ANNOUNCEMENTS
Remember to check this (and Canvas) regularly!
ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
Fabián E. Bustamante
Seely Mudd, 3rd Floor +1 847 491-2745 fabianb@cs…
LOCATION AND TIME
**Lectures:**Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00-12:20PM | Parkes Hall 215
Professor Office Hours: by appointment
CATALOG DESCRIPTION
The Internet is a continuously evolving, loosely controlled, and highly uncooperative infrastructure of impressive scale and complexity. This seminar is intended to help you understand its evolving design, and some of the forces behind it, through active discussions and investigative projects on state-of-the-art networking research.
COURSE PREREQUISITES
The course assumes a basic understanding of topics in networking, such as packet-switching, routing, socket programming, and congestion control, as covered in CS 340 “Introduction to Computer Networking”
If you have taken a similar course somewhere else, please contact me.
In compliance with Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, Northwestern University is committed to providing equal access to all programming. Students with disabilities seeking accommodations are encouraged to contact the office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at +1 847 467-5530 or ssd@northwestern.edu. SSD is located in the basement of Scott Hall. Additionally, I am available to discuss disability-related needs during office hours or by appointment.
Throughout the quarter you will be reading and discussing recent papers in computer networks while working on two research assignments. Class meetings will be focused on a range of topics, from Internet infrastructure to censorship and privacy, with two assigned readings – a recent publication and an important, background paper in the same space. For the research part of the course, you will gain experience with the research process by reproducing some prior work.
TOPICS
- Network design principles
- DNS and CDN
- TCP and congestion control
- Internet topology and routing
- New Internet architectures
- Software-defined networks
- Cloud networking
- New ISPs
- Wireless and mobile networks
- Privacy and censorship
COURSE ORGANIZATION
Most class meetings will be centered around one research topic. We will review background or motivating work during the first part of the class, and dedicate the second, and longest, part of the class to the presentation and discussion of a recent publication. You will be responsible for (one to two) conference-style papers presentations throughout the quarter.
What you get out of school depends on what you put on it, that is particularly true of seminars. You should read both background and research papers before coming to class and be prepared to discuss them. As a way of reading enforcer, before each class, you must submit a short critique of the required readings on Canvas (not the background paper).
Beyond reading, presentation, and paper discussions, you will work on two reproducibility assignments throughout the quarter. The first assignment is a small, warm-up project in which you will reproduce an experiment common to many research efforts. For the second assignment, you will work to reproduce a result from a published networking paper. What you get out of school depends on what you put on it, that is particularly true of seminars. You should read both background and research paper before coming to class and be prepared to discuss them. As a way of reading enforcer, before each class you must submit a short critique of the required readings on Canvas (not the background paper).
COMMUNICATION CHANNELS
There are a number of communication channels set up for this class:
- We will use the course web site and Canvas to post announcements related to the course. You should check this regularly for schedule changes, clarifications and corrections to assignments, and other course-related announcements.
- We will be using Piazza for all class discussion. The system is highly catered to getting you help fast and efficiently from classmates and the staff. Before emailing us, I encourage you to post your questions there.
- There is always email for questions that would be inappropriate to post on the newsgroup/discussion-board. When using email to contact the staff please start your subject line with “Adv Net: helpful-comment” to ensure a prompt response.
GRADING
I use a criterion-referenced method to assign your grade; in other words, your grade will be based on how well you do relative to predetermined performance levels, instead of in comparison with the rest of the class.
Total scores (between 0 and 100) will be determined, roughly, as follows:
- Paper critiques 15%
- In-class participation 15%
- Paper presentation 20%
- Warm-up project 15%
- Final project 35%