Lixia Zhang

ABOUT ME

I jumped into Internet research in fall 1981 when I started my PhD study at MIT, the same month that the TCP/IP specifications were published. During my eight years of graduate school, my adviser Dr. David Clark taught me how to think architecturally. After graduation I joined Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) and spent seven exciting years there (during this time the Internet went from an obscure research to its initial rollout in a global scale), before being recruited to UCLA computer science department. My original plan was to move onto something new once I got a taste of teaching, but that did not happen — it is simply too much fun working with brilliant students and inventing the future together. My mission is to help the Internet grow. See my bio for more details.

WHAT'S NEW

(I am falling behind in keeping this page updated, will add more with time)

April 2026

NDN Community Meeting 2026 call for participation is out.This year's meeting will be held virtually on Zoom to make participation accessible to all. We look forward to welcoming both returning colleagues and newcomers at NDNComm 2026!

March 2026

By chance, I came across this interview from 2006, when the IETF was celebrating its 20th anniversary: Interview with Lixia Zhang, Professor, Computer Science Department, UCLA, Member of the IAB.
Another 20 years have passed in the blink of an eye, and the IETF has now reached 40. The first 20 years witnessed the Internet's explosive growth. The second 20 years brought something different: fundamental changes in how the Internet actually operates. As a retrospective on this latter period, Geoff Huston and I wrote a position paper, "The Internet Runs on Names," examining what has changed and what it means.

December 2025

After a long silence while we were busy with exciting research collaborations with new industrial collaborators, here is a new article before the end of the year: SRM at 30: Lessons from Early Data-Centric Networking and Their Impact on Named Data Networking.

More →

ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECT

Named Data Networking

How time flies, especially when one is having fun -- at 2020 NDN Community Meeting we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the NDN project which started on September 1, 2010! NDN is going ever stronger with time. We are busy developing more applications over NDN to force out architectural details to be filled in and, most importantly, verifies and shapes the architectural direction.

Here is a partial collection of old papers, showing cumulations of understanding on networking over the years.

Here is a partial collection of recent papers, showing the progress of the NDN development.

MY RESEARCH INTERESTS

Internet Architecture Design: How many necessary pieces should be in it, and how do we know we got them right?
Network Protocol Designs: Let's start collecting a set of principles from past successes and lessons.
Here is one of my favorite Feynman quotes.

Find my publications from Google Scholar

My blogs (just starting)

Follow me on Twitter (I’m not a very active tweeter )