https://www.nist.gov/itl/antd/internet-scalable-systems-research
Information Technology Laboratory /Advanced Network Technologies Division
Internet and Scalable Systems Metrology
Works with industry to improve the quality and timeliness of emerging technical specifications for next-generation Internet technologies and distributed information systems and to foster their adoption and deployment in operational networks. The emphasis of the group is on innovating and applying advanced measurement science to increase the trustworthiness and expand the applicability of new, potentially disruptive, Internet technologies.
NIST Publications Searchable Database
Networking Publications
Evolving the Technical Infrastructure of the Internet
Internet technologies provide a technical infrastructure for most of the systems (information, transportation, manufacturing, communications, defense, Government, education, entertainment, etc) that underlie our lives.
The global Internet is at a crossroads as the viability of several of its most basic infrastructural technologies (routing, naming and addressing) are threatened by inherent vulnerabilities and robustness problems.
Internet technologies provide the basis for networks of the future - including the Internet of Things, industrial control systems, advanced mobile broadband, cloud computing, etc. The pace of innovation in Internet technologies to address these new and disruptive use cases is rapid.
ISSMG Mission:
Fostering New Network Technology - The ISSMG works with industry to improve the quality and timeliness of emerging specifications and to foster industry adoption of next-generation Internet technologies and distributed information systems.
Advancing Network Metrology - The emphasis of the group is on innovating and applying advanced measurement science to increase the robustness and expand the applicability of potentially disruptive Internet technologies.
Competencies of the group include: leadership in industry consensus standards, modeling and analysis of emerging Internet technologies, measurement science for scalable information systems, design and evaluation of advanced network test and measurement techniques, and rapid prototyping and empirical measurement of early protocol designs.
Our efforts focuses on Internet Scale problems, solutions and measurement techniques.
ISSMG Techniques / Competencies:
Analytical, Simulation & Emulation Modeling.
Internet scale modeling for performance, scalability, vulnerability, robustness.
Protocol Design, Analysis and Standardization
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), WiFi Alliance.
Internet Scale Measurement and Data Analysis.
NIST roles in Internet technology research, development and technology transfer.
Measurement and monitoring of Internet infrastructure.
Collaboration with various large scale measurement activities.
Rapid Prototyping.
Open source reference implementations of emerging specifications.
Deployment guidance and profiles.
Fostering commercial adoption and deployment
Test and Evaluation of Emerging Implementations
Test tools designed to assist implementers and early adopters.
Accredited testing laboratories for formal product interoperability and conformance.
ISSMG Current Focus Areas:
The group's programmatic focus is upon Trustworthy Networks, where we work to establish the technical basis necessary to improve the security, resilience and performance of the communication infrastructures that underly our network-centric society. Our research cultivates trust in current and emerging network technologies by developing and applying innovative measurement techniques, improving the quality and timeliness of consensus standards, and providing tools and guidance necessary to expedite adoption of advanced network technologies. ITL collaborates directly with leading industry research (Internet Research Task Force), standards (Internet Engineering Task Force) and network operations (North American Network Operators Group) groups to leverage NIST contributions and foster the design, standardization and commercial deployment of solutions to systemic vulnerabilities and robustness issues in the core Internet technologies.
Major technical areas within this program include:
The Trustworthy Intelligent Networks project works with industry and academia to improve the trustworthiness and applicability of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to future networks and distributed systems. Our research focuses on applications of AI/ML to address security and robustness issues today's networks and developing means to test and measure the robustness of AI/ML techniques necessary for future autonomic networks.
The Robust Inter-Domain Routing effort includes collaborative research with leading Internet companies to design and standardize technologies to improve the resilience and security of the Internet's global routing system. It focuses on developing and fostering deployment of mitigation techniques for attacks and misconfigurations that result in large-scale Internet outages.
The High Assurance Domains project works with the IETF, Messaging Malware Mobile and Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), Department of Defense and the Federal CIO Council to research and develop new technologies to address key trust and security issues in enterprise networks. The current focus of this effort is on the development of a reference architecture and evaluation techniques for emerging Zero Trust Networks.
The Software Defined and Virtual Networks project works to develop test and measurement techniques to advance the state of the art in network virtualization, network service function chaining, software defined networks, technologies and techniques to address robustness and security of virtualized network services. Our work explores novel applications of NFV/SDN to domains such as network security and intrusion detection, support of machine to machine communications, support of advanced mobility and cloud computing. A key component of this research is the development of enabling programmable measurement techniques that can efficiently operate at the scale and speed of advanced networks.
The Trustworthy Network of Things project works with industry to design, standardize, test and foster adoption of network-centric approaches to protect IoT devices from the Internet and to protect the Internet from IoT devices. Our current efforts focus on the research and development manufacturer usage description (MUD) and secure device onboardings technologies.
The USGv6 Program works with the IETF and Federal CIO community to provide technical leadership in standards profiles, product testing programs, and deployment guidance to foster the global transition to the next generation Internet Protocol (IPv6).
The Measurement Science for Complex Information Systems project aims to develop and evaluate a coherent set of methods to understand behavior in complex information systems, such as the Internet, computational grids and computing clouds. Such large distributed systems exhibit global behavior arising from independent decisions made by many simultaneous actors, which adapt their behavior based on local measurements of system state. Actor adaptations shift the global system state, influencing subsequent measurements, leading to further adaptations. This continuous cycle of measurement and adaptation drives a time-varying global behavior. For this reason, proposed changes in actor decision algorithms must be examined at large spatiotemporal scale in order to predict system behavior.
Please see each project for details of our contributions including research publications, standards specifications, software tools, guidance documents, workshops, etc.
Zero Trust Architecture: NIST Publishes SP 800-207
NIST announces the final publication of Special Publication (SP) 800-207, Zero Trust Architecture, which discusses the core logical components that make up a
NIST Publishes SP 800-189, Resilient Interdomain Traffic Exchange: BGP Security and DDoS Mitigation
In recent years, numerous routing control plane anomalies such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), prefix hijacking, and route leaks have resulted in denial of
DRAFT of New USGv6 Specifications Available for Public Comment
DRAFT3 of USGv6 Revision 1 Specifications Available for Public Comment The first version of the of the USGv6 standards profile was published in
Recent Select Publications
Zero Trust Architecture
Scott W. Rose, Oliver Borchert, Stuart Mitchell, Sean Connelly
Zero trust (ZT) is the term for an evolving set of cybersecurity paradigms that move defenses from static, network- based perimeters to focus on users, assets
AccuPIPE: Accurate Heavy Flow Detection in the Data Plane Using Programmable Switches
Yang Guo, Franklin Liu, An Wang, Hang Liu
Identifying heavy flows, i.e., flows with high packet rate (or count), is vital for many network applications such as anomaly detection, network operation
Resilient Interdomain Traffic Exchange: BGP Security and DDos Mitigation
Kotikalapudi Sriram, Douglas C. Montgomery
In recent years, numerous routing control plane anomalies, such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) prefix hijacking and route leaks, have resulted in denial-of
Software Defined Networking (SDN) Enhanced Edge Computing: A Network Centric Survey
An Wang, Zili Zha, Yang Guo, Songqing Chen
Edge Computing is burgeoning along with the rapidly increasing adoption of the Internet-of- Things (IoT). While there are studies on various aspects of Edge
Soft MUD: Implementing Manufacturer Usage Descriptions on OpenFlow SDN Switches
Mudumbai Ranganathan
Manufacturer Usage Descriptions are generalized network Access Control Lists (ACL) that allow manufacturers to declare intended communication patterns for
BotSifter: A SDN-based Online Bot Detection Framework in Data Centers
An Wang, Zili Zha, Yang Guo, Douglas C. Montgomery, Songqing Chen
Botnets continue to be one of the most severe security threats plaguing the Internet. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of cloud-hosted botnets along
Evaluating Predictors of Congestion Collapse in Communication Networks
Christopher E. Dabrowski, Kevin L. Mills
Researchers model congestion in communication networks using a percolation process, where congestion spreads minimally before a critical load and expands
Selected Software
BGP Secure Routing Extension (BGP‑SRx) Prototype
SRx is an open source reference implementation and research platform for investigating emerging BGP security extensions and supporting protocols such as RPKI
NIST RPKI Deployment Monitor and Test System
The NIST RPKI monitor provides multiple distinct views of the state of RPKI deployment and its relationship to BGP routing in the Internet.The monitor is
BRITE - BGPSEC / RPKI Interoperability Test & Evaluation System
BRITE - BGPSEC / RPKI Interoperability Test & Evaluation[Go directly to the running system: https://brite.antd.nist.gov/]BRITE is a web-based test and
NIST IPv6 Deployment Monitor and Test System
This is a on-line test and measurement tool that provides continuous test and measurement of the completeness, quality and extent of IPv6 deployment in the
ISSMG Quick Links
NIST IPv6 Deployment Monitor and Test Tool. - http://fedv6-deployment.antd.nist.gov/
NIST RPKI Monitor - http://rpki-monitor.antd.nist.gov/
BGPSEC / RPKI Interoperability Test & Evaluation System - https://brite.antd.nist.gov/
DANE Test Tools - https://dane-test.had.dnsops.gov/
ISSMG Additional Information
D. Montgomery; Internet and Scalable Systems Research: Addressing Systemic Challenges to Our Network Centric Society; presentation.
Current Opportunities for Collaboration with ANTD.
ISSMG Information Contact:
Doug Montgomery
dougm@nist.gov