CPS214: Computer Networks/Distributed Systems Syllabus

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Textbooks

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

• Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, third edition, by Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie. It is available in the CMU Bookstore. Covers background networking material that we assume students will already be familiar with.
• Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet, 3rd edition, by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross. Covers similar material to Peterson and Davie.
• TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols by W. Richard Stevens.
• Unix Network Programming: Networking APIs: Sockets and XTI (Volume 1) by W. Richard Stevens.
• Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by W. Richard Stevens, Addison-Wesley, 1993.

Grading

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

• 40% Project
• 30% Quizzes
• 25% Homework
• 5% Class Participation

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

The project in CPS214 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
Part 1: Internetworking
Wed 01/09	Content delivery networks I. [ppt]
Mon 01/14	Content delivery networks II. [ppt]
Wed 01/16	Intro: History and context and packet switching.		darpa-internet
Mon 01/21	noclass Martin Luther King Day
Wed 01/23	Names and Addresses: Hierarchical and Flat. I [ppt]		DNS
Mon 01/28	Names and Addresses: Hierarchical and Flat. II
Wed 01/30	Intradomain Topology and Routing [ppt]		ROUTING1, ROUTING2
Mon 02/04	Interdomain Routing [ppt]
Wed 02/06	Multihoming and Multi-path Routing [ppt]		Deflections
Mon 02/11	Router Design [ppt]		50GB
Wed 02/13	Routing Overlays [ppt]		RON
Mon 02/18	MPLS and VPNs [ppt]
Part 2: Distributed Systems
Wed 02/20	Content Overlays [ppt]		Chord
Mon 02/25	Content Overlays II [ppt]		BitTorrent
Wed 02/27	NFS & AFS [ppt]
Mon 03/03	S3 [ppt]
Wed 03/05	Cryptography Basics [ppt]
Mon 03/10	Spring Break
Wed 03/12	Spring Break
Mon 03/17	The Google File System [pdf]		GFS
Mon 03/24	Map Reduce		slides MPR
Wed 03/26	Multiplayer Online Games [ppt]
Mon 03/31	Quantum Cryptography [ppt]
Wed 04/02	Akamai Stories [ppt]
Mon 04/07	Midterm
Wed 04/09	Skype [ppt]		SK
Mon 04/14	YouTube [pdf]		YT
Wed 04/16	Video and Audio Streaming [ppt]		ST1, ST2