Approximate Networking

H. T. KungHarvard University

Panel 1 on “What Are the Biggest Opportunities in Networking Problem?”

NITRD Workshop on Complex Engineered NetworksWashington, DC

September 20-21, 2012

Wireless Networking Is ImportantBut ...

• Peak bandwidth is physically limited for any given frequency band

• Further exploitation in diversity (e.g., multipath and fine-grained beamforming) is getting increasingly difficult

• Gap in meeting application demands is growing• Thus we need to find ways to fill the gap

without violating Shannon's capacity theorem

Fortunately, There Are Opportunities

• Many applications don’t need networks for exact packet delivery, for example:– Sensor data processing– Big data analysis– Probability distribution estimation– Image/vision object recognition and tracking– Machine learning– Biologically inspired systems

• For these applications, approximate networking may be sufficient:– Deliver fraction of packets– Deliver approximate packets– Deliver combined packets

Advantages

• We can use approximate network node hardware and protocols, and traffic-reducing networks

• This allows efficient network implementation and robust network management

• Moreover, this enables new security means, e.g., integrated encryption and compression using secret distortion distribution keys rather than compression followed by encryption

• Theory in network coding and compressive sensing can be exploited

Summary

• We have argued that approximate networking, especially for wireless networking, is a good opportunity for future networking