Time and Place: Pierce Hall -(Chemistry) 3374
Time: Tu-Thur 2:10 - 3:30 (As in the program)
Office hours: Tu: 3:30-4:30
Thu: 5-6 To accomodate the dbase people
You should see this as a business plan: we propose, we present and deliver
a document.
We will pretend that you are dealing with a capital investor or the
boss in your company or
your PhD supservisor:
We need professionalism.
The presentation should be treated as a thesis defense.
The evaluation of your work will depend on the evaluation in
all parts.
NEW: I will keep my presenation slides in a secret directory
NEW: Here is the schedule and list of presentations. Check it since you will need to study the related papers.
Follow the project link to see some samples of projects.
1. Text-book :
Computer Networking:
A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet
by James
F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross
2. Secondary book ($16.09 in amazon):
BGP4 Inter-Domain Routing in the Internet
by John W. Stewart
Date Published: 12/1998
ISBN: 0201379511
Keep in touch and check this page again for possible changes.
Tips: a list of acronyms you should
be aware of , thanks to Yong Cao's help.
The issue is not to memorize the origin but understand what they really
mean and what is their importance.
Student Evaluation
60% Non-trivial project - I will provide a list of topics
20% One exam or assignment
20% Class Participation and presentations
You should be able to discuss it and/or present the paper main concepts.
The page for last's years class contains a lot of information
on conferences and journals, tools, and some scripts.
This is a course for people with a) serious interest in networks,
and
b) non-trivial background in networks. The goals is to help
potentially interested students see what networking research
is all about, and
to neworking students prepare for their research
(i.e. start their thesis work) and the networks depth exam.
Don't take this class unless you have a good background
and are prepared to dedicate a non-trivial amount of time on networks.
One more grad class and a seminar should be doable.
OVERVIEW
The class will be divided in the following parts:
Textbook. Assuming networks background, this shoud be a
breeze.
It is a very well written book. We will definitely do the
first 6 chapters. I will only teach very briefly some issues, you are
expected
to cover the book.
Papers. We will study a fair amount of papers (~10) . Students
will be expected to read a number of
papers (1-2) for each class and discuss it. Students are expected
to show up in class for
this part (see below the 10% participation).
Here is the initial list of papers . I
will be adding things soon.
BGP Routing. We will spend approximately a third of the class
on BGP routing, hence
the auxiliary book.
EVALUATION
1. EXAM or ASSIGNMENT
The goal is to test the students on the textbook and/or the auxiliary
book. My exams seldom require
memorisation.
2. PRESENTATIONS
We will have in class presentations of the papers. Also, students
at the end will
present their projects to me.
3. PROJECTS
The project will be a non-trivial original piece of work. The end result
should
be at the level of a decent workshop paper. Literature surveys
are acceptable. However,
they have to be thorough, synthesize the read material, and offer an
interesting perspective
on the state of the art.
I will offer several ideas for projects but identifying a topic is
mainly the student's duty.
Note: In previous courses, I have been very flexible on this issue.
This time I will be strict.
I will be very happy to help with the report, or explain what are the
expectations
but the expectations have to be met at the end. "I didn't know that
I had to go that far"
is not an excuse.
We will have projects in teams of two. The team will have to identify
a project
and do a proposal within the first few weeks.
The proposal is a binding agreement: you will promise to deliver something.
The idea is that a project should be a self contained piece of work
that with some
extra work could be publishable.
Literature Surveys: Literature surveys are acceptable
but they shold be really good surveys
to get maximum grades.
A good literature survey:
* identify the important papers: starting
from the good conferences and journals
is a good strating point (SIGCOMM, INFOCOM,
ICNP, GLOBAL INTERNET)
* synthesize the information: pure listing of
papers is not a literature survey
you have to highlight similarities,
classify papers and approaches, compare them
* it has to be clear, well written, with one
major topic in mind, develop
top down (problem - main classes
of approaches - subclassess of its class- etc)
A literature survey becomes someting more when
it goes beyond surveying and it identifies
open problems, proposes new methods or
combination of existing methods etc.
A reasonable lit-survey typically has at least
15 papers a good one around 25
and an extensive one 30 or more. HOWEVER, these
numbers are indicative:
First, it is the quality of papers that you use
that matters.
Second it depends on the topic: the goal is to
cover a particular subject.
Tip: select an appropriate topic so that
the amount of papers that you read are
adequate.
Surveys just like other projects will be judged
on a) topic interest, b) completeness,
c) innovation (new perspectives and insights),
d) quality of writing.
Prerequisites: Students are expected to have taken an undergraduate
class in
networks or equivalent (related working experience, self study, incredible
brain power, or determination).
I may exercise my right to not accept a student if I can sense
they won't make it.
Typically, I let students assume the responsibility of their actions,
because I believe
they know better their limitations.
WARNING:
Here are some suggestions and guidelines for the projects
. (Under construction)
Here is my some guidelines of how a well written paper should look like:
The structure of a succesful paper
Every case is different, by when you diverge too much from the given
structure
you should think twice and probably have a very good reason for it.
Text-book (strongly suggested but optional):
Computer Networking:
A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet
by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross
(reference texbook)
It could be found on-line last year here:
http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose/Contents.htm
We will cover the following chapters from the text-book:
Ch. 1 Introduction (All)
Ch. 2 Application Layer (All. Except 2.6)
Ch. 3 Transportation Layer (All. In brief: 3.4)
Ch. 4 Network Layer and Routing (All)
Ch. 5 Link Layer and Local Area Networks (ONLY: 5.1, 5.3, 5.5.1, 5.5.2,
5.7, 5.8)
Ch. 6 Multimedia Networking (All.)