Princeton engineers won the Applied Networking Research Prize from the Internet Engineering Task Force. The team included (from left) Benjamin Herber, a 2022 B.S.E. and 2023 M.Eng. graduate in electrical and computer engineering; Sophia Yoo, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering; Maria Apostolaki, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Henry Birge-Lee, a research software engineer in Princeton’s computer science department. Jennifer Rexford, Princeton University Provost and Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor in Engineering (not pictured) also coauthored the research paper. Photo by Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy
Research led by Princeton engineers has won an Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) for improving internet routing for smaller networks, such as those used by businesses and universities.
Awarded by the Internet Research Task Force and supported by the Internet Society, the prize highlights research with strong potential for real-world impact, bridging the gap between academic innovation and practical deployment. The 2024 paper introduces TANGO, a novel system that empowers smaller networks to enhance their internet performance without relying on large corporations or special hardware.
By improving the public internet, TANGO demonstrates how applied research can drive meaningful improvements in global connectivity, according to Maria Apostolaki, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and one of the paper’s senior authors. This prize provides an opportunity for researchers to present their work to leading engineers, network operators and policymakers within the Internet Engineering Task Force, accelerating its path toward adoption and standardization.
The research was conducted by Henry Birge-Lee, a research software engineer, Sophia Yoo, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, and Benjamin Herber, who earned his master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering in 2024. It was led by Jennifer Rexford, Princeton’s provost and the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor in Engineering, and Apostolaki. The paper was presented at USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation 2024.
The work addresses a long-standing challenge in today's digital world: ensuring fast and reliable internet connections for applications like online gaming, video conferencing and self-driving cars. While large tech companies solve this by building private networks, this solution is costly and contributes to internet consolidation, leaving smaller businesses and networks with limited options. TANGO tackles this by empowering smaller networks to collaborate and take control of their internet routing without relying on big corporations or the core of the internet. By working together, TANGO users can unlock hidden internet pathways, improving speed and reliability without disrupting existing infrastructure or protocols, breaking economic agreements, or requiring hardware upgrades. Real-world experiments show that TANGO can outperform traditional routing, reducing internet delays by up to 39%. This makes it a game-changer for more equitable and efficient internet connectivity, according to the researchers.
Apostolaki joined the Princeton faculty in 2022. She earned her Ph.D. from ETH Zurich in 2021 and completed postdoctoral research at Carnegie Mellon University. She is associated faculty in the Center for Information Technology Policy, DeCenter and the Next-G Initiative, Princeton’s program in advanced communications technology.
Rexford joined Princeton faculty in 2005. She is affiliated in electrical and computer engineering, operations research and financial engineering, the program in applied and computational mathematics, the program in gender and sexuality studies, the Center for Information Technology Policy, High Meadows Environmental Institute, and Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering.
