6.892 AdminisTrivia (Fall 1999)

Prerequisites

Undergraduate systems or networks course covering basic networking concepts (e.g., 6.033 or equivalent) and/or consent of instructor. Enrollment may be limited. If your networking background is rusty and you may want to page material in from one of these excellent books. In particular, I highly recommend the book by Peterson and Davie.

 

Course Structure Class meetings will discuss assigned readings from the literature. 6.892 will emphasize the practical aspects of computer networks and the Internet, and will be centered around discussions and arguments! Class participation is therefore very important.  

Grading

Grades will be based primarily on a significant course project. Participants will also write a conference-style paper describing the project and make a 20-minute presentation of their work at the end of the term. This will constitute 50% of your grade.

In addition, there will be a few homeworks assigned during the term. We expect to use the VINT network simulator, ns for some of the homework questions. In many cases, we expect ns to be useful for your project too. We strongly encourage you to get familiar with ns (version 2) as soon as you can, by installing it on your machine and playing with it. While not comprehensive, the available documentation is quite good and adequate to start using it. Any questions about usage are best directed to ns-users@mash.cs.berkeley.edu (there are instructions on the ns Web page on how you can subscribe to this list. Homeworks will constitute 20% of your grade.

We will have a mid-term quiz, currently planned for 11/9/99 (before drop-date). This, together with class participation, counts for 30% of your grade.

To summarize:

Course Project (Paper + Presentation)	50%
Homeworks	20%
Mid-term quiz	20%
Class participation & energy-level	10%

But remember, this is a graduate class and grades shouldn't be your primary or only motivator! What matters is how much you learn about research in networking and how much it excites you! We hope this class and the project you work on meet that goal.

Last update: Sun Sep 5 22:49:48 EDT 1999 (hari)