6250 Computer Networks Project

The project is a major portion of this class. Projects will be conducted in teams of 5 students. Distance Learing tudents can do a project individually or may team up with other DL students or local students if possible. Projects are expected to have a research flavor and explore specific problems or ideas in Computer Networks.

A list of possible project topics will be provided Teams may pick from this list (on a first-come first-served basis) or may choose a different topic -- subject to instructor approval. Projects can involve system or protocol design and/or implementation and/or evaluation of an idea through simulation or measurement. A final report and a short in-class presentation and demo will be required from each project team. DL students will be expected to presen t their project over skype to the class instructor.

The project will require you to do your own research into the literature as well as substantial reading and learning on your own. The instructor and the TAs are available throughout the process to help guide you and answer questions.

What you will have to do

In groups of 5 (or individually for DL students in the Q section -- Q3 (GTL) students will do projects in groups) you will

• Pick a particular project problem to work on -- A suggested list of topics is included below. Note that these are broadly defined topics, you will need to develop a specific question to address within the topic.
• Write a short 3-page "proposal" describing the scope of your project, expected outcome, plan of action and division of labor among team members. A bibliography of related literature should be included. You should make extensive use of the GT library facilities, including the IEEE and ACM digital libraries. You should also search from material available on the web if applicable.
• A final project report describing your efforts, provdinging an evaluation of your work. The final report may be accompanied by a demo if approriate.
• Give a 5-8 minute presentation in class summarizing your project.

Project Deliverables and Milestones

• Milestone 1: Team and Topic Selection. Provide a one-page description of your problem scope, which topic it belongs to and why you think it is interesting. This description should have the name of team members. --- Due Jan. 28.
  One or more representative of each team should talk to me briefly about selection and team before this deadline either during office hours, or at a mutually agreeable time.

• Milestone 2: Project proposal as described above. -- Due Feb. 18.

• Milestone 3: Progress Report: This is a precursor to the final report and should describe progress to date including This should make specific reference to a (possibly revised) literature list. -- Due April 1.

  We would like to meet with each team for 15 minutes on April 9 or 10. We will provide more details on how to schedule this meeting at a later time.

• Milestone 4: Make a 5-8 minute presentation in-class. during the last 3 or 4 lectures of the semester. Your team will have to only one member to give the presentation. All presentation need to be in powerpoint and will be due April 17 by midnight. You will not be allowed to change your slides after this date. I will decide on the ordering of the presentations (either randomly or based on some useful topic progression).

• Milestone 5: Final Report: You should strive to make this look like a research paper that describes the problem you addressed, describes the approach and the work you have done and reaches conclusions regarding your problem. -- Due Monday April 29 by 11:59pm.
• All submissions should be done on t-square.
• All deadlines occur 1-week later for DL students.

Grading

• Milestone 1: 2%
  Grade will be based on timeliness and the amount of thought that goes intto your identification and delineation of your choice topics, in addition to completing your meeting with the Professor.

• Milestone 2: 3%
  Grade will be based on timeliness, effort in delineating and explaining the scope of your project and size and relevance of literature list, and effort expended to dig up interesting material relating on your topic.

• Milestone 3: 5%
  Grade will be based on timeliness, level of progress in stated progress goals and identification of remaining effort.

• Milestone 4: 12%
  Grade will be based on adherence to time limit of presentation, quality of material presented (how much new material we learn from your presentation), clarity of presentation objectives and quality of delivery.

• Milestone 5: 18%
  Grade will be based on timeliness, signficance of your effort and results, level of evaluation and quality of writing and presentation.

The project can be in one of three falvors:

• Design, implementation and evaluation of a new networked application or protocol. For example,
  • A Transport Protocol for Intermittently-Connected Networks,
  • Adaptive Video Streaming for Mobile Devices, schemes for mitigation of buffer bloat,
  • Virtualization in Software Defined Networks,
  • Protocols and applications for vehicular networks,
  • Rateless coding in wireless networks,
  • A p2p video streaming system.
  • Message ferrying for Android mobile devices.
• Significant measurement or data set analysis. For example,
  • Analysis of routeviews and other BGP traces,
  • Measurement of DNS performance.
  Reproducing results in existing literature: For example
  • BGP Misconfiguration analysis,
  • Misbehaving TCP Daytona,
  • Shaper Probe re-implementation and evaluation,
  • Multi-level routing interactions in overlay networks,
  • overlays for end-system multicast.