Distributed Systems and Networks Lab

The Distributed Systems and Networks (DSN) Lab is a Computer Science research lab at Johns Hopkins University. We aim to invent and develop technologies with a real-world impact. To achieve this, we work to combine the practical and theoretical aspects of system-building to create systems that are not only practical and deployable, but also provably correct. The broad themes of our work are resilience, performance, and enabling services that were not previously possible.

We focus on dependable infrastructure: making the computerized networked infrastructure systems that our society relies upon resilient, performant, and secure. Our current research includes intrusion-tolerant systems for clouds and critical infrastructure with a focus on real-time and extremely resilient intrusion-tolerant SCADA systems for the power grid, as well as real-time reliable Internet services enabled by overlay networks and high-performance communication and coordination for modern data centers.

Examples of the systems developed in our lab include Spines, an overlay messaging framework, Spire, an intrusion-tolerant SCADA system for the power grid, and Spread, a high-performance group communication toolkit.

Our technologies are deployed in mission critical systems, support data center applications, are included in commercial products, and are used for research and teaching in universities and research labs around the world.