B649-Spring'08

CSCI B649: Internet Services and Protocols

Announcements

4/9/08: Schedule for the next two weeks posted. Those who have not made their second presentations should contact the instructor with their preferences.

4/3/08: Readings (2) for the week of 4/7 posted. Looking for a volunteer presenter.

3/26/08: Readings (2) for the week of 3/31 posted. Looking for a volunteer presenter.

3/20/08: Readings (2) for the week of 3/24 posted.

3/13/08: Readings (2) for the week of 3/17 posted.

2/28/08: Readings (2) for the week of 3/3 posted. Looking for a volunteer presenter.

2/20/08: Readings (3) for the week of 2/25 posted.

2/14/08: Readings (3) for the week of 2/18 posted.

2/6/08: Readings (3) for the week of 2/11 posted.

1/28/08: Readings (3) for the week of 2/4 posted.

1/23/08: Readings (2) for 1/28/08 posted. Sample summaries for the week of 1/21 posted.

1/18/08: Sample summaries for the week of 1/14 posted.

1/18/08: Readings (3) for 1/23/08 posted.

1/9/08: Readings (4) for next week posted.

1/7/08: New class time 4:00pm-5:15pm, M/W; Venue: Ballantine 214.

1/3/08: Welcome! The reading for Wed, 1/9/08 is posted.

General Course Information (Spring 2008)

Time: Mon & Wed, 4:00pm - 5.15pm

Location: Ballantine Hall (BH) 214

Instructor: Minaxi Gupta

Email:

Office: Lindley Hall (LH) 230B

Office Hours: By appointment

Pre-requisites

This is an advanced graduate level course in computer networking and requires the background of the following courses:

A graduate/senior level networking course (P538 or equivalent)
An operating systems course (B534 or similar)

Course Objectives

The Internet has experienced an unprecedented growth in the past few years. To the credit of its designers its core protocols have continued to perform reasonably well in the face of growth, application heterogeneity, changed trust relationships among its users, and higher available bandwidths. Networking research, both in the industry and academia, is actively trying to understand how the Internet scales and performs under the ever-evolving demands; and what should the next generation Internet services and protocols be like. Our goals in this course are the following:

To understand the various issues facing the Internet today. The focus will be on various security issues and on the design of a new, robust Internet.
To investigate a research problem in networking security through a semester long research project.

Grading Policy and Workload

The approximate grade break-up for the class is as follows:

Class participation: 50%
Project: 50%

The course reading material is available online. We will study about two research papers in detail in each class. Students are required to send a critical review of the relevant papers by noon the day of the class via plain text email or pdf attachment with "B649", date, and topic(s) covered in the subject. Each class will involve a combination of: presentation of material by the instructor, student presentation(s), and discussion of critical issues raised in the paper(s). Class participation part of the grade will be judged on: quality of participation in class discussions, class presentation(s), and critical review of papers.

The course project will be done in small teams and each team will work on a separate research problem. Students will have the flexibility to either choose from the problems suggested by the instructor or formulate their own with the help of the instructor. Projects will involve additional project-specific background reading and their progress will be monitored through weekly meetings throughout the semester. Each project is expected to produce a publication-quality report at completion. The project grade will be judged on: findings of the project, project report, and presentation of the project.