Speaker name: Dr. Paolo Costa

Abstract: Data centers are the infrastructure providing access to online services such as Amazon, Google Search, Facebook, and Office 365 for hundreds of millions of users around the world. They comprise hundreds of thousands of servers interconnected by a fast network fabric. The network is therefore a critical component of data centers and it is often cited as one of the main bottlenecks, affecting performance and costs.

Existing network deployments are heavily influenced by Internet-based technology. While this approach has served us well, it starts showing its limits. In this talk, I will review some of these shortcomings and discuss how the research undertaken in our group aims to address the challenges of future data centers through a deep rethinking of the way data center networks are built and operated.