(1) Can we avoid making changes to the network infrastructure by finding solutions that only change the end-points? Here, we focus on congestion control for both wide-area and datacenter networks, showing how the end-points can be updated to achieve near-optimal performance using commodity switches, and on redesigning RDMA NICs to eliminate their reliance on the in-network mechanism for loss avoidance.

(2) When infrastructure changes are needed, can we make them universal in nature? Here, we focus on packet scheduling, examining whether we can have a universal packet scheduling algorithm that can mimic all others. We show, both theoretically and practically, that we can have an almost-universal packet scheduling algorithm that can closely mimic other scheduling algorithms and can achieve a variety of network-wide performance objectives.