Syllabus

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Syllabus
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Instructor

• Dr. Hanan Lutfiyya
• Middlesex College 418
• Ext. 86888
• hanan_at_csd.uwo.ca
• Office Hours Tuesday from 1205-105 and
  Thursday from 1105-105.

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Prerequisites

• CS305 -- Operating Systems
• CS350 -- Computer Architecture (sometimes not
  enforced)
• CS357 -- Computer Communications Networks
• It is expected that you have good C skills and
  some knowledge
• of makefiles.
• This course is an antirequisite to SE 466 (from
  the Department of Electrical and Computer
  Engineering)

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Textbooks

• Required textbook
• Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Maarten van Steen,
  Distributed SystemsPrinciples and
  Paradigms, Prentice-Hall
• References
• G. Colouris, J. Dollimore and T. Kindberg,
  Distributed Systems Concepts and Design, 3rd
  edition, Addison-Wesley, 2001
• J. Kurose and K. Ross, Computer Networking A
  Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet,
  Addison-Wesley, 2001.
• R. Stevens, Unix Network Programming, Volume 1,
  Prentice-Hall
• Links to web pages on various topics man pages

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Lecture Notes

• Lecture overheads will be available (hopefully)
  before each lecture.
• They will be available in powerpoint format.

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E-mail Contact

• All e-mail that I send will be to your GAUL
  account. It is your responsibility to check your
  GAUL account or to forward the e-mail to another
  account.
• I will ignore e-mail from hotmail accounts and
  other UWO accounts unless you cc your UWO account
  in the message.

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Student Evaluation

• Final Exam 40 (April 13)
• Quiz 15 (Feb 17)
• 3 Programming Assignments 45
• No makeup quiz except for religious reasons. I
  need two weeks warning and you must go through
  your Deans office.
• If you miss your quiz for a non-religious reason
  and present valid documentation to the Deans
  office, your Final exam mark will be reweighed to
  include the weight of the Quiz.

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Special Note for Graduate Students

• Graduate students must complete paper reviews.

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Student Evaluation

• To be eligible to pass the course, a student
  must receive at least 40 in the quiz/exam
  component and at least a 40 in the individual
  assignments.
• To be eligible to receive an overall grade of 60
  or higher in the course, a student must receive
  at least 50 in the quiz/exam component and at
  least 50 in the individual assignments.

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Assignments

• Three programming assignments
• Assignments are made available through the course
  web page.
• All assignments are due by midnight. You must
  submit to both the locker and electronically.

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Late Assignments

• There is a penalty of 2n marks, where n is the
  number of days late.
• The weekend counts as one day.
• Extensions will be granted only on serious
  medical or compassionate grounds.
• Extensions will NOT be given for minor illness.

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Late Coupons

• You are given 3 late coupons
• Each coupon is a one day extension.
• Rules
• No transfer to other students
• Once used, you may not receive it back
• Coupons cannot be redeemed retroactively
• Unused coupons are not redeemable for extra marks
• Use of a late coupon does not change the final
  date on which an assignment will be accepted.
• No more than three coupons may be used for an
  assignment.

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More Assignment Information

• Keep a backup!
• Requests for an adjustment in an assignment mark
  must be made within 2 weeks after the assignment
  is returned in class. All such requests are to
  be written and submitted to me.
• Assignments must satisfy the specifications given
  in the assignment description!

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Course Objectives

• The main objective is to study the principles of
  distributed computing.
• Distributed computing is a broad subject. This
  course roughly focuses on the following
• Topics related to distributed system services
  such as support for RPCs and file systems.
• Topics related to the development of reliable
  distributed applications. This includes socket
  programming, RPC, replication, election
  algorithms, time, consistency and security. Your
  programming assignments will focus on this.

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Topics

• Communication
• Network organization
• Socket Programming
• RPC
• Processes
• Iterative vs. Concurrent servers
• Thread Programming
• Design Issues
• Client/Server
• Peer to Peer
• Naming
• Synchronization
• Consistence and Replication
• Fault Tolerance
• Mobility

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Assignment Structure

• The first assignment requires that you implement
  a peer to peer application whose design is
  loosely based on Gnutella.
• The second assignment will have you implement
  algorithms related to time, elections and/or
  consistency.
• The third assignment looks at making distributed
  applications reliable and fault-tolerant.

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Any Questions?