareas addressed included the Virtual Home Environment, adaptive services based on quality of service, location and context and adaptive content for services accessed from different types of fixed and mobile terminals.

In the mid-2000s, mobile ad hoc networking and mobile/pervasive computing emerged. I looked at quality of service routing and service differentiation in such fluid rapid-changing networks. We addressed context-aware middleware, whose services/information could be used by adaptive applications but also by the routing protocol for constructing relatively long-lived quality routes. These services and information may be also used by intelligent proactive applications that may take decisions and also possibly guide the human user to move in a particular direction in order to enjoy better connectivity and service quality.

Since I moved back to UCL in 2008, I have been addressing mainly two areas:

• Self-management of future networked systems
• Content- or Information-centric Networking

Content- or Information-centric networking recognises the fact that the vast majority of interactions over the Internet concern content access and looks an a future Internet paradigm where content, users and other entities (nodes etc.) are addressed by IDs and routing to them uses those IDs instead of network addresses, with content cached within the network for increasing access efficiency, security and user quality of experience. For an introduction to this area, pleease look at my IEEE/IFIP IM, WoWMoM and ISCC 2011 keynote speech titled Information-Centric Networking: Overview, Current State and Key Challenges (1.75M).