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Advanced Computer Networks, ICS 691

Instructor: Edo Biagioni

Final Reports

Goals

In this course, students will:

Design, organize, and implement a significant networking project.
Become familiar with fundamental literature in the field of networking.
Have practice presenting and discussing networking material.

Organization

This course has required presentations, required discussion in class, and one project (student-initiated). There are no homeworks, exams, or textbook. Grades are based on the presentations, on participation in class discussion, and on performance on the project (including project reports).

The course meets Tue-Thu 10:30-11:45 in Keller 302.

Office hours are Tuesday and Thursday 1-3 in POST 303B, and by appointment.

Tentative Schedule

This schedule is based on an 18-person class and may vary depending on final registration numbers.

January 13th is the first class. The instructor will discuss organization and requirements, and attempt to schedule presentations.
January 22nd is the deadline for deciding which paper a student will present. By that date each student must have e-mailed the instructor their selection and negotiated a date for the presentation. If multiple students select the same paper, the first one to request it will present that paper, and later students must select a different paper.
January 15th through February 5th will have presentation and discussion of project proposals. Presentations will last approximately 15 minutes each, and will be followed by about 10 minutes of discussions and feedback. There is a schedule of project proposal presentations.
February 10th through April 7th will have presentations about networking papers. The presentations will be approximately 30 minutes, followed by 45 minutes of class discussion. There is a schedule of paper presentations.
April 16th to May 5th will have presentation and discussions of project progress reports. The presentations will last about 25 -- 35 minutes (depending on whether 2 or 3 presentations are scheduled for that day), including questions, discussions and feedback. There is a schedule of project presentations.

Projects

Projects are student-initiated. The instructor is available for assistance in selecting a project.

The only restriction about projects is that they must be related to networking. Any implementation of a networking system, whether at the data link, internetwork, transport, or application level is welcome.

Project phases must include:

Proposal, including both a presentation in class and a written proposal. A list of proposals which have been submitted can be found here.
Implementation, including a demo to the instructor (and, if time allows, to the class) of the completed system.
Report, including both a presentation in class and a written report.

Projects may be done individually or in teams. A team project must be separable, so that each team member must take responsibility for a distinct and independently implementable and demonstrable part of the project. Team members will each present and report on their components of the joint project, and these presentations will (whenever possible) be scheduled jointly.

Some ideas for projects might include (but not be limited to) games, specialized custom or standard networking protocols, network simulation packages, multimedia, and applications that would benefit the department. The amount of work required to complete the project should be consistent with the workload expected of a 3-unit course.

Paper Presentations

Each student must either select a paper from the following list, or get approval from the instructor for a paper not on the list. Each student must make a presentation of the material in one paper, and be prepared to answer questions in the discussion following the presentation.

The student is responsible for obtaining copies of the paper and for distributing them to the class at least one week prior to the presentation. Arrangements can be made with the instructor or with Ethel to get the University to make the copies, but at least one additional week is required.

Sometimes a paper is hard to obtain (i.e. not in the library and not on the web). Should that be the case, check with the instructor for further strategies, including a search in a Computer Science Bibliography Database.

In order to participate constructively in the discussion following a presentation, each student in the class is required to read each of the papers prior to the presentation.

Feedback

I appreciate feedback! Please send me mail at esb@hawaii.edu with any comments, or if you notice any mistakes, or if you have problems accessing any of these links.