POSTER SESSION

Session papers are available to OSDI and workshop registrants immediately and to everyone beginning October 3, 2010.

AVATARs for Pennies: Cheap N-version Programming for Replication
Atul Singh, Nishant Sinha, and Nitin Agrawal, NEC Laboratories, Princeton

Abstract: In this paper, we propose AvatarFactory as a means to achieve the necessary diversity for building reliable distributed systems. The key contribution of AvatarFactory is in developing an automated and cost-effective methodology to introduce the diversity; it does so in multiple ways: it exploits the diversity in off-the-shelf compilers and their corresponding run-times, leverages insights from existing software recovery techniques to tolerate deterministic bugs, and employs recently developed high-level domain specific languages to reduce the chances of software errors during the implementation stage. Our preliminary evaluation shows that the versions produced by AvatarFactory are diverse enough to tolerate compiler introduced errors.
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Using Application Knowledge to Improve Embedded Systems Dependability
Andreas Heinig, Michael Engel, Florian Schmoll, and Peter Marwedel, TU Dortmund

Abstract: In this paper, we present an approach using application knowledge. This knowledge is used to classify errors according to their relevance and the influence of their correction on the timing behavior of the whole system. When real-time conditions have to be met not all errors can be fixed immediately. Using a typical soft real-time application, an H.264 video decoder, as an example, we show that error correction can be delayed. Furthermore, we show that the correction overhead will be significantly reduced if application knowledge is employed.
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Routing Attacks as a Viable Threat: Can Software Systems Protect Themselves?
Dan Alistarh, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; Gilles Trédan, Ioannis Avramopoulos, and Petr Kuznetsov, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories/TU Berlin

Abstract: In this paper, we show that distributed systems are vulnerable to routing attacks and propose an architecture to obviate this vulnerability. A somewhat surprising finding is that even a small-scale routing attack can completely disrupt the operation of a state-machine replication service. The architecture that we propose is based on the following simple ideas: (1) Circumvent the adversary if possible and (2) if it is not possible, relax the application semantics.
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Could Ash Cloud or Deep-Sea Current Overwhelm the Internet?
Rocky K.C. Chang, Edmond W.W. Chan, Weichao Li, Waiting W.T. Fok, and Xiapu Luo, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Abstract: In this paper, we are initially set out to evaluate how the ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajoöekull volcano impacted the Internet traffic. Based on our path measurement for European websites, we observed significant congestion whose onset seems to coincide with the period of disrupted air traffic. However, after expanding the scope of investigation, the path congestion was in fact caused indirectly by a submarine cable fault which received far less attention than the ash-cloud news. The paths under our monitoring were overloaded by taking on additional traffic diverted from the faulty cable.
     Read the full paper (registered attendees only until Oct. 3, 2010)