Instructor: Spyridon (Spyros) Mastorakis, Fitzpatrick 356C

Lectures: Monday 12:30PM-1:45PM, Wednesday 12:30PM-1:45PM (Pasquerilla Center 107)

Office Hours: Monday 2PM-3PM, Wednesday 2PM-3PM, or by appointment

Schedule

Course Overview

Without a doubt, the Internet, as we know it today, has been a tremendous success, expanding our communication frontiers and shaping the future of our society. However, networks still face a number of challenges, including how to achieve secure, scalable, and resilient communication, as well as how to support a variety of application scenarios (e.g., real-time video distribution, autonomous driving, augmented/virtual reality). 

This class will cover advanced networking concepts and discuss the transition from the past to the present and the future of networking. The main goal of the class is to help students gain deep understanding of: (i) the rationale of the current Internet design (i.e., why the Internet was designed the way it was designed), (ii) the shortcomings of the current Internet design (i.e., why this design might not be sufficient anymore), and (iii) what are the research directions when it comes to building the Internet of the future. Paradigms, such as cloud and edge computing, and their networking aspects will also be discussed. Finally, we will explore real-world networking paradigms used by big tech companies, such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. In addition to lectures, students will present during class research papers in the broader area of networking, as well as gain hands-on, practical experience with the covered material through a semester project.  

Grading

40% Semester project (80% completed tasks + 20% final report)

20% Quizzes on research papers and course material

20% Leading a research paper presentation

10% Paper reading summaries

10% In-class participation (including participation in Q/A and design discussions)

Textbook

There is no textbook required for the course. Lecture material will be made available online following each lecture. However, the textbook: "Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach", James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross covers networking fundamentals and is a good reference. 

Another good reference is the following textbook: "Computer Networks", Andrew S. Tanenbaum, David J. Wetherall. 

Students are also expected to do their own research online, reading through RFCs, research papers, and other technical documentation.

Quizzes

Quizzes will be administered during lecture time. Quizzes aim to ensure that we all have a good understanding of the course material. Each quiz will be short requiring at most 15-20 minutes to complete.

Paper Reading Summaries

Students can select 5 papers presented during the semester and write a short (at most half a page) summary for each paper. Summaries will be due before class (on the day of the paper presentation). Each summary should provide: (i) an overview of the paper; (ii) technical advantages/disadvantages of the proposed approach; and (iii) what the reader found interesting (or less interesting) about the paper.

Semester Project

Ideally, semester projects will be done in groups of 2 students. In case that creating a group of 2 students is not possible, please contact the instructor. Semester projects will consist of research and implementation components. The instructor will make a list of proposed projects available. Students are also welcome to coordinate with the instructor and propose their own topics of interest. The topics should be in the broader area of communications, networking, network and systems security.

Note

• The instructor reserves the right to change the course material or dates as necessary during the semester.