Course Syllabus

Spring 2009

week date topic
0 Jan 21 recitation canceled
1 Jan 26 introduction, interconnections, distributed system taxonomy, service models
client-server computing, network protocols
1.5 Jan 28 recitation canceled
2 Feb 2 network protocols, IP and ATM networking communication models
naming and binding
2.5 Feb 4 sockets programming: C/Unix, Java
3 Feb 9 remote procedure calls (RPC), object brokers
RPC case studies: Sun RPC, DCE RPC
3.5 Feb 11 Google Cluster Architecture, Google File System
4 Feb 16 RPC case studies: Microsoft DCOM/ORPC, Java RMI, XML RPC,
XML-RPC, SOAP, REST, protocol buffers.

distributed file system design
distributed file system case studies: NFS, AFS,
4.5 Feb 18 Review for exam 1
5 Feb 23 distributed file system case studies: Coda, DFS, SMB/CIFS, Google FS (GFS), GmailFS, xFS
EXAM 1
5.5 Feb 25 Scalability Terminology — Devlin, Gray, et al.
6 Mar 2 Snow day — classes canceled
logical clocks, vector clocks
clock synchronization
6.5 Mar 4 Distributed lookup services/hash tables
7 Mar 9 Exam review
group communication: message ordering and message delivery
IP multicasting
mutual exclusion, election algorithms
7.5 Mar 11 Mashup applications, identity management (OpenID), authorization (OAuth)
8 Mar 16 No lecture: Spring break
8.5 Mar 18 No recitation: Spring break
9 Mar 23 distributed shared memory and memory consistency models
intro to cryptography: terminology, classic cryptosystems,
9.5 Mar 25 recitation canceled
10 Mar 30 key exchange, secure communication, hybrid cryptosystems, digital signatures
EXAM 2
10.5 Apr 1 distributed transactions
concurrency control
11 Apr 6 Exam review,
authentication: protocols, digital certificates, Kerberos, SSL
smart cards, biometrics, authenticating humans.
steganography
11.5 Apr 8 sandboxing and code signing
12 Apr 13 protection and security,
Firewalls and Virtual Private Networks
12.5 Apr 15 fault tolerance
13 Apr 20 clustering: scalable performance, load balancing, and reliability
storage virtualization
processor virtualization
13.5 Apr 22 Pre-exam review
14 Apr 27 serverless networking
EXAM 3
14.5 Apr 29 recitation canceled
15 May 4 process migration and processor allocation
Review
16 May 11 FINAL EXAM: 8:00-10:00pm

Go here to get lecture notes and other course documentation.

*Subject to change without notice.