CS 791 Special Topics: Network Architectures and Economics

Department of Computer Science & Engineering

University of Nevada, Reno, Fall 2015

Course Information - Description - Prerequisites - Textbooks - Syllabus - Organization - Grading - Schedule, Notes & Assignments - Acknowledgment

The Internet has revolutionized the way we live and think, as it is now one of the most critical infrastructures of all time. There are close to 2.5 billion Internet users as of this year and the pace of growth in the Internet usage has not shown significant slowdown for the last two decades. Although it is clearly a tremendous success, the Internet’s architectural design was not intended to serve this large user population and variety of applications with very different technical and non-technical requirements both in wireless and wireline domains. The Internet research community has recently recognized the need to rethink the Internet’s architecture so that it can serve the needs of the users 15 years from now – potentially without being restricted with the current Internet’s architectural limitations: http://www.nets-find.net

This course aims to cover recent development in the Internet architecture research with a focus on economic issues. It surveys principles of internetworking architectures and delves into their projections on function placement and decomposition as well as various network protocol elements such as routing, naming, and addressing. It gives special emphasis on the implications of network economics on the evolution and practice of network architectures. We will detail how the market among the (Internet Service Providers) ISPs works and explore the multi-provider inter-ISP economics in terms of pricing, peering, edge-to-edge tussle, neutrality, fairness, and openness.

We will further investigate dynamics such as networking and population effects and their impact on the scale of the network architectures: power laws and scale-free composition. From simple networks to the Internet, we will cover how these dynamics contribute to the formation of the current and the future Internet structure.

Course Information

Credits: 3.0
Lecture hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 11am - 12:15pm, OSN 101

Instructor: Murat Yuksel

E-mail: yuksem@unr.edu

Phone: (775) 327-2246

Web page: http://www.cse.unr.edu/~yuksem

Office: SEM 237 (Scrugham Engineering-Mines)

Office hours:

Tuesday, 9:30-10:30am
Wednesday, 11am-12pm
Thursday, 9:30-10:30am
or by appointment

Description

Principles of internetworking architectures; and their projections on function placement and decomposition as well as various network protocol elements such as routing, naming, and addressing. Implications of network economics on the evolution and practice of network architectures. Networking and population effect and their impact on the scale of the network architectures: power laws and scale-free composition. Multi-provider inter-ISP economics: Pricing, peering, edge-to-edge tussle, neutrality, fairness, and openness.

Prerequisites

Required:

CPE 401/601 Computer Network Systems
or CPE 400/600 Computer Communication Networks
or equivalent
or consent of instructor

Desirable:

Operating Systems (CS 446/646 or equivalent)

Textbooks

There is no required textbook for this course. Since this is an advanced level class, the textbook is only the starting point for the majority of topics that we will cover. The slides used will cover ideas from a broad range of sources including other books, papers, RFCs etc. The WebCampus page will have online links to resources.

Recommended Textbooks

D. Easley and J. Kleinberg. (2010) Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press. (ISBN: 978-0-521-19533-1)
B. Ramamurthy, G. N. Rouskas, and K. M. Sivalingam. (2011) Next-Generation Internet: Architectures and Protocols. Cambridge University Press. (ISBN: 978-0-521-11368-1).

Syllabus (Tentative)

This is a tentative list of topics, subject to modification and reorganization.

Networking Paradigms

Circuit-switching
Packet-switching
Contract-switching
Bit-switching

Function Placement and Layering

End-to-end Principle
Application Layer Framing (ALF)
Network Utility Maximization (NUM)
Cross-Layer Design
Decomposition and Tussle
Multiplexing
Hourglass Model
Heterogeneity and Scale
Tiers
Virtualization

Naming and Addressing

Indirection
Encapsulation
Resolution
Hierarchies
Filtering

Routing Architecture

Two-tiered: Inter- and Intra-Domain Routing
ISP Abstractions
Source Routing:

Software-Defined Networking

Control Plane Separation
OpenFlow

Overlays and Peer-to-Peer

Content Distribution
Overlay vs. Underlay
Application Layer Multicast

Pricing and Inter-ISP Market

Flat-rate
Usage-based
Congestion-sensitive
Peering and SLAs

Fairness

Classification vs. Differentiation
Neutrality
Openness

Population Models

Information Cascade
Network Effects
Power Laws and Rich-Get-Richer Phenomena

Structural Models

Cascading in Networks
Small-World
Epidemics

Crypto-Currencies

BitCoin
Peer-to-Peer Value Exchange

Organization

Research Project There will be a project to be done by each student. The project will require a minimum of two architectural models or protocols to be evaluated under at least two different market or utility models. The expectation is that the project will involve sizable amount of research component so that a conference paper can potentially be brought together from the work of the project. As an example, comparative evaluation of a peer-to-peer architecture against a hierarchical architecture under elastic or inelastic demands would be an appropriate project topic. The project will be expected to make a thorough technical evaluation of the design alternatives with clearly defined metrics and parameters, and to perform a sequence of sound judgments based on the technical evaluation. The technical evaluation will be expected to involve simulations, emulations, or even prototypes if possible. The project will be expected to result in a paper reporting the technical evaluation and surveying the relevant work by other researchers. The students will be required to present their project at least twice during the semester.
Homework There will be homework assignments approximately one in every three weeks. The one with the lowest grade will not affect your overall grade.
WebCampus Except this web page, all course materials will be posted at the WebCampus.
Late policy Late assignments will not be accepted unless a serious reason is provided. If I am not available, slide your assignment under my office door or simply email it to me as a softcopy.
Academic Integrity There will be no team projects or reports in this class, therefore all assignments and exams must be prepared strictly individually. Any form of cheating such as plagiarism or ghostwriting will incur a severe penalty, usually failure in the course. Please refer to the UNR policy on Academic Standards.
Disability Statement If you have a disability for which you will need to request accommodations, please contact the instructor or someone at the Disability Resource Center (Thompson Student Services - 107) as soon as possible.
Important Policy Surreptitious or covert videotaping of class or unauthorized audio recording of class is prohibited by law and by Board of Regents policy. This class may be videotaped or audio recorded only with the written permission of the instructor. In order to accommodate students with disabilities, some students may have been given permission to record class lectures and discussions. Therefore, students should understand that their comments during class may be recorded.

Grading (Tentative)

Both grading policy and scale are subject to change.

• Grading Policy

Research Project	50%
Presentations	30%
Homework	20%

• Grading Scale (Tentative)

90% - 100%	A-, A
80% - 89%	B-, B, B+
65% - 79%	C-, C, C+
55% - 64%	D
0% - 54%	F

Important Note: Re-grading requests can only be made within the first week after the graded assignments/tests are returned to the students.

Schedule (Tentative), Notes & Assignments

This is a tentative schedule including the exam dates. It is subject to readjustment depending on the time we actually spend in class covering the topics. Slides presented in class and assignments will be posted at the WebCampus. See the acknowledgment for the course materials.

Date	Lectures	Assignments & Notes
Tue, Aug 25	Lecture #1: Introduction
Thu, Aug 27	Lecture #2: Networking Paradigms (1)
Tue, Sep 1	Lecture #3: Networking Paradigms (2)
Thu, Sep 3	Guest Lecture by Dr. Shamik Sengupta: Spectrum Economics
Tue, Sep 8	Guest Lecture by Dr. Jim La: Multi-Robot/Sensor Systems
Thu, Sep 10	Guest Lecture by Dr. Ming Li
Tue, Sep 15	Lecture #4: Function Placement and Layering (1)
Thu, Sep 17	Lecture #5: Function Placement and Layering (2)	*Project: Title & Abstract Due*
Tue, Sep 22	Function Placement and Layering (cont’d)
Thu, Sep 24	Lecture #6: Naming	*Homework 1 Out*
Tue, Sep 29	Lecture #7: Addressing
Thu, Oct 1	Lecture #8: Routing Architecture (1)
Tue, Oct 6	Lecture #9: Routing Architecture (2)
Thu, Oct 8	Lecture #10: Routing Architecture (3)
Tue, Oct 13	Routing Architecture (cont’d)
Thu, Oct 15	Lecture #11: Inter-ISP Market and Pricing
Tue, Oct 20	Project Related Work Presentations	*Project: Literature Due* *Homework 1 Due*
Thu, Oct 22	Project Related Work Presentations
Tue, Oct 27	Project Related Work Presentations
Thu, Oct 29	Project Related Work Presentations
Tue, Nov 3	Lecture #12: Population Models (1) – Information Cascade	Easley & Kleinberg, Ch. 16 *Homework 2 Out*
Thu, Nov 5	Lecture #13: Population Models (2) – Network Effect	Easley & Kleinberg, Ch. 17
Tue, Nov 10	Lecture #14: Population Models (3) – Power Laws and Rich-Get-Richer Phenomena	Easley & Kleinberg, Ch. 18
Thu, Nov 12	Lecture #15: Structural Models (1) – Cascading in Networks and Small-World	Easley & Kleinberg, Chs. 19 & 20
Tue, Nov 17	Lecture #16: Structural Models (2) – Epidemics	*Homework 2 Due* *Homework 3 Out* Easley & Kleinberg, Ch. 21
Thu, Nov 19	Lecture #17: Fairness and Neutrality
Tue, Nov 24	Project Final Presentations
*Thu, Nov* 26	*Thanksgiving -- NO CLASSES*
Tue, Dec 1	Project Final Presentations	*Homework 3 Due*
Thu, Dec 3	Project Final Presentations
Tue, Dec 8	Project Final Presentations	*Project: Final Report Due*

Acknowledgment

The materials for this course are in part based upon the materials from a number of people/sources, including:

· Official website for the Easley & Kleinberg text: Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World

· Official website for the Ramamurthy, Rouskas & Sivalingam text: Next-Generation Internet: Architectures and Protocols

· Mehmet H. Gunes from UNR: http://www.cse.unr.edu/~mgunes

· Nick Feamster from Georgia Tech: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~feamster

· Hari Balakrishnan from MIT: http://nms.lcs.mit.edu/~hari

· Jure Leskovec from Stanford: http://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure

· Luis von Ahn from CMU: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou

· Jason D. Hartline from Northwestern: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/hartline

· Nicole Immorlica from Northwestern: http://users.eecs.northwestern.edu/~nickle

· Adam Wierman from CalTech: http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adamw

Course Information - Description - Prerequisites - Textbooks - Syllabus - Organization - Grading - Schedule, Notes & Assignments - Acknowledgment

Last updated on October 29, 2015