Lecture (Section 037): Tue, Thu, 4:30–5:45pm in BHEE 226

Instructor

Vishal Shrivastav
Assistant Professor

Office: BHEE 334B
vshriva@purdue.edu

Office Hours
Tue 3–4pm in BHEE 334B

The modern datacenter and the cloud has emerged as the dominant computing platform that powers most of world's consumer online services, financial, military, and scientific application domains. The goal of this course is to introduce students to the design, implementation, and management of modern datacenter and cloud networks. Lectures will include the presentation and discussion of seminal papers from the field of datacenter and cloud networks, covering a wide-range of topics, including datacenter architecture and topology, datacenter routing and load balancing, datacenter transport, software-defined networking, programmable data plane, in-network computing, multi-tenancy in the cloud, RDMA, resource disaggregation, and optical switching inside datacenters.

All course materials and grades will be posted on Brightspace. We will use Piazza as the discussion forum to post and discuss questions regarding the course.

1. Datacenter Architecture and Topology
2. Datacenter Routing and Load Balancing
3. Datacenter Transport
4. Software-defined Networking
5. Programmable Data Plane
6. In-Network Computing
7. Multi-tenancy in the Cloud
8. RDMA inside Datacenter
9. Resource Disaggregation inside Datacenter
10. Optics inside Datacenter

ECE 46300 (Introduction to Computer Communication Networks) or ECE 50863 (Computer Network Systems) or Permission of the instructor.

35% — Paper Reviews
Each student is expected to write a 2 to 3 page review of one paper from each course topic, thus totaling 10 reviews. First five reviews will carry 3% credit each, while the last five reviews will carry 4% credit each. A paper review will typically include the paper summary, its strengths and weaknesses, and any suggestions for improvement. No collaboration is allowed for writing the paper reviews.

60% — Term Project
Each student will work on a semester-long project in a group of at most 2 students. Students can either propose their own project or talk to the instructor for project ideas. Any project with significant networking component will be acceptable. The final deliverables will include a technical report and a class presentation about the project. The overall grading will be broken into three milestones:

  • Milestone 1: Problem, Motivation, and Related Work – 20%
  • Milestone 2: Design and Evaluation Plan – 20%
  • Milestone 3: Final Report and Presentation – 20%

5% — Attendance and Participation

Students are free to collaborate with anyone or use any available material online for completing their class project. However, unless expressly allowed, students are expected to complete all paper reviews by themselves. A student is considered in violation of the academic honesty policy regardless of whether they are the one "copying" or the one "being copied from".

Academic integrity is one of the highest values that Purdue University holds. Individuals are encouraged to alert university officials to potential breaches of this value by either emailing integrity@purdue.edu or by calling 765-494-8778. While information may be submitted anonymously, the more information is submitted the greater the opportunity for the university to investigate the concern. More details are available on our course Brightspace under "University Policies and Statements".

Punishments for academic dishonesty are severe, including receiving a failing grade in the course or being expelled from the university. By departmental rules, all instances of cheating will be reported to the Dean of Students. On the first instance of cheating, students involved will receive a 0 on the assignment; the second instance of cheating will result in a failing grade in the course.

Use of Copyrighted Materials. All course materials are subject to Purdue's copyright policies. Students must not share, distribute, or post any material on an online web site without checking with the instructor.