Connections

Dhruv Dhody is an Internet standardization expert at Huawei-India with over 23 years of experience in the research and development of technologies including Path Computation Element (PCE), Segment Routing (SR), Network Slicing, and SDN. An active IETF contributor since 2010, Dhruv’s work has focused on path computation, traffic engineering, and SDN in the routing area.

Dhruv serves as Chair of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and co-chairs the IETF SRv6OPS and PCE WGs. They are also active in the Routing Directorate, YANG Doctors, and Operations Directorate, and have previously served as Education and Outreach Directorate Co-chair, IAB Outreach Coordinator, on the IETF list moderator team, and as an IAB liaison to the IESG.

In addition to their technical work, Dhruv is committed to increasing participation in the IETF from the Asia/Pacific region and other underrepresented groups, with the goal of strengthening diversity and inclusion in the Internet standards community.

Vinayak Hegde brings 20+ years of product development and software architecture experience spanning IoT, large-scale networks and internet protocols, data processing, and AI/ML. He has served in both IC and leadership roles, building teams across continents at Speedera (acquired by Akamai), InMobi, and Zoomcar. Previously we was worldwide CTO Startups at Microsoft. He currently runs a Tech and AI advisory firm called Brainy Yak Consulting LLP advising early and growth stage startups on AI and building robust scalable systems.

Siddharth "Sid" Mathur is the founder and lead engineer at Fastah Inc., a startup that builds IP geolocation and network intelligence APIs for software developers worldwide. Much of his work sits at the intersection of cloud platforms, IP networking, and emerging connectivity technologies such as Starlink. He's an active Go developer, and recently spoke at NANOG 96 and 97 on AI coding agents, geolocation feeds, and satellite internet.

Mohit P. Tahiliani is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at NITK Surathkal, India, and a Board Member of the India Internet Engineering Society (IIESoc). He earned his Ph.D. in Congestion Control Mechanisms from NITK in 2013, with research interests spanning Network Congestion Control, Queue Disciplines, NFV, Deterministic Networking, IPv6, NDN, and Distributed Ledger Technology. He has led multiple industry-funded projects (Intel, ABB, Bosch, Tata Communications, Epsilon, Samsung, NVIDIA and others) and received the EMC Young Achiever Award (2015), IEEE Outstanding Young Professional Volunteer Award (2021), and IEEE Bangalore Section Chair’s Recognition (2024). A long-time open-source contributor, his team’s packet scheduler addressing Bufferbloat was merged into Linux kernel v5.6. He serves on the ns-3 Steering Council, co-maintains its TCP and traffic-control modules, and has been a GSoC mentor (2017–2025) and organization administrator. With 60+ peer-reviewed publications, he reviews for leading IEEE and Elsevier journals, is a Senior Member of IEEE, and has held key roles in IEEE Mangalore Subsection, including Chair for 2023. Currently, he is the Professor-In-Charge of NITK’s Central Computer Centre, managing a network of over 40,000 devices.

Santosh Pallagatti is an Architect at Zscaler with over 20 years of experience in networking and systems infrastructure. He currently works on proxy-layer infrastructure for cloud cybersecurity, with a focus on AI traffic interception and inspection. Prior to Zscaler, he held engineering and architecture roles at VMware, Juniper Networks, Selector.ai, and Samsung, working across datacenter and virtual networking, routing protocols, distributed infrastructure, and AIOps. He holds 20+ patents and has authored or co-authored 10+ IETF RFCs.

Vishal Kamath is a fourth year student pursuing Computer Science and Engineering at National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal (NITK). His primary area of interest lies in Computer Networks and Systems. He was the head at COSH NITK, is a volunteer at FOSS Mangalore, and has contributed to multiple open source projects, including the Linux Kernel.

Sushanth Rao is a Software Engineer at Microsoft working on Azure Storage, with experience in distributed systems, operating systems, computer networking, databases, etc. He actively explores all parts of the Linux kernel and has a strong focus on the kernel’s networking subsystem. Although not a full-time kernel developer, he routinely works on kernel-related side projects and community efforts, with particular interest in eBPF, performance engineering, and computer networking internals.

He is a member of the faculty (Professor) in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. I received Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2009. I work in the broad area of performance evaluation of computer networks. My current areas of interest include cloud computing and data center networking, multimedia content delivery, and network telemetry. I co-authored a book titled An Analytical Approach to Optical Burst-Switched Networks published by Springer USA. I am a Senior Member of IEEE.

Shraddha Hegde is a Principle Engineer in HPE (ex-Juniper). She has authored or co-authored eleven IETF RFC documents and several internet drafts. She has more than 20 years of experience in Networking Domain in the area of IGP, FRR, Segment Routing, MPLS and IP Security. She has vast experience in building and deploying highly scalable data-communications platforms. Prior to joining Juniper, Shraddha has served as a Systems Architect for a major telecom equipment vendor

Nalini Elkins is Chief Operating Officer of the Industry Network Technology Council. ​​She is also the CTO and co-founder of Outside the Stacks, Inc. Nalini is a recognized leader in the field of computer performance measurement and analysis. In addition to being an experienced software product designer, developer, and planner, she is a formidable businesswoman. She has been the founder or co-founder of three start-ups in the high-tech arena. Nalini started her career doing network design and monitoring for the Chevron network. She specializes in network performance analysis, measurement, monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting of large enterprise networks.

Swamynathan Balasundaram (Swamy) is a Director of Product Line Management in Nokia with over 28 years of experience. His is responsible for network automation solutions with a focus on Transport Slicing and IP-optical integration. He has recently started to participate in the IETF working groups. Swamy has a Bachelor’s of Technology degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) BHU.

A System Architect with over 20 years of experience in the design and development of Network Operating Systems. For the past decade, he has focused on BGP and, more recently, the evolution of the BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP). He is a co-author of multiple IETF drafts within the GROW working group. When he is not at the whiteboard or in a working group, you can find him exploring new destinations around the globe or on the tennis court.

Rahul Gupta is an independent researcher currently investigating open-world/malleable operating environments for intelligence augmentation, models of computation, and computability theory. An active contributor to internet standards across multiple SDOs, he authors and contributes to specifications with a particular focus on real-time notifications and internet decentralization. He currently serves as a co-chair for the Solid Practitioners group. His previous research has spanned systems engineering, cosmology and power system automation with a unifying theme of understanding and mitigating complexity. He holds an M.Sc. in Theoretical Physics from Stockholm University and a B.E. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology.

Abhyuday K. Hegde is a third year student pursuing Computer Science and Engineering at National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal (NITK).  His primary area of interest is Computer Networks and Systems. He is also interested in equity markets, high performance computing and low latency systems programming in C++.

Tanmay Rajore is an Applied Scientist at Microsoft working on AI security and privacy. His research spans network security, cryptography, privacy-preserving machine learning, and secure AI systems. His recent work includes large-scale measurement studies of VPN traffic identification, censorship resistance, and network fingerprinting, as well as research on secure multi-party computation, confidential computing, and the security of large language models. He is interested in designing systems with strong, provable security guarantees while addressing practical challenges in modern AI and networked systems.

Anand Raje is the co-founder of BASIS Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and the India Internet Foundation, where he has worked alongside brilliant minds to make a tangible impact on the digital landscape. He currently serves as Chair of the Internet Society Kolkata Chapter, leading capacity-building initiatives and raising awareness about the transformative impact of the Internet.

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A passionate advocate for technology and its impact on society, Anand has been associated with several groundbreaking initiatives. He is part of AIORI — Advanced Internet Operations Research in India a mission-driven project building a next-generation Internet Measurement Platform and DNS Research testbed to ensure a seamless online experience for all. He has also been instrumental in establishing Kolkata IX, a pioneering community Internet Exchange Point (IXP) model in India, and in introducing the country's first-ever L-Root instances, which significantly raised stakeholder awareness and drove a notable surge in Root Server deployment across India.

Anand has further contributed his expertise to the IETF capacity-building program, playing an active role in nurturing the IETF community in India. Working alongside industry leaders, he has helped foster an environment of innovation and collaboration that continues to shape the future of Internet standards.