818K: Advanced Topics in Distributed Systems

12:30 - 1:45pm, CSI 3118

Announcements

Final has been mailed and is online.

Plan

This is an advanced course in distributed systems. In particular, we will be discussing current and classic papers on network infrastructure, distributed object stores, peer-to-peer systems, and security. The first couple weeks of class will be overview/tutorial, depending on where the students are. Subsequently, most of the classes will be based on discussion of research papers, both current and classic. Each student will work on an original research project, leading to a project writeup and in-class presentation. The best of such projects have led to conference publications in the past.

Please feel free to stop by my office whenever I am in, or email to make an appt.

Schedule

Intro, distributed state, end-to-end arguments
Gossip and epidemic algorithms
DHT-based P2P systems
Storage systems
Security
Random

	Tuesday	Thursday
8/28		Intro, discussion of syllabus, projects. Logical Time: A Way to Capture Causality in Distributed Systems
9/4	Distributed State Efficient solutions to the replicated log and dictionary problems Distributed Snapshots: Determining Global States of Distributed Systems
9/11	Distributed Snapshots	Packet Switched Networks End-to-end Arguments in System Design (talk) Active Networking and the End-to-End Argument
9/18	Eventual Consistency 1 - Gossips Epidemic algorithms for replicated database maintenance - cole (talk) From Epidemics to Distributed Computing - charles (talk)	Eventual Consistency 2 - Bayou Managing Update Conflicts in Bayou, a Weakly Connected Replicated Storage System Flexible Update Propagation for Weakly Consistent Replication (talk)
9/25	Eventual Consistency 3 - Deno Decentralized Replicated-Object Protocols (talk) Support for Speculative Update Propagation and Mobility in Deno	Session Consistency View Consistency for Optimistic Replication Session Guarantees for Weakly Consistent Replicated Data (talk)
10/2	Peer-to-peer Chord: A Scalable Peer-to-peer Lookup Service for Internet Applications - charles (talk) Wide-area cooperative storage with CFS - cole (talk)	Chord Cont. - pete Dynamic Quorums for DHT-based P2P Networks Replication in the Harp File System
10/9	Chord Search On the feasibility of peer-to-peer web indexing and search - yudi (talk) Distributed Ranked Search - bhargav (talk)	Content-Addressable Storage Opportunistic Use of Content Addressable Storage for Distributed File Systems (talk) Design Tradeoffs in Applying Content Addressable Storage to Enterprise-scale Systems Based on Virtual Machines
10/16	Log structuring the file system. File System Logging Versus Clustering: A Performance Comparison - charles (talk) Generalized File System Dependencies - brian (talk)	Versioning Venti: a new approach to archival storage - alex Deciding when to forget in the Elephant file system - alex (talk)
10/23	Mid-Term	Wide-area data movement Dynamo: Amazon’s Highly Available Key-value Store - justin (talk)
10/30	Google MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters - alex (gfs) The Google File System - bhargav (talk)	Wide-area file systems Safety, Visibility, and Performance in a Wide-Area File System - yudi (talk) Sinfonia: A New Paradigm for Building Scalable Distributed Systems - phil (talk)
11/6	Disconnected Operation 2 Disconnected Operation in the Coda File System - brian (talk) Automated Hoarding for Mobile Computers - bhargav (talk)	More mobility Segank: A Distributed Mobile Storage System - cole (talk)
11/13	Wide-Area Filesystems File System Support for Collaboration in the Wide Area Chit-Based Access Control	MIT security Separating key management from file system security - phil (talk) Decentralized User Authentication in a Global File System - phil
11/20	Byzantine Faults Capability Myths Demolished - tim (talk) Zyzzyva: Speculative Byzantine Fault Tolerance - tim (talk)	Holiday
11/27	Onion Routing FARSITE: Federated, Available, and Reliable Storage for an Incompletely Trusted Environment - brian (talk) Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router - tim (talk)	Archival storage, error correction codes 2 OceanStore: An Architecture for Global-Scale Persistent Storage - justin (talk) Pond: the OceanStore Prototype - justin
12/4	Fun and games w/ crypto From Schneier's "Applied Cryptography".	Presentations: brian, tim, phil
12/11	Presentations: cole, justin, bhargav, charles, alex, yudi

This schedule is a work in progress and will change, perhaps dramatically. I will attempt to finalize papers for a given week by the prior Thursday evening. Be sure to check back after this time.

Grades

The course grade will const of 25% class participation, 25% project, 15% for a single quiz, and 35% final exam. "Class participation" consists of showing up each day having done the reading, participating in the discussion, and some small number of class presentations.

Research Paper

Should be in form of a grant proposal
- this is a cool idea
- other work is blah, fell short yada yada
- this is my approach, which will work because blah
One-page proposals due 10/16.
Final paper should be 8-10 papers, 10 or 11 pt font, etc., due day of final.
In-class presentations last two days of class

Honor Code

The University of Maryland, College Park has a nationally recognized Code of Academic Integrity, administered by the Student Honor Council. This Code sets standards for academic integrity at Maryland for all undergraduate and graduate students. As a student you are responsible for upholding these standards for this course. It is very important for you to be aware of the consequences of cheating, fabrication, facilitation, and plagiarism. For more information on the Code of Academic Integrity or the Student Honor Council, please visit http://www.shc.umd.edu.

To further exhibit your commitment to academic integrity, remember to sign the Honor Pledge on all examinations and assignments: "I pledge on my honor that I have not given or received any unauthorized assistance on this examination (assignment)."

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
The Student Honor Council

Last modified: Wed Aug 30 11:50:02 EDT 2006