20-755: The Internet, Summer 1999

1. Administrative

Instructor: David O'Hallaron
Assoc. Prof. of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
droh@cs.cmu.edu, Wean Hall 8125, (412)268-8199

Course TA: Julio Lopez, jclopez@cs.cmu.edu, Wean Hall 8205, (412)268-3778
Recitation sessions:MF 1:30-3:20 Posner 146

Course secretary: Barb Grandillo, bag@cs.cmu.edu, Wean Hall 8212, (412)268-7550

Office hours: M 2:00-3:30 (Feel free to visit anytime)

Lectures: MF 10:30 - 12:20, Posner Hall 146.

2. Goals

The aim of this course is to help you understand the concepts and technology underlying Internet services. In your networking class last term, you studied aspects of the Internet from a network-point of view. In this course we'll take a complementary approach, studying the Internet from a host-centric point of view. We'll cover basic principles of computer systems, how to connect networks of these systems to form internets, and the issues involved in building servers that are secure, scalable, and highly-available.

3. Textbook

This is a new course for which no good textbook exists yet (or at least I haven't found one yet). We'll use the following book as a basic reference, filling in details in class as necessary: Dilip C. Nalik, "Internet Standards and Protocols", Microsoft Press, 1998, ISBN 1-57231-692-6. The cost is $23.99 from Amazon.com. Ships within 24 hours.

4. Evaluation

Breakdown: Grades will be based on a weighted average of the following:

Participation (10%): It is important for you to attend every class, to participate in the discussions, and to talk to me outside of class. All of these will be considered in an informal way when I assign the final grade.
One homework (20%): The homework will be a week-long programming task to help you learn some basics that you will need for the programming project.
Programming project (50%): For the project you'll write an Internet server of your own choice. I'll post guidelines later in the term.
Final exam (20%): The final will be an "open everything" exam that will cover the material discussed in lectures.

Final grades: The final grades will be based on mastery. Students who master the material will get A's. Students who have some difficulty but work hard will get B's. Students who have difficulty and don't work hard get C's.

Working in groups: You may work on the project and the homework in groups of up to 3 people. It is up to you to form and regulate your groups. If you're not happy with your partner(s), you are free to find others. You may also work by yourself.

5. Getting help

Julio will run recitation sections and will hold regular office hours to help you with the homework and project. If you have questions or need help outside of these times, please send mail to Julio to arrange a meeting. My posted office hours are merely times when I promise to be in the office. You are always welcome to visit outside of office hours if you need help or want to talk about the course. I normally work with my door open and welcome visits when the door is open. If my door is closed, then I'm either gone or busy with a meeting or phone call.

The idea behind letting you work with partners is to give you an outlet when you get stuck in a programming excercise. If you get stuck as a team, please come see me. You may also talk to your classmates about any ideas or concepts, but each group must write their own code.

All course materials are available from the course Web page: www.cs.cmu.edu/~droh/755.

6. Policies

Handing in assignments: All assignment are due at 10:30am on the specified due date. All handins are electronic, usually consisting of one or more files that are copied to a specified AFS directory. The writeup for each assignment will describe the handin procedure for that assignment.

Penalties for late assignments: Unless you've arranged an extension in advance, late handins will be docked 10% each day for the first two days, and assignments more than 2 days late will not be accepted.

Appealing grades: After each assignment and the final, I'll send each of you a personalized email with your score (as well as all your previous scores). You have 7 days after I send the email to appeal your score.

Cheating: All of your assignments allow collaboration with your partner, and you are encouraged to talk to other members of the class about any problems you are having. For example, it is OK to get help from classmates in debugging a program or to ask questions about the approach with a programming task. What you are not allowed to do is directly copy files or parts of files from your classmates. This is considered cheating, and the penalty will depend on the severity of the offense. At the very least, the student will receive a score of 0 for the assignment.

7. Facilities

We will use euro.ecom.cmu.edu, a Pentium-based Linux server managed by the Institute for eCommerce, for the homework and projects. Each student will receive an account on euro.

8. Schedule

*Note: stars indicate two-a-day lectures, at 10:30 and 1:30.*
Lecture	Date	Day	Time	Topic	Readings	Assignments
1	07/09	Fri	10:30	Introduction	suppl. reading
*2	07/12	Mon	10:30	Computer systems I	suppl. reading
*3	07/12	Mon	1:30	Computer systems II
*4	07/16	Fri	10:30	Internetworking I	Naik: Ch 1-3, suppl. reading
*5	07/16	Fri	1:30	Internetworking II	Naik: Ch 1-3, suppl. reading	H1 out
6	07/19	Mon	10:30	Progamming the Internet	Naik: 126-131,suppl. reading
7	07/23	Fri	10:30	Web services I	Naik: ch 12-13, suppl. reading
*8	07/23	Fri	1:30	Homework and project working session
9	07/26	Mon	10:30	Web services II	Naik: ch 12-13, suppl. reading	H1 due: 10:30am, Projects out
10	07/30	Fri	10:30	Web services III	Naik: ch 12-13, suppl. reading	Project proposal due
11	08/02	Mon	10:30	Secure services	Naik: ch 5,9 suppl. reading
	08/06	Fri		No Class
12	08/09	Mon	10:30	Scalable services	Naik, ch 13, suppl. reading
13	08/13	Fri	10:30	Guest Lecture: Bruce Maggs, Akamai and CMU SCS	suppl. reading	Project due
14	08/16	Mon	1:00 (Note special time)	Guest Lecture: Walt Smith, iXL	suppl. reading
	08/21	Sat	1pm-4pm	Final exam, Posner 145 & 146

9. Supplementary reading

General information

Ellen Siever, et al, "Linux in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition", O'Reilly, 1999.
Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, "Perl Cookbook", O'Reilly, 1998.
Numerous examples of Perl5 code for sockets, Internet services, CGI programming, and Web automation. Very helpful.
Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randall Schwartz, "Programming Perl, Second Edition", O'Reilly, 1996.
The Perl5 reference book. Lots of info but doesn't cover the new IO::Socket module.
Samuel P. Harbison and Guy L. Steele, C: A Reference Manual, Fourth Edition, Prentice Hall, 1994.

Lecture 1: Intro

Leiner et. al, A brief history of the Internet.
R. Zakon, Hobbes' Internet timeline.
Internet domain survey

Lectures 2 & 3: Intro to Systems

J. Hennessy and D. Patterson, "Computer Organization and Design, Second Edition", Morgan-Kaufman, 1998.
Comprehensive and authoritative, but probably much more detail than you want.

Lectures 4 & 5: Internetworking

A. Tannenbaum, "Computer Networks, Third Edition", Prentice-Hall, 1996,

Lecture 6: Programming the Internet

Perl5 daytime client and server.
P. Albitz and C. Liu, "DNS and BIND", O'Reilly & Assoc, 1994.
Boardwatch.com directory of Internet Service Providers.
Great source of info on the Internet, backbones, and service providers.
Mapnet
Interactive tool that displays world-wide maps of commercial and research backbones.

Lecture 7: Web services I

Vannevar Bush, As we may think, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.
The first paper on distributed hypertext.
History of the Web
Netcraft Web Survey
RFC 2616: HTTP/1.1 Spec, June 1999

Lecture 9: Web services II

CGI overview.
CGI spec.
Concise specification of the interface. Helpful once you understand the basics.

Lecture 10: Web services III

Lecture 11: Secure services

Eugene H. Spafford, The Internet worm incident, Technical Report CSD-TR-933, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, Sept. 1991.
Readable description of the Worm from one of the participants in the aftermath.
A. Tannenbaum, "Computer Networks, Third Edition", Prentice-Hall, 1996, Section 7.4.
Very clear explanation of how Internet email works.

Scalable services

The Squid Proxy Cache home page
Brian D. Davison's Web Caching Resources
A. Loutonen and K. Altis, World-Wide Web proxies, First International Conference on the World-Wide Web, Geneva, Switzerland, April, 1994.
The original paper on proxy servers.

Lecture 13: Bruce Maggs, Akamai and CMU SCS

FreeFlow.
This page has a high-level description of Akamai's FreeFlow product, which uses DNS in a clever way to serve rich content for customers while still allowing them to maintain control of their server logs and cookies.

Lecture 14: Walt Smith, IXL

Walt Smith, E-transformation: Creating a virtual transaction network, IXL white paper, July, 1999.

Dave OHallaron

Last modified: Wed Aug 18 20:22:12 EDT 1999