15-744: Computer Networks Syllabus

Textbooks

There are no official texts for the course. As background, we suggest several texts:

Grading

Your final grade for the course will be based on the following weights:

The quizzes will be in-class, one near midterm and one near the end of the semester.

The project in 15-744 is an open-ended research project, done in groups of two. The project requires a proposal, a project status report, and a final report (both written and presented).

There will be a few problem sets assigned during the term that will constitute 25% of your grade. Problem sets will be a mix of theory and hands-on programming assignments.

Schedule

Also available as an ical file that you can subscribe to.

Date Topics Notes Readings
Mon 01/15 Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Part 1: Internetworking
Wed 01/17 Intro: History and context and packet switching.
Mon 01/22 Internetworking: Architectural principles, names, addresses
[pdf] [ppt]
Design
Wed 01/24 A best effort world, placement of function (reliability, security, etc.)
[pdf] [ppt]
Read the End-to-End Arguments paper (Saltzer84)
if you haven't seen it before.
Saltzer84 Architecture
Fri 01/26 Recitation - background material review (Jeff)
[pdf] [ppt]
Wean 4615A, 3:00 - 4:30pm.
Mon 01/29 Interdomain Routing
[pdf] [ppt]
Only read sections 1, 3, skim 6, and 7 of GR for today GR
Part 2: Resource Management
Wed 01/31 End-to-End Congestion Control
[pdf] [ppt]
For more examples of Reno/NewReno/etc., see the ppt slides from 744 in 2004 CJ89 VJ88
Mon 02/05 No lecture. Meetings about projects.
Wed 02/07 Router congestion control
[pdf] [ppt]
RED XCP
Mon 02/12 Fair Queueing
[pdf] [ppt]
WFQ CSFQ
Wed 02/14 Quality of Service
[pdf] [ppt]
Project proposals due She95 CSZ92
Fri 02/16 ns-2 and tools (Jeff)
Wean Hall 5409, 3:00-4:30PM
Mon 02/19 Router Design
[pdf] [ppt]
Optional reading: D+97 (the "Lulea" algorithm) MGR iSLIP
Part 3: Wireless
Wed 02/21 Wireless Networks overview and architectures
[pdf] [ppt]
Macaw
Mon 02/26 Wireless Networks in the real world
[pdf] [ppt]
Chaotic
Wed 02/28 Quiz 1
Mon 03/05 Routing in ad-hoc networks
[pdf] [ppt]
Second MANET reading is mostly to flesh out the picture
Related: Roofnet Publications (In particular, Mobicom2005, Sigcomm2005, Sigcomm2004 papers)
ETX MANET1 MANET2
Wed 03/07 Making the Best of Broadcast
[pdf] [ppt]
ExOR SIGCOMM talk Slides: ppt, PDF. ExOR XorsInTheAir
Mon 03/12 Spring Break
Wed 03/14 Spring Break
Mon 03/19 Mobility
[pdf] [ppt]
MobileIP TCPMigrate
Part 4: Applications, Naming, and Overlays
Wed 03/21 Overlay Networks 1
No slides. An overview of overlay networks and 15-441 notes on p2p. RON GIA
Mon 03/26 Distributed Hash Tables
[pdf] [odp]
See also DHT Geometry Comparison paper. DHTSurvey Chord
Wed 03/28 No class - project meetings
Mon 04/02 DNS and the Web
[pdf] [odp]
Mike Freedman, the author of Coral, will be giving a job talk here on Monday the 9th, if people are interested.
For more DNS, see DNS Performance and the Effectiveness of Caching
DNS Coral
Wed 04/04 What's in a name? Names, identifiers, and network architecture
[pdf] [odp]
DOA i3
Part 5: Measurement, Mining, (and Multicast...)
Mon 04/09 Measurement
[pdf] [odp]
Paxson:Measurement
Wed 04/11 Guest Lecture - Christos Faloutsos: Data Mining Tools for Large Graphs
[pdf]
Networks are filled with interesting graphs - the Web, the AS graph, the router topology, etc. This lecture will examine some techniques for analyzing them to extract meaningful information. RatioRules TrafficBehavior
Mon 04/16 Multicast
[pdf] [ppt]
Presented by Jeff SRM
Part 6: Security
Wed 04/18 Security: DDoS and Traceback
[pdf] [odp]
Traceback TVA
Mon 04/23 Security: Worms
OwningTheInternet Fingerprinting
Wed 04/25 Second In-Class Exam
Mon 04/30 Project Presentations 1
Wed 05/02 Project Presentations 2
Mon 05/14 Project writeups due

Last updated: Tue May 01 16:55:54 -0400 2007 [validate xhtml]