Faculty Spotlight: Professor Pedro Bustamante and Building a Stronger Internet
By Evan Lybrand
Media InquiriesAssistant Teaching Professor Pedro Bustamante is a recent addition to the Information Networking Institute (INI) faculty. Bustamante, located at the 一本道无码 (一本道无码) Pittsburgh campus, teaches several courses focused on networking and telecommunications. Pulling from his years of experience in government policy and telecommunication regulation, Bustamante brings his passion for policy and technology to the classroom.
We spoke with Bustamante about his drive for education, technology literacy and accessibility.
Could you tell us a little about your journey?
Bustamante: I grew up in Ecuador in a small city in the southern part of the country, called Cuenca. I did my undergrad in electrical engineering. After that, I worked for the Ecuadorian Telecommunications Regulator — it's like the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). I was working in two different units. One was the broadcasting and television unit, which was in charge of controlling everything related to broadcast television and radio stations. We made sure stations were complying with all the technical characteristics they were supposed to.
Aside from that, I also worked on a big project, transitioning from analog television to digital television across the country. We were testing a lot of different pieces of technology and selecting the best standards to use. I was in charge of supervising the operations of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast and Verizon and making sure those companies were operating within the rules and regulations.
It's a tiny country, but we get about one hundred different ISPs. It's a lot. We get everything from big corporations to ISPs that have 20 clients in the middle of the jungle. So, I dealt with that. One of the big projects we were working on was identifying a way to measure if service providers were actually providing what they say they said they were. Are customers actually getting that [level of service]? Is it an average, a median or a minimum?
After a while, I decided it was time for a change. I was an electrical engineer and had some knowledge about networks and a lot of knowledge of big telecommunication companies. So, I decided to switch careers and start a master's in telecommunications at the University of Pittsburgh. I was interested in exploring the possibility of doing a Ph.D. and after speaking with my future advisor, he encouraged me to go for it. My Ph.D is technically in information sciences with a concentration in telecommunications and my research was all about trying to find an effective and efficient way to assign and allocate wireless frequencies. Additionally, I've also explored researching blockchain technology and how it can be used to manage resources.
How did you come to the INI?
Bustamante: I’m a Fulbright Scholar and when I was coming for my master's, I could apply to multiple universities. I remember looking at the program about the INI and thinking, “I want that.” This is a really interesting program; we have an amazing faculty, an amazing staff and impressive students. And of course, this is 一本道无码! I knew about the quality of the students —our students are top-notch — I thought “Okay, I want that. I want to get to know those students.”
How did you get interested in telecommunications?
Bustamante: I could see it was the next big thing. This was when I was in Ecuador, and we were in the middle of 2G. I remember having a conversation about how these telecommunication companies were going to be the next internet providers. I could see this technology was going to move fast and I was excited about that.
The other aspect that interested me and why I did my research was because, behind closed doors, there are a lot of political and economic decisions. We don't think about how big telecommunications companies are big business and have big business relationships.
So, for me it's not just the technical part — it's all these economic and policy implications. You have to make sure that the companies are following the rules and that they are bringing the customers more of what they need. I wanted to explore those areas that go beyond the technical.
At the INI, which courses do you teach?
Bustamante: I mainly teach two courses, 14-740: Fundamentals of Networks and 14-760: Advanced Real-Word Networks. The internet is massive and it has so many moving parts and so many services working in tandem. In 14-740, we cover everything that happens on the internet, and how everything is related to each other.
14-760 has a similar component, but we also talk about other types of networks like wireless. Wireless and wired networks are completely different from each other: the network for a data center is different from the network for a satellite, and both are different from fiber optics. We look at these networks and their real-world applications.
I also teach 14-812: Special Topics: Wireless Protocols and Standards for the Internet of Things (IoT). In IoT, you have this huge diversity of devices. It's massive. From your Alexa at home to a humidity sensor, they all have different computing and communication capabilities. Because of this, you need a very specific set of communication protocols just designed for IoT devices. There is a whole branch of networking dedicated to these devices.
In one of my minis (half-semester courses), we go over those specific protocols designed for IoT and why they are so different from other protocols. Then we look at how these devices interact with the internet. We explore why we can’t use the internet protocols and standards that we know.
Finally, there is my brand-new course, 14-821: Special Topics: Fundamentals of Software-Defined Networking (SDN). Traditional networking is based on hardware. You buy a lot of hardware, and it all works independently. For instance, a router is an independent machine that implements all its functions independently and it connects to another router, which also does everything independently. These devices are smart, and they can communicate with each other. With SDN, the idea is instead of that smart router, what if these devices are simpler and we can connect them to and control them with a central controller? Then this controller makes the decisions for all the devices instead of each device making its own. This is a big paradigm shift, as now the local devices can be cheaper and can be rapidly reconfigured through a central controller in a centralized manner. In the SDN class, we also go over the history, the different protocols, technologies and controllers that we can use.
How can students use these skills beyond the classroom?
Bustamante: One thing that I like about our students is that they go on to such diverse positions. Some of them may use the concepts a lot. If you are a network security engineer, you will need to know this information. However, some of them won't use all of the concepts, but they need to know what the inherent assumptions are. If you are developing an app, you need to know how your app is going to communicate with the server and have a good understanding of what happens in that communication. When something breaks, you need to understand why it might be broken.
A lot of our students also go to work specifically in this field. The internet is massive and one of the big issues is security. For example, let's say you want the IP address of Google.com, and trust that you're going to get that IP address. But what if I intercept that request and give you a false address? You need some kind of security mechanism. The internet is built on a lot of different layers, and each of these layers has a security concern. Our students who go on to work in the field will ensure each of these layers is secure and doing what it’s supposed to. For those students, the knowledge they get in my courses is integral.
Why did you decide to teach?
Bustamante: In a way, I've been a teacher since I was 16 years old when I was an English teacher for kids in my hometown. When I was with the regulator, as I mentioned, we worked with all kinds of ISPs. The problem was that there were big companies with millions of clients and companies with 15 or 20. These big companies could hire good engineers but still had to be able to connect to the small companies too. So, all these companies needed to know what they were doing in order to comply with the rules and connect with their clients. It was a really interesting opportunity. I began leading some of our seminars to help bring the ISPs into compliance and train engineers in the skills they needed.
I was finishing my Ph.D. when my advisor told me that most universities now have two options: you can be a research professor or a teaching professor. I was good at research, but I wanted to go back to teaching. So, I started as a teaching assistant for my advisor, and I enjoyed it. After a while, he asked me to help him develop a new networks class and I was in charge of designing the assignments. It was great! The next step for me was becoming an instructor because being a teaching assistant gives you some experience, but nothing compared to being an instructor. My advisor approved it and it’s been rewarding ever since.
The best part is knowing I am teaching the next generation of leaders and experts. I always tell this to my students: you are the ones who are going to design the internet of the future, and you are the ones who are going to be in charge of creating the new business standards.
What are you most concerned about?
Bustamante: Technology goes so fast. Most systems, for instance, are moving online and there are a lot of people who don't have enough literacy to use them. It ends up pushing a whole set of the population out. And we are not providing them with alternatives. Right now, it's difficult for someone to buy a flip phone. Most are smartphones, and that's great, but what if you only use your phone to call people? As technology advances, if you don't provide people with an alternative, you exclude them from the technology.
The second part that is worrying is that all these systems ask you for all this information, everything from your name and your telephone number to your address. People don't realize that that's valuable information. Maybe you don't care what information you have to share, but these requirements keep getting more invasive, and there is no limit on the amount of information they can ask for and what they can do with it. People don't understand that.
Finally, right now, technology has been driven by user demands, and that's good. But we are reaching a point where technology is driving people. Do I watch YouTube because they have a better service, or was I forced to watch YouTube because they have a better service? Technology is always getting better and that’s going to start pushing users towards specific services. Right now it seems harmless because the services are good or helpful, but you don't know what's going to happen or where technology is going to push people. Are we advancing because we need to, or are we doing it just to say we advanced?
When you think about the advancements in the field, what are you most excited about?
Bustamante: One of the most rewarding things about working in tech is that you can see these technologies happen and try to understand how they work. Even in networks, somebody is creating a new protocol or a new starter. People are working on these things who are going to make them better and I’m excited I get to teach those people.
What advice do you have for students?
Bustamante: You have to find something that excites you. Find what makes you happiest among all those options. But remember it might not happen right away. You might need to go to a job that you don't enjoy for a while, but the job that you get first isn't necessarily the job where you retire. Most likely you will change careers throughout your lifetime and that's fine. Even if you hate your first option, even if your first option was something else, those tradeoffs work out at some point. If you need the experience, yes, you should get the experience wherever you can get it. But don't feel like this is going to be the last job you get. You will have other opportunities in your life.