One of the Internet ‘Founding Fathers’ John Day Lauded for Network Research Foresight

Few have a stronger command of the workings of internet architecture than BU Metropolitan College (MET) Master Lecturer in Computer Science John Day. When recent widespread outages to high-profile websites like Spotify, Reddit, and Twitter once more revealed the faults in the foundation of the digital superhighway that Day has long critiqued, it brought new attention and credibility to the set of improvements to current mainstream internet protocols he has been championing for a decade.

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Day teaches Operating Systems (MET CS 575), Computer Networks (MET CS 535), and Advanced Networking (MET CS 775), a part of the MS in Computer Science with concentration in Computer Networks curriculum. Networking is a generalization utilizing all the concentration areas, as well as the issues of the economics and politics of the industry positioning MET students for advancement. At first shocking, Day says, “the best way I know to get a bad design is to do requirements.” He has found that first one needs to pull out the invariances to avoids ‘devils-in-the-details’ and then instead finds ‘angels,’ where today’s complex problems (security, mobility, IoT) turn out to be inherently simple, vital to the ability of networks to maintain infrastructure. The requirements largely take care of themselves. At MET, his students have the opportunity to discover new angels in RINA. “To join our research is quite simple: take a course with me!” Day says. “In essence, the course is the interview.”