Fabián E. Bustamante
Professor
Computer Science
Northwestern University
Contact information
1.847.491-2745
(Assistant) Iliana Vargas iliana.vargas@... 1.847. 491-4205
The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific 'truth'. But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints.
I am interested in large-scale, longitudinal experimental research on computer networks and distributed systems. The goals of my research is to understand networks and the distributed systems we build on them from the perspective of users at the edge of the network, and improve and design systems based on the gained insight.
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What's New?
- I am always looking for good students interested in networked systems (distributed systems, networking, wired and mobile systems).
- Demand on Internet systems as a proxy for social distancing - read our cool IMC 2021 paper "Networked Systems as Witnesses - Association Between Content Demand, Human Mobility and an Infection Spread".
- A new on IPXs, a great collaboration with Andra Lutu and Diego Perino, from Telefonica Research, and Marcelo Bagnulo, from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid will appear in ACM SIGCOMM 2021.
- I served in the Steering Committee of the NSF Workshop on Overcoming Measurement Barriers to Internet Research (WOMBIR 2021). The output of this workshop (published in SIGCOMM CCR) has partially shaped a new NSF initiative on Internet Measurement Research: Methodologies, Tools, and Infrastructure (IMR).
- From in flight to underwater, there's no place we don't go to understand the Internet! Check out our HotNets paper on the submarine cable network
- Javier Bustos and I co-organized the 20th PAM (Passive and Active Measurements) anniversary conference in the Chilean Patagonia. I gave a keynote at the TMA Conference in Vienna, Austria that I called "Network Research and Falling Trees"
- I also took part of the TMA Experts Summit with a talk on our in-flight communication work.
- More on our In-Flight Communication work - try ScaleUp to improve your Web quality of experience in-flight. This got quite a bit of press as well, including from sites like Travel + Leisure. -->
- A new Northwestern initiative for computer science with over 20 new faculty positions.
- Nick Feamster and I co-chaired the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2020. Among the many changes we introduced to the review process, the use of a Review Task Force and Early Rejections seem to be popular and have been adopted by several other great conferences since.
- A great NSF/FCC workshop on tracking quality of experience in the Internet. The report from it is now available at the SIGCOMM CCR.
- An op-ed in Pacific Standard on Cuban Internet connectivity
- My op-ed on Forbes on the right to affordable broadband
Oldies but goodies ...
Biography/Curriculum Vitae
Fabián E. Bustamante is a Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University and Lead Scientist at Phenix, a Chicago-baserd startup focused on real-time video streaming, at scale. Fabián completed his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2001. Before going to Georgia Tech, he studied and taught at the Universidad Nacional de La Patagonia San Juan Bosco (Argentina), from which he received both a 3-year and a 5-year-and-project degrees in computer science. His research interests span several areas of experimental systems, with a focus on networking and distributed systems. As part of their work, he and his research group have released tens of open-source systems that together have gained over 1.5 million users worldwide. Fabián is an ACM and IEEE senior member, a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award and the Science Foundation of Ireland E.T.S. Walton Visitor Award.
Curriculum Vitae 
Recent and representative publications
- Insights from Operating an IP Exchange Provider,
Andra Lutu (Telefonica Research), Diego Perino (Telefonica Research), Marcelo Bagnulo (University Carlos III of Madrid), Fabián E. Bustamante. ACM SIGCOMM 2021 - A first look at the IP eXchange Ecosystem,
Andra Lutu (Telefonica Research), Byunjin Jun, Fabián E. Bustamante, Diego Perino (Telefonica Research), Marcelo Bagnulo (University Carlos III of Madrid), Carlos Gamboa Bontje (Telefonica). ACM SIGCOMM CCR 2020 - Mind the Delay: The Adverse Effects of Delay-Based TCP on HTTP,
Neil Agarwal (UCLA), Matteo Varvello (Brave Software), Andrius Aucinas (Brave Software), Fabián E. Bustamante, Ravi Netravali (UCLA). CoNEXT 2020 - Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind - A User-View on the Criticality of the Submarine Cable Network,
Shucheng Liu, Zachary S. Bischof (IIJ Research Lab), Ishaan Madan, Peter K. Chan, and Fabián E. Bustamante. IMC 2020 - Where Things Roam: Uncovering Cellular IoT/M2M Connectivity,
Andra Lutu (Telefonica Research), Byungjin Jun, Alessandro Finamore (Telefonica Research), Fabián Bustamante and Diego Perino (Telefonica Research) IMC 2020 - AMP up your mobile web experience: Characterizing the impact of Google’s Accelerated Mobile Project,
Byungjin Jun, Fabián E. Bustamante, Sung Yoon Whang and Zachary S. Bischof. Mobicom 2019 - The Value of First Impressions: The Impact of Ad-Blocking on Web QoE,
James Newman and Fabián E. Bustamante. PAM 2019 - Scaling Up Your Experience, Everywhere,
James Newman, Robert H. Belson and Fabián E. Bustamante. HotMobile 2019 - Untangling the world-wide mesh of undersea cables,
Zachary S. Bischof, Romain Fontugne and Fabián E. Bustamante. HotNets 2018 - The Growing Importance of Being Always On -- A first look at the reliability of broadband Internet access,
Zachary S. Bischof, Fabián E. Bustamante and Nick Feamster. TPRC46 2018 - Anycast on the Move: A Look at Mobile Anycast Performance,
Sarah Wassermann, John P. Rula, Fabián E. Bustamante, Pedro Casas. Anycast on the Move: A Look at Mobile Anycast Performance. TMA 2018. - Mile High WiFI: A First Look At In-Flight Internet Connectivity,
John P. Rula, Fabián E. Bustamante, James Newman, Arash Molavi Khaki and Dave Choffnes. WWW 2018 - Cell Spotting -- Studying the Role of Cellular Networks in the Internet,
John P. Rula, Fabián E. Bustamante and Moritz Steiner. IMC 2017 - The utility argument — Making a case for broadband SLAs,
Zachary S. Bischof, Fabián E. Bustamante and Rade Stanojevic. PAM 2017 - A
Measurement Experimentation Platform at the Internet's
Edge,
Mario A. Sánchez, John S. Otto, Zachary S. Bischof, David R. Choffnes, Fabián E. Bustamante, Blachander Krishnamurthy and Walter Willinger. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN), 23(6), December 2015. -
In and Out of Cuba: Characterizing Cuba's Connectivity,
Zachary S. Bischof, John P. Rula, Fabián E. Bustamante. IMC 2015 -
Impact of heterogeneity and socio-economic factors on individual
behavior in decentralized sharing
ecosystems,
A. Gavalda-Miralles, David Choffnes, John Otto, Mario Sanchez, Fabián E. Bustamante, Luis A. N. Amaral, Jordi Duch and Roger Guimera. Proc. of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2014 - Internet
Inter-Domain Traffic Estimation for the Outsider,
Mario A. Sánchez, Fabián E. Bustamante, Blachander Krishnamurthy, Walter Willinger, Georgios Smaragdakis and Jeffrey Erman. IMC 2014 - Need,
Want, or Can Afford - Broadband Markets and the Behavior of
Users,
Zachary S. Bischof, Fabián E. Bustamante and Rade Stanojevic. IMC 2014
Runner-up for Best Paper Award - Behind
the Curtain - Cellular DNS and Content Replica
Selection,
John P. Rula and Fabián E. Bustamante. IMC 2014
Teaching
- FALL 2021
CS-401 Introduction to Graduate Studies in Computer Science: The first course of its kind at NU
Mon/Wed 3:30-4:50PM - Winter 2022
CS-497 Distributed Systems in Challenging Environments: A seminar reviewing interesting ideas and ongoing projects that are pushing distributed systems into new and challenging domains. This year the course will focus on the Internet’s own challenging environment, from connectivity and censorship to natural disasters and environmental impact.
Mon/Wed 9:30-10:50AM - Spring 2022
CS-345 Distributed Systems: An introduction to distributed systems
Tue/Thu 11-12:20PM
Graduate Students
Alumni
- Stefan Birrer (Ph.D., 2008) -- CEO At PhenixP2P
- David Choffnes (Ph.D., 2010) - Associate Professor at Northestern U.
- John Otto (Ph.D., 2013/14) -- Google
- Mario Sánchez (Ph.D., 2014) -- Facebook
- Zach Bischof (Ph.D. 2017) -- IIJ, in Tokyo, Japan
- John Rula (Ph.D. 2017) -- Akamai
- Shucheng (Alex) Liu (MS 2021)
- Sana Asif (MS 2021)
- Andrew Weiner (MS 2017) -- PhenixP2P
- James Whang (BS/MS 2017) -- Microsoft
- Nathan A. Lindquist (BS/MS 2018) -- TIBCO
- Prashanth Vsanthakrisnan (MS, 2019) -- TIBCO
- Robert H. Belson (BS/MS, 2019) -- Verizon
- Ishaan Madan (BS, 2020) -- Apple
- Sana Asif (MS, 2021)
- Alex Liu (MS, 2021)
- Rohit Mandrekar (MS, 2021)
- ...
Selected Professional Activities
Program Committees
- IEEE ICNP 2021
- ACM IMC 2021
- PAM 2021
- Co-chair with Nick Feamster of the ACM IMC 2020
- Co-chair with Georgios Smaragdakis of the CoNEXT 2020 Student Workshop.
- NSDI 2020
Past: CoNEXT 2019 | IMC 2018 | CoNEXT 2018 | EuroSys 2018 | NSDI 2017 | PAM 2017 | ACM SIGCOMM Internet QoE 2017 | IMC 2016 | SIGCOMM 2016 | ACM SIGCOMM Internet QoE 2016 | ACM SIGCOMM LANCOMM 2016 | CoNEXT 2015 | IMC 2015 | EuroSys 2014 | ICDCS 2014 | IEEE P2P 2014 | CoNEXT 2013 | Networking 2013 | ICDCS 2013 | ACM SIGCOMM 2012 ... (A complete list can be found in my CV)
Other Professional Service
- Steering Committee of the NSF Workshop on Overcoming Measurement Barriers to Internet Research (WOMBIR 2021)
- Steering Committee for Passive and Active Measurement Conference (PAM)
- General Co-Chair for PAM 2019
- Co-organizer of the first NSF/FCC Workshop on Tracking Quality of Experience in the Internet, held in Princeton in October 2015
- Co-founder/organizer of ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Crowdsourcing and crowdsharing of Big (Internet) Data (C2B(I)D)
- General Co-Chair for SIGCOMM 2014
- Editorial board of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking - 2014 -- 2018
- Chair Steering Committee for IEEE International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing - 2013 -- 2015 (member from 2012 -- 2015)
- Editorial board of IEEE Internet Computing - 2012 -- Present
- Editorial board of SIGCOMM CCR - 2013 -- 2018
Affiliations
- Adjunct Associate Professor School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) - 2012 -- Present
- Affiliated Faculty - Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems - founded in 2004 with the goals of uncovering fundamental principles governing complex systems in science, technology, and human behavior and applying these principles to solve societally relevant problems through the analysis, design, and control of complex systems.
- Affiliated Faculty - Northwestern Universtiy Transportation Center - a leading interdisciplinary education and research institution dedicated, since 1954, to the long-term improvement of domestic and international systems for the movements of materials, people, energy, and information.
Random Bits
- I'm originally from Patagonia, Argentina ...
- Jeanine and I run long distance (marathons, half-marathons, and 10k). I train using the advanced plan from Hansons Brothers, which I highly recommend. For years I used a program that closely follows Pfitzinger and Douglas in Advanced marathoning and one season I tried the Furman's FIRST three-days+cross marathon plan, but had to go back to the old approach -- long quality miles.
- Luca waiting for the ferry in Inis Meain (Aran Islands, Ireland).
- Pretty little thing Sofia, 1-month old, somewhere in Portugal
- Astor Piazzolla - my favorite musician and one of his best-ever compositions, Adios Nonino.
- I played Lock/2nd Row for Chenque Rugby Club, between 1984 and 1993. Many good friends and family still play for the club or for the veteran rugby team Los Alacranes.
Los Pumas'
passion -
a great
video of the toughest guys in the IRB.
- Academically (genealogy) ...
