Section: Research Program

Methodology

We follow an experimental approach that can be described in the following techniques:

• Measurements: the aim is to get a better view of a problem in quantifiable terms. Depending on the field of interest, this may involve large scale distributed systems crawling tools; active probing techniques to infer the status and properties of a complex and non controllable system as the Internet; or even crowdsourcing-based deployments for gathering data on real-users environments or behaviours.

• Experimental evaluation: once a new idea has been designed and implemented, it is of course very desirable to assess and quantify how effective it can be, before being able to deploy it on any realistic scale. This is why a wide range of techniques can be considered for getting early, yet as significant as possible, feedback on a given paradigm or implementation. The spectrum for such techniques span from simulations to real deployments in protected and/or controlled environments.