This is the first graduate-level course in computer networks. It covers fundamental principles for designing computer networks, with a particular emphasis on the design of the Internet. Topics include protocol mechanisms, network design and implementation principles and practices, advanced network architecture, and challenges in designing the next-generation Internet. The goal of this course is to teach networking fundamentals/techniques that will have a long half-life (when today's hot topic is no longer hot, the principles covered in this course will still be relevant and important).

Readings

In the course, we will use material from several sources. The following is an initial reading list.

1. Overview Books

v      James Kurose and Keith Ross, Computer Networking: A top down approach featuring the Internet,3^rd Edition,  Addison Wesley, 2004

v      Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie, Computer Networks – A Systems Approach (Edition 3), Morgan Kaufmann, 2003

v      S. Keshav, "An Engineering Approach to Computer Networking", Addison Wesley Logman, Inc., 1997.

v      W. Richard Stevens, “TCP/IP Illustrated: Protocols”, Addison Wesley

2. Network Protocol Design Principles

Commonly used network protocol mechanisms/techniques:  Signaling, state management (hard state-versus soft state, separation of control/data), randomization, indirection, multiplexing, virtualization, and design for scale.

Non-IP network architectures (ATM, telephone network) and network signaling.

1. ATM Fundamentals (IEC tutorial, Sections 1-5, 9, 10), ATM (Kurose&Ross, Section 5.9)
2. PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) Fundamentals (IEC tutorial)
3. SS7 signaling in telephone networks: Signaling System 7 (IEC tutorial) . (Optional reading: SS7 tutorial, Performance Technologies)
4. A Modarressi, R. Skoog, "Signalling System No. 7: A Tutorial," IEEE Communications Magazine, July 1990.
5. Signaling in the Internet: Zhang, L., Deering, S., Estrin, D., Shenker, S., and Zappala, D., "RSVP: A New Resource ReSerVation Protocol," IEEE Network, September 1993.

State Maintenance

6. In-band and out-of-band signaling in HTTP, FTP (If you are unfamiliar with the http and ftp protocols, read about them in Chapter 2 (Kurose and Ross, Computer Networking: A top down approach featuring the Internet, Addison Wesley, 2002). 
7. S. Raman, S. McCanne, "A model, analysis, and protocol framework for soft state-based communication," Proceedings ACM Sigcomm 1999. (You only need read pages 1 and 2, for the discussion of soft state).
8. Ping Ji, Zihui Ge, Jim Kurose and Don Towsley, "A Comparison of Hard-state and Soft-state Signaling Protocols" Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2003

Randomization

9. Ethernet backoff:  "CSMA/CD: Ethernet's Multiple Access Protocol," section 5.5.2 in [Kurose, Ross]
10. Floyd, S., and Jacobson, V., "The Synchronization of Periodic Routing Messages." IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, V.2 N.2, p. 122-136, April 1994.
11. Floyd, S., Jacobson, V., Liu, C., McCanne, S., and Zhang, L., "A Reliable Multicast Framework for Light-weight Sessions and Application Level Framing," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. (just up through section 3.4)
12. S. Floyd and V. Jacobson, "Random Early Detection gateways for Congestion Avoidance" IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 1(4):397-413 August 1993.
13. M. Christiansen, K. Jeffay, D. Ott, F. Smith, "Tuning RED for Web Traffic," Proc. ACM Sigcomm '00 (for a description of RED, section 2).

Indirection

14. IP multicast model, "Multicast Routing and IGMP," section 4.8 in [Kurose,Ross] (note also randomization in IGMP).
15. Mobile IP, "Mobility at the Network Layer," section 4.9 in [Kurose,Ross].
16. A. Keromytis, V. Misra, D. Rubenstein, "SOS: Secure Overlay Services," ACM Sigcomm 2002.  (Sections 1-3).
17. I. Stoica, D. Adkins, S. Zhuang, S. Shenker, S. Surana, "Internet Indirection Infrastructure," ACM Sigcomm 2002

Multiplexing resources: packet-level, burst-level, call-level

18. Scheduling and Policing Mechanisms, Section 6.7 in [Kurose, Ross]
19. R. Parekh, R. Gallager, "A generalized processor sharing approach to flow control in integrated services networks: the single-node case," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 1993.
20.  S. Floyd, V. Jacobson,  "Link-sharing and resource management models for packet networks,"  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON) August 1995
21. Routing, Routing in the Telephone Network, sections 11.1 - 11.4 in An Engineering Approach to Computer Networking, S. Keshav, Addison Wesley, 1997. Call-level multiplexing: blocking, trunk reservation.

Virtualization: networks over networks

22. The internet as an overlay,  "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication", V. Cerf, R. Kahn, IEEE Transactions on Communications, May, 1974, pp. 637-648.
23. IP over ATM, "IP over ATM: Classical IP, NHRP, LANE, MPOA, PAR," J. Xu. (sections 1, 2, 3).
24. Overlay Networks. D. Anderson, H. Balakrishnan, F. Kaashoek, R. Morris, "The case for resilient overlay networks," Proc. HotOS VIII, May 2001.
25. VPNs. "Scalability Implications of Virtual Private networks," J. DeClercq, O. Paridaens, IEEE Communications Magazine, May 2002.

Designs for Scale:

26. "Hierarchical Routing" section 4.3 in [Kurose,Ross]
27. J.B.S. Haldane, "On Being the Right Size," 1928. Reprinted in J.B.S. Haldane "On Being the Right Size and Other Essays", (Ed: J. Maynard Smith) Oxford University Press, 1985.

3. Protocols: Implementation principles. Protocol implementation principles, with case studies.

28. "15 Implementation Principles," draft chapter from G. Varghese
29. Folklore of Protocol Design, R. Perlman

4. Network architecture: the big picture. Lessons from the Internet (and other networks: ATM, telephony); circuit switching versus packet switching revisited; policy, flexibility, and optimized performance.

30. J. Saltzer, D. Reed, D. Clark: "End-to-End arguments in System Design" ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), Volume 2 , Issue 4 (November 1984)
31. D. Clark: "The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols", Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM '88, August, 1988.
32. D.P. Reed, J.H. Saltzer, D. Clark ,  Active Networking and End-To-End Arguments ,IEEE Network Magazine, 1998
33. M Blumenthal, D. Clark, "Rethinking the design of the Internet: The end to end arguments vs. the brave new world" ACM Trans. on Internet Technology
34. P. Molinero-Fernadez, N. McKeown, H. Zhang, "Is IP going to take over the world?," ACM HotNets 2002.
35. D. Isenberg, The Rise of the Stupid Network, Computer Telephony, August 1997, pg 16-26.
1. Optional background: AIN Overview, IEC tutorial
36. B. Carpenter, "Architectural Principles of the Internet", RFC 1958, Jun 1996.
37. J. Postel, "Internet Protocol", RFC 791, Sept 1981.
38. J. Postel, "Transmission Control Protocol", RFC 793, Sept 1981.
39. H. Zimmerman, "OSI Reference Model -- The ISO Model of Architecture for Open Systems Interconnection", IEEE Transactions on Communications, 28(4), April, 1980, pp. 425-432.

5. Miscellaneous Current Research Areas.

Network Architecture

40.   Clark, D., Sollins, K., Wroclawski, J., and Faber, T., "Addressing Reality: An Architectural Response to Real-World Demands on the Evolving Internet." ACM SIGCOMM 2003 FDNA Workshop, Karlsruhe, August 2003

41.   R. Braden, D. Clark, S. Shenker, and J. Wroclawski, “Developing a Next-generation Internet Architecture”

42.   Xiaowai Yang, "NIRA: A New Internet Routing Architecture". ACM SIGCOMM FDNA 2003 Workshop, Karlsruhe, August 2003

43.   Sollins, K., "Designing for Scale and Differentiation". ACM SIGCOMM FDNA 2003 Workshop, Karlsruhe, August 2003

Routing

44. C. Labovitz, G. R. Malan, and F. Jahanian, "Internet Routing Instability", Proceedings of SIGCOMM'97, September 1997. [.ps.gz]
45. V. Paxson, "End-to-End Routing Behavior in the Internet". ACM SIGCOMM '96, August 1996, Stanford, CA. [.ps.Z]
46. S. Savage, A. Collins, E. Hoffman, J. Snell, and T. Anderson, "The End-to-End Effects of Internet Path Selection", ACM SIGCOMM’99.
47. Craig Labovitz, Abha Ahuja, Abhijit Bose, Farnam Jahanian, "Delayed Internet Routing Convergence", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 9, No. 3 (April 2001), Pages 293-306.
48. Timothy G. Griffin, F. Bruce Shepherd, Gordon Wilfong, "The stable path problem and inter-domain routing", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 10, No. 2 (April 2002), Pages 232-243.
49. Inter-domain routing links

Network Protocols and Trust

50. S. Gorinsky, S. Jain, H.M. Vin, and Y. Zhang, “Robustness to Inflated Subscription in Multicast Congestion Control”,
    Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2003, Karlsruhe, Germany, August 2003
51. Stefan Savage, Neal Cardwell, David Wetherall and Tom Anderson, “TCP Congestion Control with a Misbehaving Receiver”, ACM Computer Communications Review, 29(5):71-78, October 1999

Internet Measurement and Intrusion Detection

52. V. Paxson, "Bro: A System for Detecting Network Intruders in Real-Time", Computer Networks, 31(23-24) pp. 2435-2463, Dec. 14, 1999.
53. D. Moore, G. Voelker, and S. Savage, "Inferring Internet Denial of Service Activity", Proceedings of the 2001 USENIX Security Symposium, Washington D.C., August 2001.
54. David Moore, Vern Paxson, Stefan Savage, Colleen Shannon, Stuart Staniford and Nicholas Weaver,
    Inside the Slammer Worm, IEEE Security and Privacy, 1(4):33-39, July 2003.