Tentative Schedule, Readings, and Assignments
Last updated: Dec 12 2007

Go to Week 15 (project presentations)

Week 1

Aug 27: Introduction [slides]

Aug 29: Network Architecture [slides]

Read before class:

• Comer, Chapters 1, 2, 16
• How to read a paper
  S. Keshav
  ACM Sigcomm Computer Communication Review, July 2007
  http://www.sigcomm.org/ccr/drupal/files/p83-keshavA.pdf
  
• The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols
  David D. Clark
  Proc. SIGCOMM 1988, Computer Communication Review Vol. 18, No. 4, August 1988, pp. 106-114
  http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigcomm/ccr/archive/1995/jan95/ccr-9501-clark.pdf
  

Week 2

Sep 03: Labor Day, no class

Sep 05: Network Architecture -- Design Philosophies [slides]

Read before class:

• End-to-end arguments in system design.
  J. H. Saltzer, D. P. Reed, and D. D. Clark.
  ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, pages 277-288, 1984.
  http://www.reed.com/Papers/EndtoEnd.html
• Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow's Internet
  David D. Clark, John Wroclawski, Karen R. Sollins, Robert Braden
  Proceedings of ACM Sigcomm 2002.
  http://sigcomm.org/sigcomm2002/papers/tussle.pdf
• Internet Clean-Slate Design: What and Why?
  Anja Feldman
  ACM Sigcomm Computer Communication Review, July 2007
  http://www.sigcomm.org/ccr/drupal/files/p59-feldmannA.pdf

Assignment 1 (due 10:30am on Sep 5):

• Submit a concise review for each of the three assigned readings. First, summarize the main theses of the paper. Second, answer the five C's (a la Keshav). Third, explain whether you agree or disagree with the main theses of the paper. Keep the reviews as short as you can. The reviews should not exceed 1 page each.
• For Assignment 1, you can either submit via email to i250hw@ischool.berkeley.edu, or turn in hardcopies of your reviews at the beginning of the class.
  

Week 3

Sep 10: Network Economics 101 [slides]

Read before class:

• Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age, MIT Press 2005.
  Philip Weiser, Jon Nuechterlein.
  Chapter 1 -- The Big Picture.
  http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262140918chap1.pdf
  

Sep 12: Models of Market Structure [slides]

Read before class:

• Pricing Communication Networks: Economics, Technology and Modelling, Wiley 2003.
  Courcoubetis and Weber.
  Chapter 6 -- Competition Models.

Week 4

Sep 17: Network Industry Structure [slides][project description]

Read before class:

• An Economic Map of the Internet
  Shawn O'Donnell
  Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) 2002.
  http://itc.mit.edu/itel/docs/2002/Internet_Map.pdf
• Pricing and architecture of the Internet: Historical perspectives from telecommunications and transportation
  A. M. Odlyzko
  Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) 2004.
  http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/pricing.architecture.pdf

Assignment 2 (due 10:30am on Sep 17):

• Submit a concise review for each of the two papers (by O'Donnell and Odlyzko). First, summarize the main theses of the paper. Second, answer the five C's (a la Keshav). Third, explain whether you agree or disagree with the main theses of the paper. Keep the reviews as short as you can. The reviews should not exceed 1 page each.

Sep 19: Physical Layer -- Foundations of Communications [slides]

Read before class:

• Comer, chapters 4, 5

Assignment 3 (on physical layer) will be distributed today, and will be due in a week on Sep 26.

Week 5

Sep 24: Physical Layer -- Technologies

Read before class:

• Comer, chapter 6

Sep 26: Data Link Layer -- Frames and LANs [slides]

Read before class:

• Comer, chapters 7, 8 (also skim chapters 9,10,11)
  

Assignment 3 due today (at 10:30am)

Week 6

Oct 01: Data Link Layer -- The Last Mile

Read before class:

• Comer, chapter 12

Oct 03: Wireless and Mobile Communications: Technology and Policy [slides]

Read before class:

• Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age, MIT Press 2005.
  Philip Weiser, Jon Nuechterlein.
  Chapter 7 -- The Spectrum.
  

Week 7

Oct 08: Wireless Spectrum Auction

Oct 10: Network Layer -- Internet Protocol: Service Models and Addressing [slides]

Read before class:

• Comer, chapters 17, 18, 20
  

Proposal for term paper/project due today.

Week 8

Oct 15: Network Layer -- Internet Protocol [slides]

Read before class:

• Comer, chapter 21

Assignment 4 (on network layer) will be distributed today, and will be due on Oct 22.

Oct 17: Network Layer -- Routing [slides]

Read before class:

• Introduction to Routing
  Piscitello, D., and Chapin, A.L.
  Connexions: The Interoperability Report, vol. 7, no. 9, pp. 66-73, September 1993.
  http://www.corecom.com/html/OSNconnexions.html.
• Comer, chapter 27
  

Week 9

Oct 22: Policy-based Routing; The Future of IP [slides]

Read before class:

• Comer, chapter 22

Assignment 4 (due 10:30am on Oct 22).


Oct 24: Network Innovation (Guest Lecture by Paul Laskowski) [slides]

Read before class:

First, a few snippets that describe the surprising lack of innovation in the architecture of the network.

• Pages 1-3 of Ratnasamy, S., Shenker, S., and McCanne, S. Towards an Evolvable Internet Architecture. ACM SIGCOMM (2005).
  http://berkeley.intel-research.net/sylvia/f300-ratnasamy.pdf
• Section 1 of Peterson, L., Shenker, S., and Turner, J. Overcoming the Internet Impasse through Virtualization. HotNets (2004).
  http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~jst/pubs/hotnets04.pdf
• Page 1 of Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council. Looking Over the Fence at Networks: A Neighbor's View of Networking Research. The National Academies Press. 2001.
  http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10183&page=1
  Not required, but you may also find pages 9-14 relevant and interesting.

The first two papers go on to propose specific remedies. These techniques reveal competing visions for network innovation – innovation by revolution and innovation by evolution. These are interesting, but we're aiming just to understand the problem at this stage, so don't read the technical sections unless you have a lot of extra time and interest.

Second, a look at how economists view innovation. The next text demonstrates the "ideas model" of innovation that is highly relevant to our problem space. Pay special attention to section 2, which defines ideas. The rest of the paper applies this model to analyze a variety of incentive schemes. These specific schemes will not be relevant to our discussion, but it is worth reading at least section 3 to gain more familiarity with how the ideas model works.

• Sections 1-3 of Procuring Knowledge, Stephen M. Maurer and Suzanne Scotchmer. 2004. In Libecap, G., ed., Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship: Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Growth, Vol 15, pp. 1-31. The Netherlands: JAI Press (Elsevier).
  http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~scotch/prizes.pdf

Finally, a section from Tussles that discusses competition in the network backbone, and expresses a common idea in the literature: improve competition by empowering end-users.

• Reread section 3.1.4 of Clark, D. D., Wroclawski, J., Sollins, K. R., and Braden, R. Tussle in cyberspace: Defining tomorrow's internet. ACM SIGCOMM (2002).
  http://sigcomm.org/sigcomm2002/papers/tussle.pdf

Some recommended reading:

• Laskowski, P. and Chuang, J. Network Monitors and Contracting Systems: Competition and Innovation. ACM SIGCOMM (2006).
  http://www.sigcomm.org/sigcomm2006/discussion/getpaper.php?paper_id=19
• Scotchmer, S. Innovation and Incentives, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
• Feigenbaum, J., Papadimitriou, C., Sami, R., and Shenker, S. A BGP-based Mechanism for Lowest-Cost Routing. Distributed Computing 18 (2005), pp. 61-72.
  http://www.cs.yale.edu/~jf/FPSS.pdf

Assignment 5  (due 10:30am on Oct 24):

After reading the texts, please answer the following two questions (limiting your submission to under one page):

• Imagine designing a network from a clean-slate perspective with the aim of generating innovation in the architecture. What fundamental design questions would you want to answer first as you go about building your network? (There are no wrong answers, but try not to list more than 3 or 4 design choices.)
• A hypothetical network found in the recommended Feigenbaum et al. text is designed so that each ISP's profit is calculated from the operating cost of each provider (Among its interesting properties, this network achieves lowest cost routing, even when each provider’s operating costs are private information). In a dynamic setting, what is wrong with basing an ISP's reward on operating costs? Can you suggest an alternate profit benchmark?

Week 10

Oct 29: Network Regulation and Network Neutrality [slides]

Read before class:

• The Benefits and Risks of Mandating Network Neutrality, and the Quest for a Balanced Policy
  Jon Peha
  Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) 2006.
  http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~peha/balanced_net_neutrality_policy.pdf
  

Assignment 6 (due 10:30am on Oct 29):

• Submit a concise review for the assigned reading. First, summarize the main theses of the paper. Second, answer the five C's (a la Keshav). Third, explain whether you agree or disagree with the main theses of the paper. Keep the review as short as you can. The review should not exceed 1 page.

Oct 31: Transport Layer [slides]

Read before class:

• Comer, chapters 24,25
  

Week 11

Nov 05: Networking in Developing Regions (Guest Lecture by Melissa Ho) [slides] (Warning: 43MB)

Read before class:

• Of Carts and Horses: Regulation and Privatization in Telecommunications Reforms
  Wallsten, Scott
  Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 6:4, 217 - 231 (2003)
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/714856962.pdf
  
• Negotiating the 'Net: the Case of Ghana
  Osiakwan, Eric and Foster, William.
  draft, November 2004, from Negotiating the Net in Africa: The Politics of Internet Diffusion.
  http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/ntn/
  

No reviews are due for these two papers.

Nov 07: Transport Layer -- TCP Flow and Congestion Control

Week 12

Nov 12: no class (Veterans Day)

No office hours today.

Nov 14: Application Layer Protocols -- HTTP, VoIP, and DNS [slides]

Read before class:

• Comer, chapters 31, 33, 35 (and chapters 28-30 if you are unfamiliar with client-server interactions and the socket interface)

Week 13

Nov 19: Application Layer Overlays -- CDN, ALM, P2P, DHT [slides]

Read before class:

• Wikipedia entry on overlay network: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlay_network
• Wikipedia entry on DHT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table

Nov 21: Incentive-centered Design [slides]

Read before class:

• Basic Solution Concepts and Computational Issues
  E. Tardos and V. Vazirani
  Chapter 1, Sections 1.1 to 1.3 of N. Nisan, T. Roughgarden, E. Tardos, V. Vazirani, eds., Algorithmic Game Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2007. (Skim the rest of Chapter 1 if you wish.)
  https://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i250/f07/assignments/Nisan_Non-printable.pdf
  
• Incentives in Peer-to-Peer Systems
  M. Babaioff, J. Chuang, M. Feldman
  Chapter 23 of N. Nisan, T. Roughgarden, E. Tardos, V. Vazirani, eds., Algorithmic Game Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2007. (Skim Sections 23.6.1 and 23.6.2)
  https://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i250/f07/assignments/Nisan_Non-printable.pdf
  

Feel free to skim other chapters that look interesting to you.

Assignment 7 (due 10:30am on Nov 21):

• Submit a concise review for the assigned reading by Babaioff et al. First, summarize the main theses of the chapter. Second, answer the five C's (a la Keshav). Third, explain whether you agree or disagree with the main theses of the chapter. Keep the reviews as short as you can. The review should not exceed 1 page.

Week 14

Nov 26: Network Security [slides]

Read before class:

• Comer, chapter 40

Nov 28: Economics of network security

Read before class:

• Why Information Security is Hard: An Economic Perspective
  Ross Anderson
  17th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, December 10-14, 2001
  http://www.acsac.org/2001/papers/110.pdf
• System Reliability and Free-Riding
  Hal Varian
  In Economics of Information Security, Camp, L. Jean; Lewis, Stephen (Eds.), Springer 2004.
  http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/2004/reliability

Assignment 8 (due 10:30am on Nov 28):

• Submit a concise review for each of the assigned readings. First, summarize the main theses of the paper. Second, answer the five C's (a la Keshav). Third, explain whether you agree or disagree with the main theses of the paper. Keep the reviews as short as you can. The reviews should not exceed 1 page each.

Week 15

Dec 3: Student Project Presentations

• 700 MHz FCC spectrum auction: rules, outcomes, and impact on industry structure (10:40-10:50am)
  Deepti Chittamuru [presentation; report]
  
• Analysis of recent spectrum auctions (10:50-11:00am)
  Florian Sauter [presentation; report]
• Google and the 700MHz Spectrum Auction (11:00-11:10am)
  Joshua Gomez [presentation; report]
• Location Proxy Service (11:15-11:25am)
  Jia Zou and Peter Lau [presentation; report]
• IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) (11:35-11:45am)
  Ankit Gupta [presentation; report]
• Sociable P2P: using social information in peer-to-peer architectures (11:45-11:55am)
  Yiming Liu [presentation; report]
  
  Each presentation will be 10 minutes in length. In addition, we will have 5-minute Q&A sessions after the 3rd and 7th presentations.
  

Dec 5: Student Project Presentations

• Wireless Ad Hoc Networks in the Last Mile: Technologies, Markets and Policy Implications (10:40-10:50am)
  Ashwin Jacob Mathew [presentation; report]
• Sustainable Business Models for Future Wireless Networks in Developing Countries (10:50-11:00am)
  Bindiya Jadhwani [presentation; report]
• OLPC (One laptop per child) Mesh Networking -- hope or hype? (11:00-11:10am)
  Rajesh Veeraraghavan [presentation; report]
• Internet Evolution in the Developing World (11:10-11:20am)
  Shanna Epstein [presentation; report]
• Cost Benefit Analysis of AIP (Accountable Internet Protocol) Deployment (11:25-11:35am)
  DK Moon [presentation; report]
• Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability scanner (11:35-11:45am)
  Florent Robineau [presentation; report]
• Facebook versus OpenSocial: An Overview (11:45-11:55am)
  Ashkan Soltani [presentation; report]
  
  Each presentation will be 10 minutes in length. In addition, we will have 5-minute Q&A sessions after the 4rd and 7th presentations.
  

Week 16

Dec 10: Final Paper/Report Due