COS-597B Semester Project

The semester-long project in COS-597B is an open-ended systems research project. Project topics should be reached after discussion with the class instructor.

The project time-line is as follows:


Writing

Papers must be written in LaTeX using the format included here (tar.gz), e.g., 11 point font, single spaced, double columned. Papers must be no longer than 6 pages, EXCLUDING references. You should strongly consider using some type of version control software (e.g., Subversion or Git) for your project and the paper you write describing it.

Writing Hints

Evaluation

If you need access for up to 10 servers, please contact us for access to the SNS group cluster. For larger-scale tests, you should try out one of the following testbeds:

Emulab is a network emulation environment at the University of Utah. It provides racks of machines and programmable switches that can be configured to form mostly-arbitrary network topologies, with controllable delay and loss between nodes. It's a great way to test real programs in repeatable conditions or at scales that you can't get on your own. If you wish to use Emulab for your project, you should join our class emulab project.

PlanetLab is a large-scale, distributed collection of machines that can be used for experiments and measurements, managed by a group based here at Princeton. It has around 600 nodes scattered over about 350 sites. The machines run something linux-ish that you can login to and run programs, and there exist a variety of utilities for automatically distributing software to the nodes, running programs, and so on. You must sign up to use a PlanetLab account. Please only sign up if you're going to use the account, since it imposes some management overhead on people not involved with the course.


Last updated: Wed Sep 12 20:22:43 -0400 2012