CSE 291 : Spring 2015 : Data Center Networking

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Overview

CSE 291 is a graduate course on data center networking. Large-scale networks and data-intensive computing systems are increasingly important to solving critical, real-world problems such as biological and scientific research, global-scale applications like search and social networks, and increasingly sophisticated entertainment and media. These networks primarily compose compute with storage, acting as a "backplane" for a massive distributed system. As such, the principles and design decisions making up their construction differ greatly from the design of the wide-area Internet. This change has fundamentally changed the way data center networks are designed and built. Networks underpinning Internet data centers must isolate different tenants and applications from each other, provide low-latency access to data spread across the cluster, and scale to high data access bandwidth, all despite omnipresent component failures. Designing networks to meet these demands entails new challenges, and opportunities, in network design, and puts the network at the heart of building new systems.

This course will provide a deep exposure to the networks that underpin modern data centers. Topics covered in the course include data center topologies, measurements, transport and low-latency, novel control planes, integration of circuit switching into data center fabrics, bufferless interconnects, and inter-data center communication.

Prerequisites for the course include knowledge of undergraduate-level operating systems (e.g., CSE 120) and networking (e.g., CSE 123/124).

Lecture time: Tu/Th 8:00am to 9:20am
Units: 4
Location: WLH 2111

Course Staff

Teaching Assistant

Name	Email	Office	Office Hours
Yashar Asgarieh	yasgarie@cs.ucsd.edu	TBD	TBD (or by appointment)

Professor

Name	Email	Office	Hours
George Porter	gmporter AT cs DOT ucsd DOT edu	EBU3B 3104	Tuesday 9:30-10:30am (or by appointment)

Course Policies

Objectives

In the process of learning about data center networking, you will learn:

How to read a research paper in an objective manner.
How to articulate your understanding and insights into a research paper.
How to synthesize research themes and topics across multiple papers.
How to design a research map, annotated bibliography, related work document, and a project proposal
Carry out a project related to data center networking
Presentation of research results

Structure

The course does not have a textbook. Instead, the course material will come from noteworthy and representative papers from the literature, focusing on recent results. You should read these papers before coming to class, and be prepared to discuss and engage critically with them.

Occasionally, students have to miss class for one good reason or another (e.g., present a paper at a conference, go on a business trip). If you find yourself in this situation, contact me ahead of time to avoid losing participation credit. Though you will not be in class to participate in discussion, you will still need to keep up with the assigned reading.

Acknowledgements

This website was created using Dave Andersen and Nick Feamster's coursegen software (thanks!).

Last updated: 2015-04-07 12:58:26 -0700 [validate xhtml]