Piers O'Hanlon

I provide consultancy services in the areas of Security, 5G, Privacy, IoT, Internet protocols, and custom software development on multiple platforms (Linux, Embedded-systems, MacOS/X, Windows). I've been involved with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for more than a decade and have authored two RFCs and a number of drafts. I also provide technology consulting for art and performance - based on robots, video tracking and related systems - these have been exhibited internationally including at the Tate Britain and Sadler's Wells in London.

I'm currently working on researching improvements for low latency streaming media. Most recently I worked at the University of Oxford, Computer Science Department, on communication security and privacy for 5G (as part of the 5G-ENSURE EU project). Previously I used to work on security and privacy at the University of Oxford's Oxford Internet Institute (OII). Prior to Oxford I worked on Internet based networked systems, media transport, and security in the University College London's Computer Science Department.

Presentations

• P. O'Hanlon, WiFi-Based IMSI Catcher (Video,Slides) Shakacon Security Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii, 13 July 2017
• P. O'Hanlon, WiFi-Based IMSI Catcher (Video), Security BSides London, 7 June 2017
• P. O'Hanlon, R. Borgaonkar, WiFi-Based IMSI Catcher (Slides), BlackHat Europe, London, 3-4 November 2016 - See here for PRESS Coverage.
• P. O'Hanlon, Network Attachment Privacy (Slides,Video), UK Network Operator's Forum (#33), London, 19 January 2016

Bug/CVE

• P. O'Hanlon, Privacy bug (CVE-2015-3778) found in Apple's implementation of the Detection of Network Attachment (DNA) protocol (RFC4436) for iOS and MacOSX operating systems within their bootp subsystem. Update released for iOS 8.4.1 and OSX 10.10.5, 13 August 2015. For more details see my blog post.

Standards documents

• P. O'Hanlon, J. Gruessing, The Transport-Info HTTP Header, IETF, INTERNET-DRAFT, March 2020.
• P. O'Hanlon, K. Carlberg, Congestion control algorithm for lower latency and lower loss media transport, IETF, INTERNET-DRAFT, April 2013.
• M. Westerlund, I. Johansson, C. Perkins, K. Carlberg, P. O'Hanlon, Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) for RTP over UDP, IETF RFC6679, Proposed Standard, August 2012.
• K. Carlberg, P. O'Hanlon, Telephony Routing over IP (TRIP) Attribute for Resource Priority, IETF RFC5115, January 2008.
• H. de Meer, P. O'Hanlon, et al, Analysis of Existing QoS Solutions, IETF INTERNET-DRAFT, November 2002.
• T. Chown, S. Jiang, P. O'Hanlon, J. Bound, Guidelines for IP version independence in GGF specifications, Global Grid Forum GFD.40, January 2005.

Contributions at conferences and workshops

• Melissa Darragh, Ryan McCartney, Piers O'Hanlon, Stephen Perrott, Chris Poole A Public Low Latency Streaming Trial, ACM Mile High Video (mhv/2026), Denver, USA, 2-5 February 2026
• Alex Giladi, John Ellerton, Nicolas Levy, Piers O'Hanlon, Michael Loftus, Khaled Jerbi, Olivier Cortambert, Chris Hampartsoumian, Rob Roskin Towards Ultra-Low Latency in Adaptive Streaming, SMPTE 2025 Media and Technology Summit (MTS), LA, USA, 14 October 2025
• P. O'Hanlon, Minimizing Disruptions in Low-Latency Streaming with Latency Dependent Intra-segment Response, ACM Mile High Video (mhv/2025), Denver, USA, 18-20 February 2025
• C. Needham, P. O'Hanlon, Some suggestions to improve robots.txt, IAB/IETF Workshop on AI-CONTROL, Washington DC, USA, 19 August 2024
• P. O'Hanlon, A. Aslam, Latency Target based Analysis of the DASH.js Player (arXiv pre-print), ACM MultiMedia Systems (MMSys'23), Vancouver, Canada, 7-10 June 2023. [1st place in DASH-IF Excellence in DASH Award]
• Ghada Arfaoui, Pascal Bisson, Rolf Blom, Ravishankar Borgaonkar, Hakan Englund, Edith Félix, Felix Klaedtke, Prajwol Kumar Nakarmi, Mats Naslund, Piers O'Hanlon, Juri Papay, Jani Suomalainen, Mike Surridge, Jean-Philippe Wary, and Alexander Zahariev A Security Architecture for 5G Networks (DOI), IEEE Access, 17 April 2018
• P. O'Hanlon, R. Borgaonkar, L. Hirschi Mobile subscriber WiFi privacy, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy's Mobile Security Technologies Workshop (MoST), San Jose, USA, 25 May 2017. [Best Paper Award]
• Carlos J. Bernardos, Juan Carlos Zúñiga, P. O'Hanlon Wi-Fi Internet connectivity and privacy: hiding your tracks on the wireless Internet, IEEE Conference on Standards for Communications and Networking (CSCN), Tokyo, Japan, 28-30 October 2015
• P. O'Hanlon, J. Wright, T. de Souza, I. Brown, KEMF: Key Management for Federated Sensor Networks, SecureComm, Beijing, China, 24-26 September 2014
• P. O'Hanlon, J. Wright, I. Brown, Privacy at the Link Layer, W3C/IAB workshop on Strengthening the Internet Against Pervasive Monitoring (STRINT), London, 28 Feb - 1 March 2014
• P. O'Hanlon, K. Carlberg, DFlow: Low delay congestion Control,[DOI], Capacity Sharing Workshop (CSWS13), co-located with the 21st International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP'13), Göttingen, Germany, 7 October 2013
• P. O'Hanlon, K. Carlberg, Latency Signals, Internet Society (ISOC) Workshop on Reducing Internet Latency, London, 25-26 September, 2013
• T. de Souza, J. Wright, P. O'Hanlon, I. Brown, Set Difference Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks, Proceedings of SecureComm, Padua, Italy, 3-5 September 2012
• P. O'Hanlon, The AVATS and SUMOVER projects: The media tools continue, Proceedings of the 8th Annual AccessGrid Retreat, Vancouver, Canada, May 2008.
• P. O'Hanlon, P. Kirstein, S. Varakliotis, The UCL media tools past, present, and future, Proceedings of the Open Source and Sustainability 2006 conference, Said Business School, Oxford, April 2006
• P. O'Hanlon, Taking the media tools forward, Proceedings of the 6th Annual AccessGrid Retreat, Ann Arbour, MI, USA, May 2006
• S. Jiang, P. Kirstein, P. O'Hanlon, The Combination of IPv6 and Grid Systems, IPv6 and Broadband, Page 55 - 65, Published (ISBN 3-00-01 3801-3) by IST 6Link March 2005
• P. O'Hanlon, IPv6 and the Access Grid, Proceedings of the 4th Annual AccessGrid Retreat, Toronto, Canada, May 2004
• S. Jiang, P. O'Hanlon, P. Kirstein, Moving Grids into the IPv6 Era, Grid and Cooperative Computing 2003, Shanghai, China, 7-10 December 2003
• P. Kirstein, K. Carlsberg, K. Hasler, P. O'Hanlon, Media Transmission Over Coupled Wired/Wireless Networks Using Application Level Active IPv6 Networks, Proc. 6th Int. SympComm. Networking, pp 195-207, Perth, 13-16 October 2002
• P. Kirstein, P. O'Hanlon, K. Carlberg, P. Gevros, K. Hasler, The RadioActive Networking Architecture, DANCE 2002, Grand Hyatt, San Francisco, USA. ISBN:0-7695-1564-9 pp.394-408, 29-30 May 2002
• Hermann de Meer, Piers O'Hanlon, Segmented Adaptation of Traffic aggregates, IWQOS 2001, Karlsruhe, Germany, LNCS 2092, pp.342-353, ISBN: 3-540-42217-4, June 6-8, 2001
• D. G. Jameson, M. Hobsley, P. O'Hanlon, S. Buckton, Experiences in Interactive Teaching in Distance Medical Education using an ATM Video Network, Proceedings of Eurochinatel Conference, April 1997, Beijing, China.
• M. Hobsley, R. Mccloy, D. G. Jameson, S. Buckton, P. O'Hanlon, Lessons learned during the INSURRECT project INteractive SURgical Teaching at REmote CeNtres,Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, Volume 3 Number 1 Supplement June 1997, pp.38.
• D.G. Jameson, M. Hobsley, P. O'Hanlon, S. Buckton, The Interactive Surgical Teaching from Remote Centres (INSURRECT) project, VII International Conference on Technology and Distance Education in San Jose, Costa Rica, 19-22 November, 1996
• D.G. Jameson, P. O'Hanlon, S. Buckton, M. Hobsley, Broadband telemedicine: teaching on the information superhighway, Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare 1995; Volume 1 Number 2, pp.111-6.
• E. Duval, H. Olivié, P. O'Hanlon, and D. Jameson, HOME: an environment for hypermedia objects, The Journal of Universal Computer Science 1 (1995), no. 5, 265-287
• D.G. Jameson, M. Hobsley, P. O'Hanlon, S. Buckton, Surgical Teaching project in Surgery, ED-MEDIA 94, World Conference on Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, June 25-29, 1994, Vancouver, Canada
• E. Duval, H. Olivié, P. O'Hanlon, and D. Jameson, Networked hypermedia for education, Proceedings of Telematics for Education and Training (P. Held and W. Kugemann, eds.), Proceedings of the Telematics for Education and Training Conference, 1994, pp. 408-415
• E. Duval, H. Olivié, P. O'Hanlon, D. Jameson, N. Ismail, S. Wilbur, and R. Beckwith, A multimedia information resource for education, Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Technology and Education - London, England, 27-30 March 1994 (T. M. Thomas, ed.), pp. 1008-1010
• E. Duval, H. Olivié, P. O'Hanlon, D. Jameson, N. Ismail, S. Wilbur, and R. Beckwith, Managing networked multimedia data, ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics 28 (1994), no. 1, 15-19
• E. Duval, P. O'Hanlon, and N. Ismail, Distributed Hypermedia for Education, Workshop at MediaActive 94, Harnessing Multimedia for Higher Education, Liverpool, United Kingdom, 4-6 May, 1994
• E. Duval, I. Decloedt, C. Liekens, H. Olivié, P. O'Hanlon, D. Jameson, N. Ismail, S. Wilbur, J. Van Heddegem, and R. Beckwith, An Information and Telecommunication Infrastructure for Flexible and Distance Learning, Proceedings of Applica93, Telepresence, First International Conference on Technologies and Theories for Human Cooperation, Collaboration, Coordination, Lille, France, 22-24 March 1993, pp. 218-230
• D. Jameson, P. O'Hanlon, R. Beckwith, E. Duval, and H. Olivié, Functionality of a Multi-media Image Network for Medical Education, Proceedings of Applica93, Telepresence, First International Conference on Technologies and Theories for Human Cooperation, Collaboration, Coordination, Lille, France, 22-24 March 1993, pp. 58-66
• D. Jameson, P. O'Hanlon, R. Beckwith, E. Duval, and H. Olivié, Distance learning by satellite - using an information resource to provide a flexible learning system, Proceedings of Teleteaching: Proceedings of the IFIP TC3 Third Teleteaching Conference, Teleteaching 93 (Trondheim, Norway, 20-25 August , 1993) (G. Davies and B. Samways, eds.), pp. 459-467
• R. Beckwith, D. Jameson, P. O'Hanlon, and E. Duval, Interactive Satellite Teaching and Conferencing Using an Image Server, ESA Olympus Conference, Seville, Spain 1993.

Past Invited Talks

• P. O'Hanlon, S.Jiang, P.Kirstein, Grid and IPv6, INET2004, Barcelona.
• P. O'Hanlon, Active Networks and Conferencing, First Internet Bay Conference on Science and the Cyber Community, Lulea, Sweden 2001
• P. O'Hanlon, Secure Conferencing, Netproject.com Security seminars, London 2001

[Old] Trip Reports

• Trip report on the 51th IETF, 5-10 August 2001, London, UK.
• Trip report on the 47th IETF, 26-31 March 2000, Adelaide, Australia.
• Trip report on the 46th IETF, 7-12 November 1999, Washington D.C.

See my Timesinker Blog for awkward tech stuff that I've run into (e.g. What is UKC19TRACING?). If you're interested in art then take a look at my brother's Art site.