Nick Feamster

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Nick Feamster
Nick Feamster.png
Feamster in 2024
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology (S.B., M.Eng., Ph.D.)
Known forSoftware-defined networking
Network measurement
Machine learning for networking
Internet security
Online computer science education
Awards ACM Fellow
PECASE
ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award
Sloan Research Fellowship
Technology Review TR35 Innovators Under 35
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science, Networking
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago
Princeton University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Thesis Proactive Techniques for Correct and Predictable Internet Routing  (2005)
Doctoral advisor Hari Balakrishnan

Nick Feamster is an American computer scientist and the Neubauer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, where he was the inaugural director of the Center for Data and Computing, later the Data Science Institute, and co-directs the Internet Innovation Initiative, which focuses on AI's impact on policy and economics. [1] He is known for significant contributions to software-defined networking (SDN), [2] early work in applying machine learning to network security and performance, [3] broadband Internet measurement, [4] Internet technology policy, and online education.

Contents

Early life and education

Feamster grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, showing an early interest in technology through participation in Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth, one of the first online education initiatives, where he completed AP calculus and physics in middle school. [5] [6]

He earned his S.B. (2000) and M.Eng. (2001) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and his Ph.D. (2005) in Computer Science, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral dissertation, Proactive Techniques for Correct and Predictable Internet Routing, received honorable mention for the George M. Sprowls Award. His doctoral advisor was Hari Balakrishnan. [7] [8]

Career

Industry work

Feamster was an early software engineer at LookSmart, where he developed the company's first web crawler, later acquired by AltaVista. [1] He contributed to network security at Damballa, co-inventing botnet-detection technology covered by patents. [9] He co-founded NetMicroscope, a company applying AI to network service management. [10] [11] He also worked on video transcoding at Hewlett-Packard, voice-over-IP technologies at Bell Laboratories, DNS technology at Verisign, and network management and fault diagnosis at Thomson. [12] [13]

In 2019, his research supported a Wall Street Journal investigation into Internet speed and streaming video quality. [14] [15]

Academic positions

Since 2019, Feamster has been Neubauer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, directing the Network Operations and Internet Security Lab and co-directing the Internet Innovation Initiative. [1] [16] After a 2005 postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University, he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as an assistant professor, becoming full professor in 2014. In 2015, he returned to Princeton as Professor of Computer Science, having served as Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP). [17]

Personal life

Nick Feamster running the Comrades Marathon, where he finished as a top-10 American in 2017. Nick Feamster Running.png
Nick Feamster running the Comrades Marathon, where he finished as a top-10 American in 2017.
Nick Feamster singing and playing guitar. Nick Feamster Guitar.jpg
Nick Feamster singing and playing guitar.

Feamster is an avid long-distance runner, having completed over 20 marathons, including Boston and New York, and earning three silver medals at the Comrades Marathon. [1] [18] [19] He holds the fastest known time for an unsupported end-to-end run on the Chicago Lakefront Trail. [19] He serves on the official pace team for the Chicago Marathon. [20] He is also a musician who writes, produces, and performs his own tracks. [21]

Research and contributions

Software-defined networking

Feamster is noted for significant contributions to SDN, with influential papers including The Case for Separating Routing from Routers (2004) and The Road to SDN (2014). [22] [23] His Router Configuration Checker (rcc) won the Best Paper Award at USENIX NSDI 2005 and laid the foundation for formal verification of network configurations. [24] He teaches SDN through a Coursera course. [25]

Internet measurement

Feamster's work on broadband Internet measurement includes the BISmark project, the world's first open-source router-based Internet speed test, deployed in over 30 countries. [26] BISmark informed the FCC's Measuring Broadband America initiative and was extended through projects like PEERING and Transit Portal. [27] [28]

Machine learning for networking

Feamster made early contributions to applying machine learning to networking, including spam and botnet detection. [29] His WISE system, developed with students, was deployed at Google for network scenario evaluation. [30] Recent work includes NetDiffusion and NetSSM, applying generative AI to network management. [31] [32]

Network security

Feamster's security contributions include machine learning-based spam and botnet detection, covered by patents. [33] [34] He co-invented Oblivious DNS, deployed by Apple and Cloudflare to enhance privacy. [35] [36] [37]

Online education

Feamster co-authored the textbook Computer Networks with Andrew Tanenbaum. [38] He created one of the first MOOCs, which focused on SDN, for Coursera in 2013. [39] He was one of four founding instructors for Georgia Tech's Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program, teaching computer networking, with course videos available on YouTube. [40] [41]

Technology policy

Feamster is an active contributor to Internet policy, having served as Princeton's CITP director and testifying before the FCC on broadband and net neutrality. [42] He co-edited reports for the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) and advocated for ethics in computer science education. [43] [44]

Internet censorship and online speech

Feamster's early work on Infranet (2002) addressed Internet censorship circumvention. [45] He founded the Workshop on Free and Open Communication on the Internet (FOCI) in 2011. [46] He also teaches a course on censorship and online speech. [47] [48]

Feamster has served as a technical expert witness in litigation for many cases, and has testified in federal court on many cases involving a variety of issues, including copyright, patents, trade secrets, and other issues relating to security and privacy, including Sony Music Entertainment v. Cox Communications (2019) and Splunk Inc. v. Cribl, Inc. (2021). [49] [50]

Awards and honors

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Nick Feamster". University of Chicago Department of Computer Science. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  2. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Rexford, Jennifer; Zegura, Ellen (2014). "The Road to SDN". ACM Computer Communication Review.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ↑ Ramachandran, Anirudh; Feamster, Nick; Vempala, Santosh (2007). "Filtering Spam with Behavioral Blacklisting". Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2007.
  4. ↑ Sundaresan, Srikanth; de Donato, Walter; Feamster, Nick; Teixeira, Renata; Crawford, Sam; Pescapè, Antonio (2011). "Broadband Internet Performance: A View From the Gateway". Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2011.
  5. ↑ "Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies". Stanford University. Archived from the original on August 1, 2010. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  6. ↑ "Nick Feamster Biography". University of Chicago. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  7. ↑ Feamster, Nick (2005). Proactive Techniques for Correct and Predictable Internet Routing (Thesis). MIT.
  8. ↑ "Nick Feamster" (PDF). University of Chicago. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  9. ↑ US 10044748,Feamster, Nick; Dagon, David; others,"Detecting Malware Infections via DNS",published August 7, 2018
  10. ↑ "NetMicroscope". NetMicroscope. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  11. ↑ "NetMicroscope Uses AI to Improve Network Monitoring for a Better Internet Experience". University of Chicago Polsky Center. January 1, 2024. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  12. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Wee, Susie (1999). "Field-to-frame transcoding with spatial and temporal downsampling" . Proceedings 1999 International Conference on Image Processing. Vol. 4. IEEE. pp. 271–275. doi:10.1109/ICIP.1999.819593.
  13. ↑ "Nick Feamster: Fifteen Years of Measuring Access Network Performance". University of Chicago. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  14. ↑ "The Truth About Faster Internet: It's Not Worth It". Wall Street Journal. July 1, 2019. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  15. ↑ "Nick Feamster's Research Drives Wall Street Journal Investigation". University of Chicago Data Science Institute. July 1, 2019. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  16. ↑ "Internet Equity Initiative". University of Chicago. Retrieved October 1, 2025.
  17. ↑ "CITP Luncheon Speaker Series: Nick Feamster - Dissecting the FCC's New Rules on ISPs and Customer Privacy". Princeton University. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  18. ↑ "Comrades Athlete Results: Nick Feamster". FinishTime.co.za. Retrieved October 11, 2025.
  19. 1 2 "Nick Feamster: Chicago Lakefront Trail FKT". Fastest Known Time. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  20. ↑ "Chicago Marathon Pace Team". Chicago Marathon. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  21. ↑ "Nick Feamster". SoundCloud. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  22. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Balakrishnan, Hari; Rexford, Jennifer (2004). "The Case for Separating Routing from Routers" (PDF). Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Future directions in network architecture.
  23. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Rexford, Jennifer; Zegura, Ellen (2013). "The Road to SDN: An Intellectual History of Programmable Networks". Queue. 11 (12). Association for Computing Machinery: 20–40. doi:10.1145/2559899.2560327. ISSN   1542-7730.
  24. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Balakrishnan, Hari (2005). "Detecting BGP Configuration Faults with Static Analysis" (PDF). Proceedings of the 2nd USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI).
  25. ↑ "Software Defined Networking Course". Coursera. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  26. ↑ Feamster, Nick (2011). CRI-II-NEW: Collaborative Research: Measurement Infrastructure for Home Networks (Report). National Science Foundation. NSF Award #1059350. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  27. ↑ "Measuring Broadband America". Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  28. ↑ Sundaresan, Srikanth; Feamster, Nick; Teixeira, Renata (2015). "Measuring the Performance of User Traffic in Home Wireless Networks" (PDF). Proceedings of the Passive and Active Measurement Conference (PAM).
  29. ↑ Ramachandran, Anirudh; Feamster, Nick; Vempala, Santosh (2007). "Filtering Spam with Behavioral Blacklisting". Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2007.
  30. ↑ Tariq, Mukarram Bin; Zeitoun, Amgad; Valancius, Vytautas; Feamster, Nick; Ammar, Mostafa (2008). "Answering Machine Language Queries". Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2008 Conference on Applications, Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communications. Seattle, Washington, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 145–156. doi: 10.1145/1402958.1402971 . Retrieved October 11, 2025.
  31. ↑ Jiang, Xi; Liu, Shinan; Gember-Jacobson, Aaron; Bhagoji, Arjun Nitin; Schmitt, Paul; Bronzino, Francesco; Feamster, Nick (2024). "NetDiffusion: Network Data Augmentation Through Protocol-Constrained Traffic Generation". Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems. 8 (1): 1–32.
  32. ↑ Bronzino, Francesco; Schmitt, Paul; Chu, Andrew; Feamster, Nick (2024). "Evaluating Networked System Security with Probabilistic Graphical Models". Proceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Formal Methods and Networking. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 46–52. doi:10.1145/3672198.3673792 . Retrieved October 11, 2025.
  33. ↑ US 8713676,Feamster, Nick; others,"Systems and Methods for Identifying Malicious Domains Using Internet-Wide DNS Lookup Patterns",published April 29, 2014
  34. ↑ Hao, Shuang; Syed, Nadeem; Feamster, Nick (2009). "Detecting Spammers with SNARE". Proceedings of the 18th USENIX Security Symposium.
  35. ↑ Singanamalla, Sudheesh (December 8, 2020). "Oblivious DNS over HTTPS (ODoH): A Practical Privacy Enhancement to DNS". Cloudflare Blog. Cloudflare. Retrieved October 11, 2025. ODoH itself took inspiration from "Oblivious DNS: Practical Privacy for DNS Queries"
  36. ↑ Schmitt, Paul; Edmundson, Anne; Mankin, Allison; Feamster, Nick (2019). "Oblivious DNS: Practical Privacy for DNS Queries". Proceedings of the 2019 Applied Networking Research Workshop. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 17–19. doi: 10.1145/3340301.3341128 . ISBN   9781450368483 . Retrieved October 11, 2025.
  37. ↑ Edmundson, A.; Schmitt, P.; Feamster, N.; Mankin, A. (July 2, 2018). Oblivious DNS - Strong Privacy for DNS Queries (Technical report). IETF. draft-annee-dprive-oblivious-dns-00.
  38. ↑ Tanenbaum, Andrew; Feamster, Nick (2021). Computer Networks. Pearson. ISBN   978-1292374062.
  39. ↑ "Nick Feamster Instructor Page". Coursera. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  40. ↑ "CS 6250: Computer Networks". Georgia Tech. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  41. ↑ "CS6250 Computer Networking". YouTube. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  42. ↑ "Post 'Net Neutrality' Internet Needs New Measurement Tools". Princeton University. March 29, 2019. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  43. ↑ "Technical Working Group Report on Broadband Internet Access Service Labeling" (PDF). Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG). August 27, 2024. Retrieved October 11, 2025.
  44. ↑ "Effort Pushes Computer Scientists to Consider Uses of Technology". Princeton University. January 8, 2019. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  45. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Balazinska, Magdalena; Harfst, Greg; Balakrishnan, Hari; Karger, David (2002). "Infranet: Circumventing Web Censorship and Surveillance". Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Security Symposium.
  46. ↑ "First FOCI Workshop 2011". USENIX. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  47. ↑ "Internet Censorship and Online Speech Course". Noise Lab, University of Chicago. Retrieved October 11, 2025.
  48. ↑ "Internet Censorship and Online Speech". University of Chicago. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  49. ↑ "Sony Music Entertainment v. Cox Communications, Inc". PACER Monitor. U.S. District Court, E.D. Virginia. 2019. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  50. ↑ "Splunk Inc. v. Cribl, Inc" (PDF). PACER Monitor. U.S. District Court, N.D. California. 2021. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  51. ↑ "PECASE Recipients". White House. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  52. ↑ "Feamster Named ACM Fellow". Princeton University. December 20, 2016. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  53. ↑ "ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award Recipients". ACM SIGCOMM. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  54. ↑ "TR35 Innovators Under 35". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  55. ↑ "Sloan Research Fellows". Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  56. ↑ "NSF CAREER Award Recipients". National Science Foundation. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  57. ↑ Ramachandran, Anirudh; Feamster, Nick (2006). "Understanding the Network-Level Behavior of Spammers". Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2006.
  58. ↑ "USENIX NSDI Test of Time Award". USENIX. 2015. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  59. ↑ "ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Paper Award". ACM SIGCOMM. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
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