pk.org: Distributed Systems

CS 417 Documents

O you possessed of sturdy intellects, observe the teaching that is hidden here beneath the veil of verses so obscure.
      —Dante Alighieri, Inferno IX:61–63, trans. A. Mandelbaum

This page contains links to lecture notes, class lecture slides, and related reading material. Lecture slides are in Adobe PDF format. The slides here will generally be a superset of the material presented in class, with extra annotations and, in some cases, additional pages for clarity.

Please let me know if you find any errors or unclear wording. Any corrections will be most appreciated.

Week 1 Introduction to Distributed Systems

Topics

  • Definitions, properties, and challenges of distributed systems

  • Types of transparency (access, location, migration).

  • Horizontal vs. vertical scaling

  • Failure models (crash-stop, omission, and Byzantine faults)

  • Networking: IP, TCP/UDP, QUIC, sockets, head-of-line blocking, and latency vs. throughput

Lecture Notes Notes

  1. Introduction to Distributed Systems

  2. Networking

Lecture Slides Slides

  1. Introduction (PDF)

Study Guide Terms

Terms You Should Know Terms