CPS214: Computer Networks/Distributed Systems Syllabus

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

Date	Topics	Readings
Part 1: Internetworking
Fri 01/13	Content delivery networks I. [ppt]	Akamai Network
Wed 01/18	Content delivery networks II.
Fri 01/20	Intro: History and context and packet switching. [ppt]	darpa-internet
Wed 01/25	Names and Addresses: Hierarchical and Flat. I [ppt]	DNS
Fri 01/27	Names and Addresses: Hierarchical and Flat. II
Wed 02/01	Intradomain Topology and Routing [ppt]	ROUTING1, ROUTING2
Fri 02/03	Interdomain Routing [ppt]
Wed 02/08	Interdomain Routing. II
Fri 02/10	Multihoming and Multi-path Routing [ppt]	Deflections, RFC
Wed 02/15	Router Design [ppt]	50GB
Fri 02/17	Routing Overlays [ppt]	RON, RFC
Wed 02/22	MPLS and VPNs [ppt]
Part 2: Distributed Systems
Fri 02/24	Content Overlays [ppt]	Chord, FreeNet
Wed 02/29	Content Overlays II [ppt]	BitTorrent
Fri 03/02	Download Manager/NetSession [ppt ]
03/03 - 03/12	Spring Break
Fri 03/14	NFS & AFS [ppt]
Wed 03/21	Cryptography Basics [ppt]
Fri 03/23	S3 [ppt]
Wed 03/28	S3/Mid Term
Fri 03/30	Map Reduce [ppt]	MPR GFS
Wed 04/04	Multiplayer Online Games [ppt]
Fri 04/06	Quantum Cryptography [ppt]
Wed 04/11	Akamai Stories [ppt]
Fri 04/13	Skype [ppt]	SK
Wed 04/18	YouTube [pdf]	YT
Fri 04/20	Video and Audio Streaming [ppt]	ST1, ST2