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:
Week 2
Sep 03: Labor Day, no class
Sep 05: Network Architecture -- Design Philosophies [slides]
Read before class:
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:
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.
No assignment is due this week.
Week 4
Sep 17: Network Industry Structure [slides][project
description]
Read before class:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Week 9
Oct 22: Policy-based Routing; The Future of IP [slides]
Read before class:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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:
Nov 28: Economics of network security
Read before class:
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
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