CS856: Internet Server Performance

Project Information

Important Dates

• Presentations: Tuesday July 25, 2:30-5:30.
• Papers Due: Tuesday August 1, noon.
• Reviews Due: Tuesday August 8, noon.

Paper Guidelines

• Papers must be submitted in pdf format.
• Length: 10 pages maximum including all references, figures and graphs. This is an absolute maximum. Papers longer than this will not be considered.
• Minimum 10 point font.
• Example paper template (latex).
• Link to the 2004 USENIX/FREENIX conference page.
  There are templates under the Instructions for Authors section that can be used for other word processing systems.
• From the information about USENIX submissions.
  In a good paper, the authors will have:
  • attacked a significant problem
  • devised an interesting and practical solution
  • clearly described what they have and have not implemented
  • demonstrated the benefits of their solution
  • articulated the advances beyond previous work
  • drawn appropriate conclusions

Project/Paper Submission

• Due: Tuesday August 1, noon.
  This is an absolute and hard deadline. No extensions. Anything recieved late will receive a grade of 0 (no exceptions). This simulates conference submission deadlines.
• Create a file with the name XXX.pdf where XXX is your project id (which I'll email to you). That file must contain the project paper you are submitting.
• Email file XXX.pdf (where XXX is your project id) to me as an attachment. The subject line should read
  Subject: 856 XXX.pdf
  This will allow me to easily save each project submitted so they can later be obtained for reviewing.

Project Source Submission

Please consider also submitting your source code - especially those groups who have modified the userver. If I can I'd like to merge all of the mods that I can to produce a new version of the userver. If you choose to send me your source please follow the steps below:

• Create a README.groupXX in your source tree where XX is your group number. Be sure to include a statement noting how you would like your source to be treated (i.e., licensing). Ideally it will be GPL'ed.
• Move or cp (if you cp please use -p to preserve dates) your source tree to a directory named groupXX-src.
• Create a gzipped tar file of groupXX-src and store it in groupXX-src.tgz. This can be done:

  % tar -cf groupXX-src.tar groupXX-src
  % gzip -9 groupXX-src.tar
  % mv groupXX-src.tar.gz groupXX-tgz
  

  Or using gnu tar.

  % tar -czf groupXX-src.tgz groupXX-src
  

• Send the gzipped tar file to me as an attachement using the subject.
  Subject: 856 groupXX-src.tgz

Review Submission

• Due Tuesday August 8 before noon.
• There are 4 projects. You will each be required to review the
• The form to be used for paper review ratings.
  • Create the file XXX-YY-rating.txt where XXX is the project id and YY is your reviewer id.
  • Must be plain ASCII text.
• The form to be used for paper review comments.
• Create the file XXX-YY-comments.txt where XXX is the project id and YY is your reviewer id.
  • The comments are meant to be used as justification for your ratings.
  • Must be plain ASCII text.
  • No more than 79 columns wide by 55 total lines long (including header information). Note: that there may be no need to use all 55 lines.
• In one single email with
  Subject: 856 reviews from YY
  attach all of the XXX-YY-rating.txt files and all of the XXX-YY-comments.txt files.

The Presentations

• PDF copies of the presentation must be submitted by noon Tuesday July 25.
• Presentation: Tuesday July 25, 2006. Time: 2:30 - 5:30.
• Before starting to prepare your talk everyone should read and think about the comments in the paper "How to give a good research talk" and the "constructive comments". Links to these can be found in the list of possible course readings. Note: that some of these points don't really apply so you'll have to use some judgement. E.g., some conferences (including ours) might not be able to handle hand written slides.
• Talk length: 20 minutes (strictly enforced).
  • Think about having about 10-15 slides or fewer.
  • Think about what point you want to make and make it (i.e., what is the message).
  • Each member of the group should talk for roughly the same amount of time.
• Submission: All talks will need to be submitted in PDF format and must be sent as an attachment which is named XXX-talk.pdf (where XXX is the the project id you've been assigned). Use
  Subject: 856 XXX-talk.pdf
  I'll make them available on a laptop that I'll supply That way we don't have to worry about switching between laptops. I'll also archive them in the course project page.