Princeton University
Computer Science Dept.

Computer Science 597b
Advanced Topics in Computer Science
Extensible Routers & Active Networks

Larry Peterson

Fall 1998
Directory
General Information | Schedule and Topics | Reading List

Course Description

This course will consider problems involved in building computer networks that are easily extended to provide new services. Permitting application writers to customize the network by injecting code into the network's routers, so called active networks, is one example of why one might make a network more flexible, but there are others. For example, network administrators often need to extend the router(s) they manage to cope with changing assumptions, and the individual nodes (network-attached devices) of a scalable server often want to push common functionality back into the communication substrate. The class will involve reading relevant papers from the literature, collaborating as a group to define an architecture for extensible routers, and working individually and in small groups to implement both components of the architecture and enhanced network services that exploit the architecture. The goal of the class is to demonstrate several new network services running on a common platform by the end of the semester. 

General Information

Lectures: TTh 3:00 - 4:15pm, Room 302.

Professor: Larry Peterson, 308 CS Building, 258-6077, llp@cs

News Group: pu.cs.597b

Prerequisites: This seminar is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Students should have taken CS 461 (Distributed Computing and Networking) or a similar class. Graduate students in an area other than Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, and all undergraduates, should contact Professor Peterson for permission to take this seminar. 


Schedule and Topics

Sept 17  Introduction and Overview (llp)
Sept 22 & 24  Extensible Router Architecture (llp)
Sept 29  Dynamic Tunneling (Tom Anderson -- University of Washington)
Oct 1  Tag Switching (Andy Bavier)
Oct 6 & 8  TCP Congestion Control, RED Gateways, Int-Serv, Diff-Serv (Wenjia Fang, llp)
Oct 13 & 20  Active Networks (Cheng Liao, Dongming Jiang)
Oct 15  Display Wall (Kai Li)
Oct 22  Network Attached Active Disks (David Nagle -- CMU)
Oct 27 & 29  Classification Algorithms (YuQun Chen, Yaoyun Shi, Sanjeev Kumar)
Nov 10 & 12  Scheduling Algorithms (Yitzhak Mandelbaum, Yuanyuan Zhou)
Nov 17   Proxies, Firewalls & Caches (Geliang Tong, Jiannan Zheng, Limin Wang)
Nov 19  No class
Nov 24  Web Caching (Pei Cao -- University of Wisconsin)
Dec 1 & 3  Video (Jie Chen, Xiaodon Wen, Han Chen)
Dec 8  No class
Dec 10  Architecture Revisited (Scott Karlin)
Dec 15 & 17  Project Presentations and Demos



Reading List

Extensible Router Architecture Congestion Control and QoS Active Networks Classification Algorithms Packet and Cycle Scheduling Proxies, Firewalls and Caches Video