macsbug

As of Sept. 2023, I joined Peraton Labs, Networking Research Group. Before that, I was a R&D Researcher at an industrial research lab, one of the few remaining places of this kind, tracing back to the famed AT&T Bell Labs. (Of course, it is not the same any more. For the history and other info, go here, here and here.)

Sometimes alone and sometimes together with my colleagues, interns and contractors, I work on various things related to wireless technologies and mobile Internet. As projects demand, I manage small and fast teams of people of different talents to make things happen as well as solve technical problems. In a few occasions, I managed quite large teams for some periods of time, when a project grew more demanding.

I finished my graduate work in 1997 at Stanford, and since then, have been in the wireless and networking industry on both coasts of the U.S., not equally divided of course, through the good times and bad times.

I've worked on variety of subjects from physical layers to applications, but recently my main focus has been the access and core network architecture for wide-area mobile wireless cellular systems, reflecting the lessons learned from the last several decades of mobile networking, computing, economics and human behavior. Also, I am currently working on understanding and mitigating extreme congestion issues around large crowded events in stadiums/malls/festivals and other locations.  Of late, I have been interested in latency reduction in cellular networks (which is related to the network architecture as well) as well as mobile devices, particularly under congestion. I am also involved in investigating Security issues of SDN (Software Defined Network) and performance of M2M, IoT, 5G services, particularly connected cars and other vehicle-related services.

My work usually involves literature research, analytical investigations, new algorithms, data gathering/analysis, tinkering in my dungeon lab (actually a large well-lit lab on the 5th floor), hacking, googling, reverse-engineering, building prototypes, measuring in real field locations, computer simulations, explaining to others, etc. For details, please refer to my papers and other information on this site.

Occasionally, due to my exposure to all layers of cellular networking, I am asked to help sleuth and solve problems that normal network/systems troubleshooting folks are unable to understand, kinda like Tier 10 tech support. These are problems that show conflicting symptoms, span large areas or time, too sporadic to study, or otherwise vexing and out of the ordinary. These are most fun, but I guess it's a good thing I don't get enough of these.

I am often asked to be a sounding board for new ideas for projects and new solutions by many people around me. My exposure to wide areas of engineering and scientific fields enables me to draw analogies and lessons from history and current practices. Insights and new ideas come about from these discussions, often leading to new avenues of investigation and spurring new motivations for stalled work.

Besides the main interest, I have been dabbling in mobile device security, network security, applications, services & middleware, and various other phenomena on the Internet, including network instrumentation, regulations, economics, historical parallels and accidental events.

For various reasons, I closely follow venture startup company activities, its culture, and its impact in technology and economy. I have also worked with many small startup companies in wireless and networking via various collaborations and internship arrangements. On behalf of my employer, I have evaluated many venture-backed companies on their technical strengths as well, though that is only a part of the magic spark.

The wireless industry relies heavily on industry standards, probably more so than other engineering fields due to the nature of "communication". As a result, I monitor, decipher, get puzzled over and participate in standard activities in IEEE 802.11, 802.16, 802.20, 802.21, 802.22, Wi-Fi Alliance, WiMAX forum, IETF, W3C, 3GPP, and the like, not in that order, nor all concurrently (That'd be inhumane).

Over my time spent in standard activities, I've come to appreciate various pros and cons of presently-practiced standards-setting approaches and market dynamics reflected in them, in human, political, economic and finally technological contexts. I plan to write about it someday, hopefully soon.

I strive to understand so-called "big picture" context of anything I come across, though due to the complexity of modern market dynamics and technologies, 'the business of predicting the future appears to be left for the clueless, the irresponsible and snake oil salesmen'. In fact, seeing through snake oil pitches and poking holes in them have been a lot of fun. Sometimes, I encounter someone who seem to truly and honestly believe in something that, to trained eyes, are clearly snake oil, or more appropriate in these cases, fantasies.

Also, when I get around to them, you may find a few links to my non-professional interests like photography, technology history, economic history, psychology, cinema, evolutionary biology, model making, kite flying, etc. ...

Oh Yeah.. I also moonlight as a web master, coder, hacker, security engineer and general manpower for a small e-commerce operation.

As usual, I proclaim that this site is under perpetual renovation, so excuse me for errors. Of course, please check back from time to time for new stuff if you like. 

Thanks for visiting!

J.