Managing networks is a difficult task, whether they be wirelined or wireless. Traditionally, this task has been performed through dedicated infrastructure devices that are carefully controlled and administered. Examples include firewalls, traffic shapers, and special-purpose gateways. In this talk, we focus on wireless networks and contend that many management tasks in this environment are best performed through active participation of clients. We have demonstrated this in our recent work on channel assignment, load balancing, and efficient handoffs in 802.11 based WLANs. In this talk we will present solutions to a few of these problems, a framework in which these problems can be better solved, and a set of broader research activities, all being conducted in our newly founded Wisconsin Wireless and NetworkinG Systems (WiNGS) Laboratory.

Suman Banerjee (suman@cs.wisc.edu) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and heads the newly founded Wisconsin Wireless and NetworkinG Systems (WiNGS) laboratory. He received the PhD and MS degrees in Computer Science from University of Maryland College Park, USA and the BTech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kanpur, India. His research focus is on various aspects of wireless and mobile networking systems.