CAS CS451/651 Distributed Systems
Spring 2012
"A distributed system is a collection of independent computers that appears to its users as a single coherent system." [Tanenbaum and Steen 2006]. Every major internet service is a distributed system. Examples include Google, Facebook, Youtube, banking websites and for that matter the World Wide Web itself. Other fundamental services such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS), Domain Name Services (DNS) and email are also distributed systems. For students to be effective, today and in the future, as decision makers, technical advisors, innovators and implementors they should be familiar with the principles and paradigms that underlying this important class of systems.
This page http://www.cs.bu.edu/~jappavoo/webpages/cs451.html the course piazza site, and BlackBoard will be continually updated. Please check (reload) this page regularly (at least twice a week).
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- Instructor
- Office Hours
- Time And Place
- Course Description
- Prerequisites
- Grade Break Down
- Weekly Class Structure and Evaluation
- Project and Workload
- CS651
- Class Schedule
- TextBooks
- Online References
- Online Class Resources
- Academic Honesty
The purpose of the office hours of the Instructor is to answer specific questions or clarify specific issues. Office hours are not to be used to fill you in on a class you skipped or to explain entire topics.
CS451/651 (Distributed Systems) is a fast-paced, broad and practical introduction to the fundamentals of distributed systems. The course first examines foudational topics such as: System Models, Networking, Interprocess Communications, Remote Invocation, Indirect Communications, and Operating Systems Support. After covering the foundations a selection of topics will be covered from: Distributed algorithms, Shared data, Middleware, System services. A major goal of the course is to provide practical exposure to distributed systems through a term long programming project in which small groups of students construct a distributed game using 'C'. The project requires significant programming effort.
Programming-centric introduction to how networks of computers are structured to operate as coherent single system. Introducing principles of architecture, processes, communications, naming, synchronization, consistency and replication, fault tolerance and security, and paradigms such as web-based, object-based, file systems, and coordination-based.
The prerequisites for this course are CS 210 Computer Systems and CS112. Students without the prerequisites will not be allowed to enroll in the course.
Your final grade will be determined approximately as follows:
| Take Home Midterm | 15% |
| Take Home Final | 25% |
| Weekly Evaluation. See below. | 25% |
| Project | 35% |
The class meets twice a week. In general the weekly sessions will be divided into a lecture session and a lab session. The lab session will be more interactive in nature and focus on programming topics and guiding the development of the term projects. As part of the lab sessions the instructor will evalute project progress and comprehension of the lecture material. This evaluation will take the form of: one-on-one discussions, quizzes, and demos.
Be forewarned the workload in this course will be heavy. To master the conceptual material covered in the lecture and prepare you for completion of the project there will be weekly reading and programming required outside of class time.
The course is organized around a term-long programming project that constitutes 35% of the grade. The project will utilize a library of foundational components that will be in part developed by the students during the semester. Additional components will be provide by the instructor. The goal of the project is two fold, firstly to allow the principles and paradigms covered in class to be utilized and explored practically and secondly to get exposure to the process of system construction, including design, software development, documentation, testing and debugging.
The project this year will be a distributed capture the flag style game.
The projects will be evaluated along 3 main dimensions, design, project management, and functionality. Design will be judged based on accompanying documentation that the students will prepare describing their system with respect to organization, software structure and choices made. Project management will be evaluated based on a project log that the students will submit. The logs will document weekly project meetings in which students are expected to identify status with respect to implementation progress, problems encountered, and what is to be done in the following week. Finally project functionality will be evaluating using a test suite designed to validate protocol adherence and various test-cases such as scalability and unexpected disconnection. Each group will do a final presentation of their projects to the instructor during the schedule final exam time.
Some of the critical Semester Dates are below:
The following is the tentative schedule that will be adjusted as necessary
Week |
Dates |
Description |
References |
| 1 | Jan 17, 19 |
Lecture: Introduction and Class Overview Lab: Organization, Game Introduction, and Prepatory Assignment: UNIX intro and Version Control |
CS:DS-Ch 1. |
| 2 | Jan 24, 26 | Lecture: System Models | CS:DS-Ch 2. |
| 3 | Jan 31, Feb 2 | Lecture: Networking and Internetworking: Part I | CS:DS-Ch 3. |
| 4 | Feb 7, 9 | Lecture: Networking and Internetworking: Part II | CS:DS-Ch 3. |
| 5 | Feb 14, 16 | Lecture: Interprocess Communication | CS:DS-Ch 4. |
| 6 | Feb 23 | Lecture: Remote Invocation | CS:DS-Ch 5. |
| 7 | Feb 28, Mar 1 | Lecture: Indirect Communication I | CS:DS-Ch 6. |
| 8 | Mar 6, 8 | Lecture: Indirect Communication II | CS:DS-Ch 6. |
| 9 | Mar 20, 22 | Lecture: Operating Systems Support I | CS:DS-Ch 7. |
| 10 | Mar 27, 29 | Lecture: Operating Systems Support II | CS:DS-Ch 7. |
| 11 | Apr 3, 5 | Lecture: TBA | |
| 12 | Apr 10, 12 | Presentations: Chapter 8 "Distributed Objects" (Ian Denhardt) & Chapter 10 "Peer-to-Peer" (Nikka Ghalili) | |
| 13 | Apr 17, 19 | Presentations: Chapter 12 "File Systems" (Yue Zhu) & Chapter 13: "Naming" (Yuefeng Wang) | |
| 14 | Apr 24, 26 | Presentations: Chapter ?? "" (Ying Ye) & Chapter ?? "" (Zhoushuo Wang) | |
| 15 | May 1 | Lecture: TBA |
Name |
Date |
Solutions |
| MidTerm | Out March 8, Due March 22 @ 1:30pm | Solutions |
| Final | Out April 24, Due on Day of Exam: May 9th | NONE |
If there is any information for a give lab it will be posted here.
Name |
Dates |
Resources |
| Lab 1 | Jan 19 | writeup, files |
| Lab 2 | Feb 2 | writeup, files |
| Lab 3 | Feb 9 | writeup, files |
| Lab 4 |
[DS:CS Required Text] George Coulouris, Jean Dollimore and Tim Kindberg, "Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design" , 5ed. Addison Wesley/Pearson Education, 2011, ISBN 0 0-13-214301-1. An digitial version is available
[UNP] Another useful text, which covers network programming in C, that we will rely on is Richard Stevens, Bill Fenner and Andrew M. Rudoff, "UNIX Network Programming - The Sockets Networking API.", 3ed. Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN-10: 0131411551 ISBN-13: 978-0131411555.
Boths books are available from the BU bookstore.
[optional] Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike, "The UNIX Programming Environment", Prentice Hall, 1984. (Another Classic Text).
BlackBoard: A BlackBoard Site is available for the course. Here you will find access to several tools including: the ability to email the class, access a discussion forums, and look at your grades.
Assignments must be completed individually. Discussion of issues in computer systems is encouraged, but representing the work of another person as your own is expressly forbidden. This includes "borrowing", "stealing", copying programs/solutions or parts of them from others. We may use an automated plagiarism checker. Cheating will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Handing in your own work a day or two late will affect your grade far less than turning in a copy of someone else's work on time!
See the CAS Academic Conduct Code, in particular regarding plagiarism and cheating on exams. Copies of the CAS Academic Conduct Code are also available in room CAS 105. A student suspected to violate this code will be reported to the Academic Conduct Committee, and if found culpable, the student will receive a grade of "F" for the course.