Most distributed machine learning systems nowadays, including TensorFlow and CNTK, are built in a centralized fashion. One bottleneck of centralized algorithms lies on high communication cost on the central node. Motivated by this, we ask, can decentralized algorithms be faster than its centralized counterpart? Although decentralized PSGD (D-PSGD) algorithms have been studied by the control community, existing analysis and theory do not show any advantage over centralized PSGD (C-PSGD) algorithms, simply assuming the application scenario where only the decentralized network is available. In this paper, we study a D-PSGD algorithm and provide the first theoretical analysis that indicates a regime in which decentralized algorithms might outperform centralized algorithms for distributed stochastic gradient descent. This is because D-PSGD has comparable total computational complexities to C-PSGD but requires much less communication cost on the busiest node.

Ensuring packet-level communication quality is vital for ultra-reliable, low-latency communications (URLLC) in large-scale industrial wireless networks. We enhance the Local Deadline Partition (LDP) algorithm by introducing a CNN-based dynamic priority prediction mechanism for improved interference coordination in multi-cell, multi-channel networks. Unlike LDP's static priorities, our approach uses a Convolutional Neural Network and graph coloring to adaptively assign link priorities based on real-time traffic, transmission opportunities, and network conditions. Assuming that first training phase is performed offline, our approach introduced minimal overhead, while enabling more efficient resource allocation, boosting network capacity, SINR, and schedulability. Simulation results show SINR gains of up to 113\%, 94\%, and 49\% over LDP across three network configurations, highlighting its effectiveness for complex URLLC scenarios.

Most distributed machine learning systems nowadays, including TensorFlow and CNTK, are built in a centralized fashion. One bottleneck of centralized algorithms lies on high communication cost on the central node. Motivated by this, we ask, can decentralized algorithms be faster than its centralized counterpart? Although decentralized PSGD (D-PSGD) algorithms have been studied by the control community, existing analysis and theory do not show any advantage over centralized PSGD (C-PSGD) algorithms, simply assuming the application scenario where only the decentralized network is available. In this paper, we study a D-PSGD algorithm and provide the first theoretical analysis that indicates a regime in which decentralized algorithms might outperform centralized algorithms for distributed stochastic gradient descent. This is because D-PSGD has comparable total computational complexities to C-PSGD but requires much less communication cost on the busiest node.

Modern large-scale networks introduce significant complexity in understanding network behaviors, increasing the risk of misconfiguration. Prior work proposed to understand network behaviors by mining network configurations, typically relying on domain-specific languages interfaced with formal models. While effective, they suffer from a steep learning curve and limited flexibility. In contrast, natural language (NL) offers a more accessible and interpretable interface, motivating recent research on NL-guided network behavior understanding. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) further enhance this direction, leveraging their extensive prior knowledge of network concepts and strong reasoning capabilities. However, three key challenges remain: 1) numerous router devices with lengthy configuration files challenge LLM's long-context understanding ability; 2) heterogeneity across devices and protocols impedes scalability; and 3) complex network topologies and protocols demand advanced reasoning abilities beyond the current capabilities of LLMs. To tackle the above challenges, we propose NetMind, a novel framework for querying networks using NL. Our approach introduces a tree-based configuration chunking strategy to preserve semantic coherence while enabling efficient partitioning. We then construct a unified fact graph as an intermediate representation to normalize vendor-specific configurations. Finally, we design a hybrid imperative-declarative language to reduce the reasoning burden on LLMs and enhance precision. We contribute a benchmark consisting of NL question-answer pairs paired with network configurations. Experiments demonstrate that NetMind achieves accurate and scalable network behavior understanding, outperforming existing baselines.

Penetration testing, the simulation of cyberattacks to identify security vulnerabilities, presents a sequential decision-making problem well-suited for reinforcement learning (RL) automation. Like many applications of RL to real-world problems, partial observability presents a major challenge, as it invalidates the Markov property present in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Partially Observable MDPs require history aggregation or belief state estimation to learn successful policies. We investigate stochastic, partially observable penetration testing scenarios over host networks of varying size, aiming to better reflect real-world complexity through more challenging and representative benchmarks. This approach leads to the development of more robust and transferable policies, which are crucial for ensuring reliable performance across diverse and unpredictable real-world environments. Using vanilla Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) as a baseline, we compare a selection of PPO variants designed to mitigate partial observability, including frame-stacking, augmenting observations with historical information, and employing recurrent or transformer-based architectures. We conduct a systematic empirical analysis of these algorithms across different host network sizes. We find that this task greatly benefits from history aggregation. Converging three times faster than other approaches. Manual inspection of the learned policies by the algorithms reveals clear distinctions and provides insights that go beyond quantitative results.