Thank you for thinking of NAL!
PhD semester projects
Contact: Katerina.
MS theses (PDMs) and MS/BA semester projects
Our long-term goal is to improve Internet transparency, and we keep looking for new ways to achieve that. At the moment, we have projects on the following topics:
- Using math to infer network behavior: Network devices can behave in mysterious ways, e.g., consistently de-prioritize certain traffic. We are investigating ways to infer such network behavior, but only from external observations (without direct access to the network device itself). We are looking for a student who’s into signal processing and machine learning to help us reconstruct the queuing delay process seen by a flow using only the flow’s own irregular observations [BA project]. Contact: Mahdi
- Testing a neutrality-detection tool: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) sometimes throttle, block, or de-prioritize certain traffic, affecting application performance and raising concerns about Internet neutrality. We have designed a tool that localizes where traffic differentiation occurs, and we are looking for a student to do final pre-deployment testing (run experiments on various networks, analyze the results to evaluate the tool’s accuracy and robustness, suggest improvements…). We need someone who’s passionate about Internet neutrality and loves building software tools [BA project]. Contact: Mahdi
- Using online games to map Internet latency: We collect video-game streaming footage from Twitch and extract the latency numbers to build a universal map of Internet latency. We are looking for a student who loves games and data science to help us analyse the collected measurements: find gamers with interesting latency patterns; group gamers according to their latency behavior; and try to explain natural variations in latency due to real-world events [MS project]. Contact: Catalina
To enjoy any of these topics, you must have enjoyed your Computer Systems and/or Networks courses (including all those quirky delay computations and TCP diagrams).
Before we start working together, it’s important for both you and us to agree that the project matches your interests and background. So, if you are interested, please contact us to schedule a meeting.
Cybersecurity MS
The above topics do not qualify as security or privacy topics, so they are not good matches for Cybersecurity MS semester projects. Occasionally we do offer such projects, but unfortunately this won’t be the case in Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.