Course pages 2019–20

Network Architectures

This is a paper reading seminar style course - there will be a schedule giving the list of work to read and who is assigned to which paper each week.

There's a great book for background reading to kickoff, by Dave Clark from MIT on network architecture(s) which I highly recomend.

schedule of when you will be speaking, and link to papers you'll be talking about.

Student's speaking assignments are to give a 20-25 minute prepared talk on the paper. I am very happy to discuss paper assignments and talks beforehand. Advice on critical reading/reviewing, writing, presenting a paper is offered in the Research Skills Programme

We'll go through these topics at roughly one per week.

One thing I'd like readers to bear in mind is that one can take an evolutionary approach to network architecture change, or one can try to be revolutionary. In discussing a given paper, try to see which approach it is taking and whether this supports or undermines the viability of the proposed idea - this notion originated with Constantine Dovrolis and Jenifer Rexford in this nice counterpoint discussion. An important evolutionary refinement is Punctuated Equilibrium: which may be how technology (including networks) evolve really.

A very interesting complex systems/systems bio/eco/evolutionary view on how layered architectures evolve is this paper on Architecture, constraints, and behavior by John C. Doyle and Marie Cseteb.

Forwarding/Addressing & IPv6 & The Internet Architecture for Oct 11 & 15

For IPv6 evolution, see also:

• The Simple Internet Protocol (SIP) (not to be confused with the internet telephony SIP:-))
• Paul's Internet Protocol
• recent workshop report on future internet

Radical Alternatives to The Internet Architecture Oct 15/17