CPSC 641: Performance Issues in High Speed Networks

Professor Carey Williamson

Winter 2022

Course Project Requirements

The course project in CPSC 641 requires students to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of some important aspect of high-speed networks and/or network protocol performance. Your project accounts for 50% of your final grade for the course, and thus should represent 4-6 weeks of thoughtful independent research effort. Projects are to be done individually.

The project should take the form of a research paper, similar to those found in the published networking literature. (Of course, there is no requirement that your paper be publishable!) The research paper should present your own (novel) research results on a relevant network performance problem. Results may be obtained analytically, through simulation, or experimentally through measurement of an existing system or implementation. The paper should be 12-15 pages in length, including abstract, figures, tables, and bibliography. Use a reasonable word processing package, a readable font size, and single-column formatting.

Some background reading is always required to do a good research paper on a given topic, and should be reflected in your bibliography. Note, however, that it is NOT sufficient to do just a survey paper. Creativity, originality, and your own contribution are also required. This may involve applying previously known approaches to new network scenarios, or applying new approaches to previously studied scenarios, or new approaches to new problems entirely.

Deadlines

The timetable for project requirements is as follows:

Project Ideas

Project topics are to be mutually agreed upon between you and me. Topics of your own choosing are preferred, but if you need ideas, I can offer several suggestions, and point you to relevant literature.

Several possible ideas for project topics are listed below:

Here are examples of actual project titles from students who took this course over the past few years:

In any event, put your thinking caps on, and discuss your idea(s) with me as soon as possible.