does not allow connections outside its own set of values. Networks may communicate, if they are compatible in their goals. But for this they need actors who possess compatible access codes to operate the switches. They are the switchers or power-holders in our society (as in the connections between

The boundary between computing infrastructure and urban infrastructure were blurred to a fuzzy line some time ago and much has been written (and speculated) about on the ramifications of their consociation across a spectrum of topics, from sociology and public policy, to cyborgs and robotic

, following component roles and replication semantics. To discover application topologies, OX monitors network traffic among virtual machines, transparently. Based on this information, OX builds on-line topology graphs for applications and incrementally partitions these graphs across the infrastructure

Abstract—The increasing usage of smart embedded devices in business blurs the line between the virtual and real worlds. This creates new opportunities to build applications that better integrate real-time state of the physical world, and hence, provides enterprise services that are highly dynamic

This thesis presents CraneTracker, a multi-modal sensing and communication system for monitoring migratory species at the continental level. By exploiting the robust and extensive cellular infrastructure across the continent, traditional mobile wireless sensor networks can be extended to enable

This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact

could automatically cache data blocks near worker nodes, or perform some computation directly on the data stream. This approach enables a new breed of application designs that blur the line between the cloud’s network and its servers. 1

I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Torsten Braun, head of the Computer Network and Distributed Systems group (RVS), for supervising this work and for his insightful advises. Prof. Dr. Torsten Braun encouraged and motivated me to publish my research results and he provided me the opportunity to present

All rights reserved.

Abstract—Wireless sensor network protocols and applications typically need to be evaluated and tested not only using simulators but also on testbeds. While simulations allow studying the performance of protocols and applications in a controlled environment, they usually do not provide a sufficient