15-744: Computer Networks 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 15-744 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
Mon 01/15	Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Part 1: Internetworking
Wed 01/17	Intro: History and context and packet switching.
Mon 01/22	Internetworking: Architectural principles, names, addresses [pdf] [ppt]		Design
Wed 01/24	A best effort world, placement of function (reliability, security, etc.) [pdf] [ppt]	Read the End-to-End Arguments paper (Saltzer84) if you haven't seen it before.	Saltzer84 Architecture
Fri 01/26	Recitation - background material review (Jeff) [pdf] [ppt]	Wean 4615A, 3:00 - 4:30pm.
Mon 01/29	Interdomain Routing [pdf] [ppt]	Only read sections 1, 3, skim 6, and 7 of GR for today	GR
Part 2: Resource Management
Wed 01/31	End-to-End Congestion Control [pdf] [ppt]	For more examples of Reno/NewReno/etc., see the ppt slides from 744 in 2004	CJ89 VJ88
Mon 02/05	No lecture. Meetings about projects.
Wed 02/07	Router congestion control [pdf] [ppt]		RED XCP
Mon 02/12	Fair Queueing [pdf] [ppt]		WFQ CSFQ
Wed 02/14	Quality of Service [pdf] [ppt]	Project proposals due	She95 CSZ92
Fri 02/16	ns-2 and tools (Jeff)	Wean Hall 5409, 3:00-4:30PM
Mon 02/19	Router Design [pdf] [ppt]	Optional reading: D+97 (the "Lulea" algorithm)	MGR iSLIP
Part 3: Wireless
Wed 02/21	Wireless Networks overview and architectures [pdf] [ppt]		Macaw
Mon 02/26	Wireless Networks in the real world [pdf] [ppt]		Chaotic
Wed 02/28	Quiz 1
Mon 03/05	Routing in ad-hoc networks [pdf] [ppt]	Second MANET reading is mostly to flesh out the picture Related: Roofnet Publications (In particular, Mobicom2005, Sigcomm2005, Sigcomm2004 papers)	ETX MANET1 MANET2
Wed 03/07	Making the Best of Broadcast [pdf] [ppt]	ExOR SIGCOMM talk Slides: ppt, PDF.	ExOR XorsInTheAir
Mon 03/12	Spring Break
Wed 03/14	Spring Break
Mon 03/19	Mobility [pdf] [ppt]		MobileIP TCPMigrate
Part 4: Applications, Naming, and Overlays
Wed 03/21	Overlay Networks 1	No slides. An overview of overlay networks and 15-441 notes on p2p.	RON GIA
Mon 03/26	Distributed Hash Tables [pdf] [odp]	See also DHT Geometry Comparison paper.	DHTSurvey Chord
Wed 03/28	No class - project meetings
Mon 04/02	DNS and the Web [pdf] [odp]	Mike Freedman, the author of Coral, will be giving a job talk here on Monday the 9th, if people are interested. For more DNS, see DNS Performance and the Effectiveness of Caching	DNS Coral
Wed 04/04	What's in a name? Names, identifiers, and network architecture [pdf] [odp]		DOA i3
Part 5: Measurement, Mining, (and Multicast...)
Mon 04/09	Measurement [pdf] [odp]		Paxson:Measurement
Wed 04/11	Guest Lecture - Christos Faloutsos: Data Mining Tools for Large Graphs [pdf]	Networks are filled with interesting graphs - the Web, the AS graph, the router topology, etc. This lecture will examine some techniques for analyzing them to extract meaningful information.	RatioRules TrafficBehavior
Mon 04/16	Multicast [pdf] [ppt]	Presented by Jeff	SRM
Part 6: Security
Wed 04/18	Security: DDoS and Traceback [pdf] [odp]		Traceback TVA
Mon 04/23	Security: Worms		OwningTheInternet Fingerprinting
Wed 04/25	Second In-Class Exam
Mon 04/30	Project Presentations 1
Wed 05/02	Project Presentations 2
Mon 05/14	Project writeups due