CIS 700/003 - Distributed Systems meet Social Networks

Instructor: Andreas Haeberlen
Room: Chemistry 119 (231 S. 34th Street) Levine 512
Lectures: Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:30-6pm
Office hours: Thursdays 1:30-2:30pm

Announcements

Course description

This graduate seminar covers advanced topics in distributed systems, with a particular focus on systems that span multiple administrative domains. These systems are operated by multiple individuals or organizations with potentially conflicting interests; examples include peer-to-peer systems like BitTorrent or Skype, as well as federated systems like the Internet. In addition to the classical challenges of distribution, these systems face new challenges (but also provide new opportunities) that arise from the social relationships between their users and operators.

The purpose of this seminar is to familiarize students with current research in this area. The seminar will begin with an overview of distributed systems fundamentals, and will then proceed to topics such as incentives, accountability, Byzantine fault tolerance, privacy, online social networks, reputation systems, and social defenses against Internet crime.

Prerequisites

Some familiarity with systems and networking topics. For example, CIS 455/555 or CIS 553 would be helpful.

Format

This course will include paper readings, discussions, and a research project. I will give some lectures on fundamentals, and I will ask you to present papers from the reading list, which we will then discuss in class. To ensure that everyone has read the paper, you are required to send me a short summary of the paper at least one hour before class.

You may work on the research project individually or in teams of two. I will provide a list of project ideas, but you are free to propose your own project, e.g., based on your current research interests, as long as there is a connection to the subject of this course. We will do final presentations at the end of the course, and each team should prepare a six-page paper in the style of a workshop submission.

Summaries

Your summaries do not need to be long; one or two paragraphs should be sufficient. However, each summary must contain answers to the following questions:
  1. What is the problem that the paper addresses?
  2. Why is this an important problem?
  3. How does the paper solve the problem? What are its key contributions?
  4. What are strengths and weaknesses of the paper? (Name at least one of each)
Please submit you summary via email (in plain text) at least one hour before class.

Grading

You are welcome to audit the class. If you wish to take it for credit, your grade will be based on the paper summaries you submit (20%), your participation in class discussions (15%), your in-class presentations (15%), and your term project (50%).

Schedule

Date Topic Subtopic Reading Slides Presenter Remarks
Jan 14 Introduction     pdf Andreas No summaries due
Jan 19 Fundamentals Interdomain routing Gao/Rexford pdf Andreas Introduction email due. No summaries due.
Jan 21 Measurement Social networks Online Social Networks pdf Brian Class moved to Levine 512
Jan 26 Technical systems DisCarte pdf Andreas  
Jan 28 (Mis)behavior Spamalytics pdf Adam  
Feb 2 Construction Decentralized systems SplitStream pdf Changbin  
Feb 4 Negotiation Nexit pdf Anduo  
Feb 9 Monitoring Hubble pdf Andreas Project proposal due
Feb 11 Fundamentals State-machine replication Paxos (Alternative) --- Andreas Class cancelled due to the snow storm
Feb 16 Models Rational BitTorrent is an auction pdf Harshendu  
Feb 18 Byzantine PBFT pdf Svilen  
Feb 23 History Internet evolution History of the Internet ---   Attend Cerf and Kahn's lecture
Feb 25 Techniques Reputation systems Credence pdf Jian  
Mar 2 Trusted hardware TrInc pdf Sean  
Mar 4 --- WiP session        
Mar 9 ---         Spring break
Mar 11 ---         Spring break
Mar 16 Techniques Accountability PeerReview pdf Zhuowei Project status reports due
Mar 18 Headaches Spoofing DMCA Takedown pdf Steven  
Mar 23 Sybil attack SybilGuard pdf Srinivasan  
Mar 25 Denial of service Defense By Offsense pdf Santosh  
Mar 30 Phishing Wealth of miscreants pdf Marie  
Apr 1 Privacy Information leakage De-anonymization pdf Carl  
Apr 6 Confidentiality Persona pdf Chandni  
Apr 8 Long-term privacy Vanish pdf Sibasish  
Apr 13 Differential privacy PINQ pdf Mengmeng  
Apr 15 Opportunities Spam defense Ostra pdf Xiaozhou  
Apr 20 Experience Case study CoralCDN pdf Andreas  
Apr 22 ---         Final presentations
Apr 26 ---         Final presentations