arXiv subjects

Chip Elliott

Publications and source records attributed to Chip Elliott.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2018

The Future of CISE Distributed Research Infrastructure

Shared research infrastructure that is globally distributed and widely accessible has been a hallmark of the networking community. This paper presents an initial snapshot of a vision for a possible future of mid-scale distributed research infrastructure aimed at enabling new types of research and discoveries. The paper is written from the perspective of "lessons learned" in constructing and operating the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) infrastructure and attempts to project future concepts and solutions based on these lessons. The goal of this paper is to engage the community to contribute new ideas and to inform funding agencies about future research directions to realize this vision.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2005

Current status of the DARPA Quantum Network

This paper reports the current status of the DARPA Quantum Network, which became fully operational in BBN's laboratory in October 2003, and has been continuously running in 6 nodes operating through telecommunications fiber between Harvard University, Boston University, and BBN since June 2004. The DARPA Quantum Network is the world's first quantum cryptography network, and perhaps also the first QKD systems providing continuous operation across a metropolitan area. Four more nodes are now being added to bring the total to 10 QKD nodes. This network supports a variety of QKD technologies, including phase-modulated lasers through fiber, entanglement through fiber, and freespace QKD. We provide a basic introduction and rational for this network, discuss the February 2005 status of the various QKD hardware suites and software systems in the network, and describe our operational experience with the DARPA Quantum Network to date. We conclude with a discussion of our ongoing work.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2004

The DARPA Quantum Network

A team from BBN Technologies, Boston University, and Harvard University has recently built and begun to operate the world's first Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)network under DARPA sponsorship. The DARPA Quantum Network became fully operational on October 23, 2003 in BBN's laboratories, and in June 2004 was fielded through dark fiber under the streets of Cambridge, Mass., to link our campuses with non-stop quantum cryptography, twenty-four hours per day. As of December 2004, it consists of six nodes. Four are 5 MHz, BBN-built BB84 systems designed for telecommunications fiber and inter-connected by a photonic switch. Two are the electronics subsystems for a high speed free-space system designed and built by NIST. This paper describes the motivation for our work, the current status of the DARPA Quantum Network, its unique optical switching and key relay protocols, and our future plans.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2004

On the Optimal Mean Photon Number for Quantum Cryptography

The optimal mean photon number (mu) for quantum cryptography is the average photon number per transmitted pulse that results in the highest delivery rate of distilled cryptographic key bits, given a specific system scenario and set of assumptions about Eve's capabilities. Although many experimental systems have employed a mean photon number (mu) of 0.1 in practice, several research teams have pointed out that this value is somewhat arbitrary. In fact, various optimal values for mu have been described in the literature. In this paper we offer a detailed analytic model for an experimental, fiber-based quantum cryptographic system, and an explicit set of reasonable assumptions about Eve's current technical capabilities. We explicitly model total system behavior ranging from physical effects to the results of quantum cryptographic protocols such as error correction and privacy amplification. We then derive the optimal photon number (mu) for this system in a range of scenarios. One interesting result is that mu of approximately 1.1 is optimal for a wide range of realistic, fiber-based QKD systems; in fact, it provides nearly 10 times the distilled throughput of systems that employ a more conventional mu = 0.1, without any adverse affect on system security, as judged against a set of reasonable assumptions about Eve's current capabilities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2003

Quantum Cryptography in Practice

BBN, Harvard, and Boston University are building the DARPA Quantum Network, the world's first network that delivers end-to-end network security via high-speed Quantum Key Distribution, and testing that Network against sophisticated eavesdropping attacks. The first network link has been up and steadily operational in our laboratory since December 2002. It provides a Virtual Private Network between private enclaves, with user traffic protected by a weak-coherent implementation of quantum cryptography. This prototype is suitable for deployment in metro-size areas via standard telecom (dark) fiber. In this paper, we introduce quantum cryptography, discuss its relation to modern secure networks, and describe its unusual physical layer, its specialized quantum cryptographic protocol suite (quite interesting in its own right), and our extensions to IPsec to integrate it with quantum cryptography.

quant-ph↗