Table of Contents
Syllabus
Week 1
- March 31
- LectureCourse Introduction & Overview
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L1: Course Introduction & First Principles
- April 2
- LectureThe Four Invariants (Ch 1)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L2: The Four Invariants as a Diagnostic Tool
PA1 Released PA1: Investigate Wireless Network Protocol — due Tuesday, April 14 at 11:59 PM.
Discussion Section Environment setup & tool orientation - Submit on Gradescope
Week 2
- April 7
- LectureDesign Principles in Action: From Nothing to a Routable Network (Ch 1, 5, 6)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L3: Design Principles in Action
- April 9
- LectureDesign BGP and SDN From Scratch (Ch 6)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L4: Design BGP and SDN From Scratch
Discussion Section 802.11 intro - Submit on Gradescope
Week 3
- April 14
- LectureThe Shared-Medium Problem (Ch 2, 3)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L5: The Shared-Medium Problem Background: Wireless PHY Primer (optional) PA1 Due PA1: Investigate Wireless Network Protocol — due Tuesday, April 14 at 11:59 PM.
- April 16
- LectureHow Wireless Closes the Loop: CSMA/CA and Its Limits (Ch 3)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L6: How Wireless Closes the Loop — CSMA/CA and Its Limits
Discussion Section Flow analysis & packet parsing - Submit on Gradescope
Week 4
- April 21
- No Class Cancelled — see email for pre-lecture exercise (The Overhead Tax).
- April 23
- LectureBreaking the Contention Ceiling (Ch 3, 4)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L7: Breaking the Contention Ceiling
Discussion Section QoS metric extraction for video streaming
PA2 Due PA2: Extract QoS Metrics for Video Streaming Applications — due Tuesday, April 14 at 11:59 PM.
Week 5
- April 28
- LectureThe Other Path: Cellular and Convergence (Ch 3, 4)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L8: The Other Path — Cellular, Convergence, and Progressive Disaggregation
- April 30
- No In-Class Lecture Students are encouraged to read the lecture notes and chapter readings below independently.
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
- Review all Ch 1–4 sections covered in Weeks 1–5
Lecture Notes L9: Inside the Scheduler — 5G Disaggregation, O-RAN, and Network Slicing
Discussion Section Midterm review
Week 6
- May 5
- Midterm ExamIn-class, closed-device Covers Lectures 1–8 (Chapters 1–4: First Principles, Wireless Link Layer, Wireless Infrastructure).
- May 7
- LectureL10: The Perceptual Anchor: Why Multimedia Is Different (Ch 7) — Guest: Sanjay
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L10: The Perceptual Anchor
Discussion Section Analyzing RTP Streams - Submit on Gradescope
Week 7
- May 12
- LectureL11: The Streaming Control Loop: Buffering, DASH, ABR (Ch 7)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L11: The Streaming Control Loop
- May 14
- LectureL12: When Buffering Is Forbidden: VoIP, Jitter, and Modern Real-Time (Ch 7)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L12: When Buffering Is Forbidden
Discussion Section CCAnalyzer Paper Intro
Week 8
- May 19
- LectureL13: Who Gets Served Next? Scheduling Disciplines (Ch 5) — Guest: Jaber
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L13: Who Gets Served Next?
- May 21
- LectureL14: When the Queue Lies: Bufferbloat and AQM (Ch 5) — Guest: Jaber
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L14: When the Queue Lies
Discussion Section Project Intro
Week 9
- May 26
- LectureL15: From Measurement to Trustworthy Control (Ch 12)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
- (Optional pre-read for L16) Clark, Partridge, Ramming, Wroclawski. A Knowledge Plane for the Internet. SIGCOMM 2003.
Lecture Notes L15: From Measurement to Trustworthy Control
- May 28
- LectureL16: From Programmable Observation to Agentic Operations (Ch 12)
Readings
- Book chapters are withheld during publisher review. See the book preface for the framework overview.
Lecture Notes L16: From Programmable Observation to Agentic Operations
Discussion Section Updated Project Description - Participation Check on Gradescope
Week 10
No lectures this week. Use this time to focus on your final project — the course has reached the research frontier (L16) and the remaining work is yours.
- June 2
- No Lecture Project work day. Extended office hours available — bring questions about your project design, data collection, evaluation methodology, or paper draft.
- June 4
- No Lecture Project work day. Extended office hours available — final check-in before project submissions are due.
Discussion Section No discussion this week — TAs available during regular discussion slot for project consultations.