- Instructor: Xin Jin
- Teaching assistants: Kaiyue (Karin) Wu
- Lecture time: Tuesday and Thursday, 1:30-2:45pm
- Location: Malone 228
- Office hours: Tuesday 2:45-4pm, Malone 207/233
- Credits: 3 credits
- Area for MSE and PhD requirements: Systems
- Homework submission: Gradescope, join the course with entry code MZRZK4
This is a graduate-level course on computer networks. It provides a comprehensive overview on advanced topics in network protocols and networked systems. The course will cover both classic papers on Internet protocols and recent research results. It will examine a wide range of topics, e.g., routing, congestion control, network architectures, datacenter networks, network virtualization, software-defined networking, and programmable networks, with an emphasis on core networking concepts and principles. The course will include lectures, paper discussions, programming assignments and a research project.
One undergraduate course in computer networks (e.g., EN.601.414/614 Computer Network Fundamentals or the equivalent), or permission of the instructor. The course assignments and projects assume students to be comfortable with programming.
- Monday, September 4: Sign up for paper presentations here before September 7
- Sunday, November 12: Sign up for project presentations here before November 16
| Date | Topics | Readings | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classics | |||
| Tue 09/05 | Course Overview | How to Read, You and Your Research | |
| Thu 09/07 | End Host | Packet Switching, E2E Argument | |
| Tue 09/12 | Control Plane | Design Philosophy, E2E Routing Behavior | |
| Thu 09/14 | Data Plane | Click, P4 | 50Gbps Router, RMT; Class moved to Malone 107 |
| Tue 09/19 | No class, but work on assignment 1 and forming groups | Assignment 1 due Mon 09/25 | |
| Thu 09/21 | Overlay Networks | Chord, CAN | Pastry, Tapestry |
| Datacenter Networking | |||
| Tue 09/26 | Datacenter Architectures | VL2, Jupiter Rising | PortLand |
| Thu 09/28 | Optical Datacenters | Helios, ProjecToR | FireFly |
| Tue 10/03 | Resource Allocation | DRF, Carbyne | Varys |
| Thu 10/05 | Congestion Control | DCTCP, pFabric | PDQ |
| RDMA | |||
| Tue 10/10 | RDMA 1 | DCQCN, RoCEv2 | |
| Thu 10/12 | RDMA 2 | Design Guidelines, Infiniswap | |
| Software-Defined Networking | |||
| Tue 10/17 | SDN Control Plane | Ethane, Onix | FlowVisor |
| Thu 10/19 | Wide Area Networks | B4, Owan | SWAN |
| Tue 10/24 | Traffic Engineering | BwE, FFC | Footprint; Project Proposal due Mon 10/23 |
| Network Verification | |||
| Thu 10/26 | No class, but work on assignment 2 | Assignment 2 due Mon 11/06 | |
| Tue 10/31 | Data Plane Verification | HSA, Delta-net | NetPlumber, VeriFlow, Mutable |
| Thu 11/02 | Control Plane Verification | BatFish, Minesweeper | Propane |
| Network Measurement | |||
| Tue 11/07 | Network Telemetry | EverFlow, Pingmesh | NetSight |
| Thu 11/09 | Sketch | UnivMon, SketchVisor | OpenSketch |
| Middleboxes | |||
| Tue 11/14 | Frameworks | E2, NetBricks | SIMPLE |
| Thu 11/16 | Load Balancers | Ananta, SilkRoad | Duet |
| Tue 11/21 | Thanksgiving Vacation | Gobble, gobble! | |
| Thu 11/23 | Thanksgiving Vacation | Gobble, gobble! | |
| Networking Meets Big Data | |||
| Tue 11/28 | Distributed Storage | IOFlow, NetCache | SwitchKV |
| Thu 11/30 | Wide Area Analytics | JetStream, Clarinet | Iridium |
| Project Presentations | |||
| Tue 12/5 | Project presentations 1 | ||
| Thu 12/7 | Project presentations 2 | Project Report due Mon 12/11 |
- Each student reviews 1 paper/class; submit reviews before the class
- Each student presents 2 papers; sign up here
How to write reviews
- 4 sections in review
- Summary
- Paper strengths
- Paper weaknesses
- Detailed comments
- Summary (points in sentence or bullet form)
- 1-2 points: What problem?
- 1-2 points: Core novel ideas or technical contributions
- 3-5 points: Summarize approach, mechanisms, findings
- Strengths/Weaknesses: 2-4 points each
- Detailed comments
- Longer exposition. Be constructive. Imagine conversation w/ authors: What would you tell them?
- May include
- Problem: What is it? Is it new? Is it real? Is it important?
- Solution: What is the technique(s)? Is it novel? How is it compared to past solutions? What is the intuition(s)?
- Implementation/evaluation: Does it have a real system prototype? Is the evaluation dataset(s) representative? Does the evaluation cover all aspects?
- Looking forward: Can you come up with a new/different/better solution? Can you find a new/related problem to solve?
- Assignment 1: Use iperf3 and wireshark to explore TCP.
- Assignment 2: Use P4 and Mininet to design network features. (Tutorial 1, Turorial 2)
- Final project: Novel research with a system-building component
- Open-ended research problem: Come up with your own, or talk to me
- Can work alone or in small teams, i.e., 1-5 people
- Must involve writing some software
- Can overlap with other projects, with permission
- Undergraduate research projects
- PhD qualifying research projects
- Deliverables
- Two-page short proposal: Oct 23
- Project presentation: Dec 7 (last class)
- Six-page final report: Dec 11
This course strictly enforces the university and department policies on academic integrity. The details can be found on the department website.
25% off for each 24 hours late, rounded up
- Class participation: 20%
- Paper reviews: 20%
- Programming assignments: 20%
- Project report and presentation: 40%