EE 281 Course Project

Projects may be done in groups of at most two. Please note the submission deadlines.

Project Goals

You will conduct a review of the literature in an area related to computer networks. The project is divided into two phases. In the first phase, you will review three significant papers in an area of computer networking. In the second phase, you will identify an aspect of a problem not resolved in the papers under review, and propose an idea and a research plan to address this gap.

This project should prepare you for EE 297A/B.

Phase 1: The literature review (50%) to be submitted on October 24, 2017

To begin, you should locate your area of interest in the research landscape. SIGCOMM and INFOCOM are the annual flagship conferences hosted by the ACM and the IEEE respectively (two major societies invested in the topic of computer networks). The ACM largely intersects with the computer science community, and the IEEE, with that of electrical engineering, though their orbits tend to overlap. Each society also hosts several satellite workshops and conferences to encourage new and up-and-coming areas of research.

To narrow your field of interest, you should read through the technical programs of recent conferences and workshops hosted by both of these societies. See here and here for more details. Take note of the papers and people given awards. Visit their professional webpages and explore their labs and publications.

I would recommend confining your search to papers that focus on network architecture and protocols, the core subject of this course.

Once you have defined your area of research, you should select three significant, recent publications that “flank” the major components of the problem you’ve identified or alternatively provide a thrust in a certain direction of inquiry. This selection is a crucial part of the project, so make sure you have a good understanding of your area and the literature in it beforehand. Your task is to evaluate, analyze, and critique the ideas in the selected papers. A literature review succeeds when it synthesizes a diverse body of work into a coherent narrative. Most importantly, a good review clarifies what has yet to be done. Some additional guidelines for writing quality reviews can be found here.

I will grade your work based on how effectively you capture the contributions of each paper and their interrelationships.

Phase 2: The proposal (50%) to be submitted on November 28, 2017

The first phase, if properly done, should naturally lead into the second. You must identify a void in the literature you reviewed. Your task is to develop an idea that fills this void. This idea, fundamentally, should be simple to state (but not necessarily simple to execute or validate).

Propose a plan to demonstrate and/or explore whether your idea is a contribution to the field. Be very specific. The proposal should be at the same level of detail as the papers you cited. The only obstacle to carrying out your plan should be a lack of time, a lack of resources, or a lack of programming skills. Try to minimize the use of acronyms and buzzwords. The proposal should demonstrate your research, understanding, and grasp of the area in question. If you are able to validate some aspect of your idea as part of your project that would be fantastic.

The format and structure of the final document should be conference-worthy, even if your ideas have yet to be proven. I encourage you to use LaTeX; your work should look, feel, and read like a legitimate publication. It would help to read as many quality publications pertaining to your area as possible to get a sense of what that entails.

You should view this project as an opportunity to thoughtfully engage with contemporary scholarship in the field of networking. Feel free to take advantage of my office hours to discuss your progress. I am happy to arrange additional meetings for those who ask.

Good luck!