Raouf Boutaba

Research interests

Professor Boutaba's research interests are focused primarily on the integrated management of networks, systems and services, and on resource management in wired and wireless networks. Applications areas of current interest include future Internet architecture, network virtualization, software-defined networking, cloud computing and services, Internet of Things, intrusion detection and prevention systems.

Degrees and awards

BMath, Dipl Eng (Annaba), Magister (Annaba & Glasgow), Master's, PhD (Pierre & Marie Curie)

• McNaughton Gold Medal (2014)
• University of Waterloo Outstanding Performance Award (2014)
• Best Dissertation Award (former PhD student Q. Zhang) at the IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium, Krakow, Poland, May 5-9, 2014
• Named Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada “for remarkable contribution to the management of communication networks and services” (2013)
• Runner Up for Best Paper Award at IEEE/ACM/IFIP Int. Conf. on Network and Service Management (CNSM), Zurich (Switzerland), October 2013; IBM Faculty Award (2013)
• Best Dissertation Award (former PhD student Carol Fung) at the IFIP/IEEE Integrated Network Management Symposium, Ghent, Belgium, May 27-31, 2013
• Best Paper Runner-Up Award, IEEE ICDCS 5th Int. Workshop on Hot Topics In Peer-to-peer computing and Online Social networking (HotPOST), Philadelphia, USA, April 2013
• Salah Aidarous Award “presented to an individual who has provided unremitting service and dedication to the IT and Telecommunications Network Operations and Management community” (2012)
• Named IEEE Fellow “for contributions to network management methodologies and applications” (2012)
• Best Poster Prize, International Symposium on Information Technology Convergence Engineering (ITCE), Seoul, Korea, July 2012
• David R. Cheriton Faculty Fellow (2012-2015)
• Google Faculty Award (2011)
• University of Waterloo Outstanding Performance Award (2011)
• Best Poster Award at the Second International Symposium on Information technology Convergence Engineering (ITCE), Pohang (South Korea) August 2010
• Best Student Paper Award at the International Conference on Network and Service Management, Niagara (Canada), October 2010 (2010)
• Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), South-Korea (2009-2013)
• Best Paper Award, IFIP/IEEE Integrated Network Management (IM), Long Island, USA, June 2009 (2009)
• The 2009 DAN STOKESBERRY AWARD “presented to an individual who has made a particularly distinguished technical contribution to the growth of the network management field” (2009)
• IEEE Communications Society Joseph LoCicero Award for Exemplary Service to Publications over a sustained period of time (2009)
• NSERC Accelerator Award (2009-2011)
• IEEE Communication Society 2008 Fred W. Ellersick Best Paper Prize (2008)
• University of Waterloo Outstanding Performance Award (2008)
• Best Student Paper Award, IM 2007, the IFIP/IEEE Integrated Network Management Symposium, Munich (Germany), May 2007 (2007)
• IFIP Silver Core for Outstanding Service to the International Federation for Information Processing (2007)
• IEEE Communications Society Harold Sobol Award for Exemplary Service to Meetings & Conferences (2007)
• David R. Cheriton Faculty Fellow, University of Waterloo (2007-2010)
• Runner up for Best Paper Award at IEEE GLOBECOM 2006, San Francisco, USA (2006)
• NORTEL Award for Leadership Excellence in Technology Transfer (2005)
• Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society (2005-2008)
• Runner up for the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) 2005 Best Paper Award (2005)
• Best Student Paper Award at MMNS 2004, the IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services (MMNS), San Diego (USA), October 2004 (2004)
• NORTEL Research Excellence Award (2004)
• Best Paper Award of the MMNS 2003, the IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services (MMNS), October 2003 (2003)
• Mathematics Faculty Fellow, University of Waterloo (2003-2006)
• Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Computer Society (2002-2004)
• Best paper award of the International KIKS/ IEEE Journal of Communication Networks (2001)
• Premier's Research Excellence Award, Government of Ontario (2000-2002)
• Algeria’s High Education and Research Minister Prize for Best Engineer 1988

Industrial and sabbatical experience

While in Paris, Professor Boutaba acted as the lead researcher for the University of Paris VI on the project entitled “Distributed Management of Networked Systems”, funded by the European Community as part of the Esprit-II program. This project involved several partners including Siemens (Germany), Harwell (UK), Telesystemes (France), Philips (Germany), MARI Research (UK), NTUA (Greece) and APM Technologies (UK). Raouf was also a lead researcher for the University of Versailles on the project “Integrated Communications Management,” funded by the European Community as part of the ACTS program. This project involved several partners including Cray Communications (UK), Alcatel ISR (France), Alpha SAI (Greece), Ascom Tech AG (Germany), Monetel (France), CET (Portugal), Electronik Centralen (Sweden), Nokia Corporation (Finland), ICS-Forth (Greece), NTUA (Greece), University QMW (UK), University College London (UK) and others (Unipro Ltd., University of Durham, GN Elmi AS, VTT).

After moving to Canada, he was the founding director of the telecommunications and distributed systems research unit at the computer science research institute of Montreal. Professor Boutaba launched and conducted multi-million dollar research and development projects with Canadian industrial partners, including Ericsson Research Canada, in the area of fault management in wireless networks; Eicon Technologies in the area of distributed management of computer networks; Positron Fiber Systems in the area of optical network management. He has also acted as a consultant for several companies including iXmedia, Bell Canada, Teleglobe, Stentor and MediaSoft in the areas of multimedia networking and network management.

While at the University of Toronto, Professor Boutaba was involved in research projects funded by NORTEL Networks, Alcatel, Leitch technologies and General Datacom. After joining the School of Computer Science of the University of Waterloo in 1999, he conducted research with NORTEL Networks in the areas of self-managing networks and resource management in multimedia wireless networks. He also conducted research with Bell Canada in the area of broadband IP networks, with Alcatel in the area of network services architecture, with Cisco in the area of network virtualization, with Google on Cloud resource management, and with IBM on service automation.

Professor Boutaba held Visiting Professor Positions at the University of Toronto (Canada), the University of Pierre et Marie Curie, the University of Versailles, Telecom ParisTech (formerly ENST- Paris), Viltaneuse University (Paris 13) and University Paris Descartes (Paris 5) in France, and Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in South Korea.

Representative publications

S. Medjiah, T. Ahmed and R. Boutaba. Avoiding Quality Bottlenecks in P2P Adaptive Streaming. In IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC). IEEE Press, Vol 32(4), pp. 734-745, April 2014

Q. Zhang, M. F. Zhani, R. Boutaba and J. Hellerstein. Dynamic Heterogeneity-Aware Resource Provisioning in the Cloud. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing (TCC). IEEE Press, Vol 2(1), pp. 14-28, January 2014.

Q. Zhang, Q. Zhu, M. F. Zhani, R. Boutaba and J. Hellerstein. Dynamic Service Placement in Geographically Distributed Clouds. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC). IEEE Press, Vol 31(12), pp. 762-772, December 2013

J. Xiao and R. Boutaba. Reconciling the Overlay and Underlay Tussle. In IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON). Vol. 7(3), pp. 204-210, September 2013.

M. F. Bari, M. R. Haque, R. Ahmed, R. Boutaba and B. Mathieu. A Naming Scheme for P2P Web Hosting. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC). IEEE Press, Vol 31(9), pp. 299-309, September 2013.

A. Amokrane, M. F. Zhani, R. Langar, R. Boutaba, G. Pujolle. Greenhead: Virtual Data Center Embedding Across Distributed Infrastructures. In IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing (TCC). IEEE Press, Vol 1(1), pp. 36-49, September 2013.

M. Rahman and R. Boutaba. SVNE: Survivable Virtual Network Embedding Algorithms for Network Virtualization. In IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM). IEEE Press. Vol. 10 (2), pp. 105-118, June 2013.

J. Francois, I. Aib and R. Boutaba. FireCol: A Collaborative Protection Network For the Detection of Flooding DDoS Attacks. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. IEEE Press, Vol. 20(6), pp. 1828-1841, December 2012.

Q. Zhu, C. Fung, R. Boutaba and T. Başar. GUIDEX: A Game-Theoretic Incentive-Based Mechanism for Intrusion Detection Networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC). IEEE Press, Vol 30(11), pp. 2220-2230, December 2012.

C. J Fung, J. Zhang, and R. Boutaba. Effective Acquaintance Management based on Bayesian Learning for Distributed Intrusion Detection Networks. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM). IEEE Press. Vol. 9 (3), pp. 320-332, September 2012. 

M. Chowdhury, M. R. Rahman and R. Boutaba. ViNEYard: Virtual Network Embedding Algorithms with Coordinated Node and Link Mapping. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON). IEEE Press. Vol. 20(1), pp. 206-219, February 2012.

H. Saleet, R. Langar, S. Naik, R. Boutaba, A. Nayak, N. Goel. Intersection-based Geographical Routing Protocol for VANETs: a Proposal and Analysis. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT). IEEE Press. Vol. 60(9), pp. 4560-4574, November 2011.

C. Fung, J. Zhang, I. Aib and R. Boutaba. Dirichlet-based Trust Management for Effective Collaborative Intrusion Detection Networks. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM). IEEE Press. Vol. 8(2), pp. 79-91, June 2011.

N. Bouabdallah, B. Ishibashi, R. Boutaba. Performance of Cognitive Radio-based Wireless Mesh Networks. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC). IEEE Press, Vol. 10(1), pp. 122-135, January 2011.

N. Bouabdallah, R. Langar and R. Boutaba. Design and Analysis of Mobility-Aware Clustering Algorithms for Wireless Mesh Networks. In IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON). IEEE Press, Vol. 18(6), pp. 1677-1690, December 2010.

N. Limam and R. Boutaba. Assessing Service Quality and Trustworthiness at Selection Time. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. Vol. 36 (4): 559-574, July/Aug. 2010.