CS 417 Syllabus

Fall 2023

week	date	topic^*
1	Sep 11	Introduction, fault tolerance, networking Definitions, properties, challenges Layers, tiers, topologies, horizontal vs. vertical scaling Failure models Networking: IP, protocols, sockets
2	Sep 18	Inter-process communication Data serialization: JSON, Google protocol buffers Remote procedure calls, distributed objects, web services
3	Sep 25	Inter-process communication Web services: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)/microservices, SOAP, REST Time, clocks, and event ordering Clock synchronization, NTP Logical clocks, vector clocks
4	Oct 2	Group communication and virtual synchrony Message ordering and delivery guarantees Multicasting Group membership and virtual synchrony
5	Oct 9	Distributed coordination and consensus Distributed mutual exclusion Leader election Raft consensus Google Chubby (Apache Zookeeper) EXAM 1
6	Oct 16	Distributed file systems Network attached storage: NFS, AFS, SMB, Coda
7	Oct 23	Parallel file systems: Google FS (GFS), Hadoop Distributed FS (HDFS) Peer-to-peer systems and distributed hash tables DHTs: CAN, Chord, Amazon Dynamo DNS
8	Oct 30	Distributed transactions commit protocols: 2PC, 3PC Consistency models: ACID/BASE, eventual consistency, CAP theorem Distributed deadlock Concurrency control
9	Nov 6	Distributed databases Bigtable (Apache HBase), Cassandra, Spanner EXAM 2
10	Nov 13	Distributed computation MapReduce Bulk Synchronous Parallel (Apache Hama) Pregel (Apache Giraph) Apache Spark
11	Nov 20	Moving content Kafka event streaming Akamai, peer-to-peer content delivery
12	Nov 27	Security in distributed systems Cryptography: communication and authentication, key exchange, secure communication, hybrid cryptosystems, digital signatures Distributed authentication: protocols, digital certificates, TLS Identity management (OpenID), distributed authorization (OAuth)
13	Dec 4	Cluster architectures Google cluster architecture Clustering: high-performance computing (HPC), load balancing, and high availability EXAM 3
14	Dec 11	Distributed systems design Summary, lessons, emerging trends
15	Wed Dec 20	Final exam: 8:00-11:00pm

Go here to get lecture notes and other course documentation.

Rutgers CS Diversity and Inclusion Statement

Rutgers Computer Science Department is committed to creating a consciously anti-racist, inclusive community that welcomes diversity in various dimensions (e.g., race, national origin, gender, sexuality, disability status, class, or religious beliefs). We will not tolerate micro-aggressions and discrimination that creates a hostile atmosphere in the class and/or threatens the well-being of our students. We will continuously strive to create a safe learning environment that allows for the open exchange of ideas while also ensuring equitable opportunities and respect for all of us. Our goal is to maintain an environment where students, staff, and faculty can contribute without the fear of ridicule or intolerant or offensive language. If you witness or experience racism, discrimination micro-aggressions, or other offensive behavior, you are encouraged to bring it to the attention to the undergraduate program director, the graduate program director, or the department chair. You can also report it to the Bias Incident Reporting System].

^*Subject to change without notice.