Well, it has been a year since I wrote here.
I made it though my 663 and 668 classes unscathed. I then took two 689 courses the next semester. One was on Peer to Peer networks, and the other was Fault Tolerance, a continuation of 668. Both were fun, but the P2P class required a lot of reading research papers. I enjoyed it though.
Now I am taking a single 689 class on Survivable Networks. It is mostly graph theory and how to make it so a network can survive a link cut, or a node cut or things like that. A lot of theory, but it could be practical in the end. I have to present a paper on the 15th, and we have a project to start. I will write later on how this goes.
My research is slowly getting somewhere. I am no longer working on material for my masters but instead working on doctorate stuff. I am looking at the idea of detecting network anomalies by simply looking at packet counts on a multi-port router instead of looking at the packet headers or payload. I am also considering ideas for automatic reaction to the presence of a worm or virus in the network, but this is a very difficult problem to deal with.