CS 755
System and Network Architectures and Implementation
(Fall 2013)

M. Tamer Özsu
tamer.ozsu@uwaterloo.ca
DC 3350

Lecture times: Tuesday & Thursday 9:30-10:50AM

Lecture location: DC 3313

Calendar Description

Distributed, multi-user applications are designed and implemented using many underlying technologies that must be coordinated to provide important features such as robustness, scalability, manageability, ubiquitous access, privacy, security, authentication, and role-based access control, to name only a few. The network supporting the application may be crucial to its successful implementation. The application logic itself is likely implemented in a number of languages and programming environments. Students will be provided with an advanced overview of current networking and distributed systems topics, and will apply it to case studies drawn form consumer internet applications, enterprise systems, and medical and healthcare systems.

Prerequisites

Students are expected to understand the fundamentals of programming languages, data structures, operating systems, and algorithms, each at least at the level of an introductory course.

Antirequisites

This is a graduate level instruction to computer networks and distributed systems. In that sense, it is a remedial course for students who do not have a background on these topics but with to have one. Students who have taken a computer networks or distributed systems course in their undergraduate studies or in previous graduate programs should not take this course. There are other advanced graduate courses that they should take.

References

There are no required textbooks for the course. There will be lecture slides that will be provided and we will be reading a number of papers. However, the lecture notes will be based on the following textbooks and you are expected to read the relevant chapters:

• Computer Networking, 5th or 6th edition, James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross, Addison-Wesley, 2009 or 2012.
• Distributed Systems, 2nd edition, Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Maarten van Steen, Prentice-Hall, 2007.

For access to papers, you can consult Michael Ley's online bibliography:

• DBLP Computer Science Bibliography

Workload and Evaluation

• Two critical reviews of research papers (20%)
  • First one due by 12 October (email me PDF file)
  • The second one is due by 30 November (again email me PDF files)
• Final exam (40%)
  • This is scheduled on the last lecture -- not during the finals week. It is a 2 hour exam (almost).
• Class presentations (20%)
  • Each student will present one or two papers in class and critique it (15 minutes).
  • The evaluation form (see below) is a good guide in preparing your presenations.
  • See schedule below (which will be filled in as we go along)...
• Class participation (20%)
  • Participation mark will be determined by the following:
    • Participation in the discussions in class (we'll have about 10 minutes discussion for each paper).
    • Each student will read each paper to be presented and write a short review of it (3/4 to 1 page). The guidelines for these short reviews are here. Please note that these are different than the critiques mentioned above.
    • Each student has to fill out an evaluation form and mail it to me by 5PM on Sunday of the week when the presentation is given. You can download the PDF or Word version

Please review the materials concerning academic integrity and academic honesty. You must complete and sign the Academic Integrity Acknowledgement Form, and hand it in at the beginning of third lecture.

Schedule (tentative and may change)

The first four weeks will be straight lectures. After that one class each week will be lecture, the second class will be presentation & discussion.

The links from Lecture Notes will allow you to download lecture slides; similarly links from Papers will take you to a list of appropriate papers for that topic that will be discussed in class and that can also be used for critiques.