Call for Papers

The performance and commodity price advantages of modern LANs have created a convergence of networks and I/O. This convergence promises both price efficiencies and true interoperability, for storage and for cluster interconnect. The NICELI workshop provides a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss the merits, drawbacks, applications, and practical implications of protocol and implementation designs. Approaches based on Internet protocols are of particular interest. We invite submissions of research results, protocol design rationales, significant implementation experience, and architectural papers related to the convergence of networks and interconnect.

Topics of interest could include, but are not limited to:

• Remote DMA and Direct Data Placement (DDP) protocols
• Architectural directions for and implications of RDMA/DDP
• What implementation techniques are most beneficial?
• Performance (and what are the right metrics)?
• How can these protocols and implementations be made secure?
• Formal verification of these protocols
• Case studies of implementations (HW and SW)
• Operating system implications
• Applications (e.g., iSCSI, DAFS, NFS, clustering, etc.)
• Lessons learned from past attempts at network-I/O convergence
• Speculations on future developments enabled by this technology

Other relevant topics are certainly welcome; please contact the Program Chair or Co-Chair to discuss the relevance of a topic not listed above.

Accepted papers will appear in a workshop proceedings (to be placed in the ACM Digital Library). A report on workshop discussions will appear in SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review.

What to submit

We invite two kinds of submissions:

1. Technical papers presenting research and practical results.
2. Position papers addressing the pros and cons of specific proposals, such as those being discussed in the IETF or in industry consortia.

Technical papers should be no longer than 14 pages; position papers should be no longer than 8 pages. All submissions should be in PDF or Postscript form, page-numbered, in 10-point font or larger, and suitable for monochrome printing on 8.5"x11" paper; please be cautious about the fonts used. In general, please conform to the submission requirements for SIGCOMM 2003 papers.

Technical papers must be anonymized (using SIGCOMM's anonymity guidelines), and may be dual-submitted to both NICELI and SIGCOMM. Dual-submitted papers must meet the SIGCOMM submission deadline; NICELI-only submissions are due later. Dual-submitted papers must be clearly marked as such, and will be reviewed by both PCs. Any papers accepted by both events will appear in the SIGCOMM Proceedings; other NICELI papers will be posted on the Web. If you are not sure whether to submit your paper to both NICELI and SIGCOMM, please consult with the PC chairs before the SIGCOMM deadline.

Position papers must not be anonymized, and may not be dual-submitted to SIGCOMM. Authors of accepted position papers will be asked to share their drafts with each other, so that they can consider and address opposing views while preparing their camera-ready revisions.

How to submit your paper

Papers should be submitted via the Web at http://systems.cs.colorado.edu/NICELI2003

Dual-submitted papers must also be submitted to SIGCOMM via the Web at http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm2003/submission.html, and must meet the formatting guidelines described there (if there is any conflict between the SIGCOMM guidelines and the NICELI guidelines).

Important Dates

Organizers

Program Co-chair: Allyn Romanow, Cisco Systems
Program Co-chair: Jeff Mogul, HP Labs

Program Committee:

• Stephen Bailey, Sandburst Corporation
• Jeff Chase, Duke University
• Patrick Crowley, University of Washington
• Uri Elzur, Broadcom Corp.
• Dirk Grunwald, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Liviu Iftode, University of Maryland
• Kostas Magoutis, Harvard University
• Vijay S. Pai, Rice University
• Prasenjit Sarkar, IBM Research
• Peter Steenkiste, Carnegie Mellon University