Special Topics, Summer 2009

Advanced Topics in Networking  

Cloud Computing and Advanced Topics in Wireless Networks


      When and Where: Mon/Wed/Fri, 2:30PM-4:30PM, 三教104
                               (First week: 理科1号楼1131)
      Professors:
            Ben Zhao, ravenben at cs.ucsb.edu

            Haitao Zheng, htzheng at cs.ucsb.edu
      Office Hours: Fridays 2:30PM, 理科1号楼1807)

Introduction

The field of computer networking is changing at a rapid pace.  Recent trends in computer hardware has changed the way we think about both wired and wireless networking.  This is a short class being offered by two visiting professors from University of California at Santa Barbara, USA.  The class will consist of 2 lectures each week (Monday/Wednesday), followed by a discussion or office hour on research projects on Friday. 

The class will cover two key topics: cloud computing and advanced wireless networking.  First, advances in server hardware and virtual machine monitors have allowed large companies to build extremely large data clusters of tens or hundreds of thousands of servers, and to build a flexible computing model that not only leverages the law of large numbers in resource management, but also scales resource usage dynamically to meet the needs of its clients.  The result is a seismic shift towards data center and cloud computing by large and small companies alike.  The first half of this course will examine the algorithms and software designs that make cloud computing possible, along with research issues facing the design and operation of large data centers.  Next, the advent of reconfigurable wireless devices such as cognitive radios and software-defined radios has opened up significant new spaces in wireless networking research.  In the second half of this course, we study several hot topics in wireless networking, including dynamic spectrum access, interference mitigation and market-based spectrum     
distribution.

For both topics, we will examine recent research published at top conferences, examine each paper to learn about techniques in research and technical writing, and consider current and future open research challenges.  Each student will be expected to read all assigned papers before lecture each day, and will participate in a group project for the four weeks of the class.  Each group will present their results at the end of the course.

Grading

(not finalized...)

Class Participation  		10%
Paper Reviews 20%
Final Exam (take-home) 30%
Projects 40%