COS 597L: Foundational Papers in Networks and Operating Systems

Meeting times

Monday/Wednesday 3:30-4:20pm

Location

Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building 198

Prerequisites

at least one of COS 518, COS 417, COS 561 (or equivalent) recommended but not required. May be concurrently enrolled in 597L and COS 518

Instructor

Mae Milano, mpmilano@cs.princeton.edu.

Office hours

194 Nassau #231, M/W 3:00pm-3:25pm. Additional hours available upon request.

Course description

In this class, we will review foundational papers from across operating systems and computer networks, with a particular focus on papers which blend these domains. Students will read 2 papers / week. Each paper will be assigned 1 student as discussion lead, who must prepare a short talk on that paper. Additionally, students will complete a term project. This class is appropriate for students performing research in its topic domains, who wish to deepen their understanding of the field.

Course calendar

Note, every course day will feature a discussion on the papers listed in that week, led by an assigned graduate student. All students must read, and be prepared to discuss, all assigned papers.

Week 1

Monday 08/31 — No class

Wednesday 09/02

• How to read a paper
  S Keshav
• End-to-End arguments in system design
  J H Saltzer D P Reed and D D Clark
• Hints for computer system design
  Butler Lampson

Presenter: Mae · Advocate: Mae · Critic: Mae

Week 2

Monday 09/07 — No class

Wednesday 09/09

• The UNIX time-sharing system
  Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson
• The structure of the THE multiprogramming system
  E W Dijkstra

Presenter: Jialin · Advocate: Kostas · Critic: Ramesh

Week 3

Monday 09/14

• The design+implementation of a log-structured filesystem
  Mendel Rosenblum, John K. Ousterhout

Presenter: Tyler · Advocate: Rupa · Critic: —

Wednesday 09/16

• AIFM: High-Performance, Application-Integrated Far Memory
  Zhenyuan Ruan, Malte Schwarzkopf, Marcos K. Aguilera, Adam Belay

Presenter: Andrew · Advocate: Sai · Critic: Yash

Week 4 — Project proposal due

Monday 09/21

• On the duality of operating system structures
  Hugh C. Lauer, Roger M. Needham

Presenter: Tyler · Advocate: Anupta · Critic: Leon

Wednesday 09/23

• Capriccio: scalable threads for internet services
  Rob von Behren, Jeremy Condit, Feng Zhou, George C. Necula, Eric Brewer

Presenter: Raye · Advocate: Megan · Critic: Johnny

Week 5

Monday 09/28

• Mach: A New Kernel Foundation for UNIX Development
  Mike Accetta, Robert Baron, William Bolosky, David Golub, Richard Rashid, Avadis Tevanian, Michael Young

Presenter: Mohanna · Advocate: Megan · Critic: Rupa

Wednesday 09/30

• the performance of microkernel-based systems
  hermann Hartig, Michael Hohmuth, Jochen Liedtke, Sebastian Schonberg, Jean Wolter

Presenter: Andrew · Advocate: — · Critic: Leon

Week 6

Monday 10/05

• Exokernel: an operating system architecture for application-level resource management
  Dawson R. Engler, M. Frans Kaashoek, James O'Toole Jr.

Presenter: Anupta · Advocate: Ramesh · Critic: Mohanna

Wednesday 10/07

• Extensibility, Safety, and Performance in the SPIN Operating System
  Brian N. Bershad, Stefan Savage, Przemysław Pardyak, Emin Gün Sirer, Marc E. Fiuczynski, David Becker, Craig Chambers, Susan Eggers

Presenter: Sai · Advocate: Leon · Critic: Ramesh

Week 7

Monday 10/12

• seL4: formal verification of an OS kernel
  Gerwin Klein, June Andronick, Kevin Elphinstone, Gernot Heiser, David Cock, Philip Derrin, Dhammika Elkaduwe, Kai Engelhardt, Rafal Kolanski, Michael Norrish, Thomas Sewell, Harvey Tuch, Simon Winwood

Presenter: Anupta · Advocate: Ramesh · Critic: Kostas

Wednesday 10/14

• Xen and the art of virtualization
  Paul Barham, Boris Dragovic, Keir Fraser, Steven Hand, Tim Harris, Alex Ho, Rolf Neugebauer, Ian Pratt, Andrew Warfield

Presenter: Mohanna · Advocate: Sai · Critic: Ramesh

Recess — Monday 10/19 · Wednesday 10/21

Week 8

Monday 10/26

• Dune: Safe user-level access to privileged CPU features
  Adam Belay, Andrea Bittau, Ali Mashtizadeh, David Terei, David Mazières, Christos Kozyrakis

Presenter: — · Advocate: — · Critic: Anupta

Wednesday 10/28

• Multiprogramming a 64kB Computer Safely and Efficiently
  Amit Levy, Bradford Campbell, Branden Ghena, Daniel B. Giffin, Pat Pannuto, Prabal Dutta, Philip Levis

Presenter: — · Advocate: Ramesh · Critic: Leon

Week 9 — Project check-ins

Monday 11/02

• Arrakis: the operating system is the control plane
  Simon Peter, Jialin Li, Irene Zhang, Dan R. K. Ports, Doug Woos, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Thomas Anderson, Timothy Roscoe

Presenter: Rupa · Advocate: Mohanna · Critic: Sai

Wednesday 11/04

• OpenFlow: enabling innovation in campus networks
  Nick McKeown, Tom Anderson, Hari Balakrishnan, Guru Parulkar, Larry Peterson, Jennifer Rexford, Scott Shenker, Jonathan Turner

Presenter: Sai · Advocate: — · Critic: Mohanna

Week 10

Monday 11/09

• Congestion avoidance and control
  Van Jacobson

Presenter: Raye · Advocate: Anupta · Critic: Sai

Wednesday 11/11

• Bitcoin
  Nakamoto

Presenter: Ramesh · Advocate: Mohanna · Critic: Megan

Week 11

Monday 11/16

• Frenetic: a network programming language
  Nate Foster, Rob Harrison, Michael J. Freedman, Christopher Monsanto, Jennifer Rexford, Alec Story, David Walker

Presenter: Rupa · Advocate: Andrew · Critic: Anupta

Wednesday 11/18

• Composing software-defined networks
  Christopher Monsanto, Joshua Reich, Nate Foster, Jennifer Rexford, David Walker

Presenter: — · Advocate: Raye · Critic: Kostas

Week 12

Monday 11/23

• fresco: Modular composable security services for software-defined networks
  Seungwon Shin, Phillip Porras, Vinod Yegneswaran, Martin Fong, Guofei Gu, Mabry Tyson

Presenter: Megan · Advocate: — · Critic: —

Wednesday 11/25 — No class (Thanksgiving recess)

Week 13

Monday 11/30

• Sphinx: detecting security attacks in software-defined networks
  Mohan Dhawan, Rishabh Poddar, Kshiteej Mahajan, Vijay Mann

Presenter: — · Advocate: — · Critic: Megan

Wednesday 12/02

Presenter: Megan · Advocate: — · Critic: —

Week 14 — Project deadline

Monday 12/07

Project description

Students will propose a topic within computer systems and networks broadly, and conduct a short research project on this topic. The ideal project will result in a HotOS paper; however, negative (or otherwise unpublishable) results, scooped or pre-empted work, or submittable-but-not-submitted papers will not result in any grade deduction.

Proposal

Students will write a 1-page proposal explaining their topic, its relevance to the field, their particular project, and their planned means of evaluation.

Check-in

Students will meet 1-on-1 with the professor to describe their progress to date, and demonstrate that they are on-track to finish their proposed project by the final deadline.

Final project

Students will submit an 8-page paper about the research project, following the content and formatting guidelines of the HotOS conference.

Grading Breakdown

• in-class participation: 25%
• in-class presentations: 35%
• Final project: 40%
  • proposal: 10%
  • check-in: 10%
  • final project: 20%