The centerpiece of CSE222A is the term project, which culminates in
a workshop-quality paper and a public presentation. You are
encouraged to think carefully about the project topic and scope, as I
expect that a number of the projects, with some amount of extra
polishing and follow-up work, will be submittable to a high-quality
venue. Indeed, students with successful projects from recent
CSE222A offerings earned all-expense-paid trips to present their work
at international conferences in places like Austin, Texas; Hong Kong; and
Bern, Switzerland.
Of course, time is limited. The key to a successful project is to
carefully lay out a plan of action so that some significant
portion---but frequently far from all---of it can be completed in time
to write up and present at the end of the term. Projects will be
graded in the same manner that conference papers are evaluated: we're
looking for interesting insights, clarity of presentation, and
appropriate positioning of your work within the framework of existing
research. From the point of view of the class, the goal of the
project is to give you first hand experience conducting research in
networking and exploring a topic that interests you in more detail
than we well in class.
Each project will be presented orally during the official final
exam period for the course (and possibly in additional sessions as
logistics require). Groups will also submit an 8-10 page research
report describing their efforts. All class members are required to
attend and evaluate their classmates presentations and papers.
Projects should be done in groups of two or three. Exceptions may occasionally be granted; please talk to the instructor.
Timeline
To assist in the timely completion of the project, we have established the following checkpoints.
1/24: Each student is required to submit two or three brief (a
paragraph or two, maximum) project ideas by email. We will
then post the submitted ideas to the class through Piazza. Students
who have already formed (partial) project groups should submit a
single email naming each of the group members.
1/29: After consulting the project idea list and communicating
privately with other students, students are encouraged to form their
own project group. Each group should send email to the me with the
members of the group and a brief description of the project idea(s).
2/05: Each group must submit a page-long project proposal. The proposal should contain four sections:
An introduction, providing a basic overview of the goal.
Related work, which discusses the current state of the art that
you intend to build upon.
A schedule, specifying concretely what you intend to have
accomplished by each of the two milestones below as well as for the
final report/presentation. It is perfectly acceptable if the final
deliverable is not a completion of the project---which, if successful,
some members of the group may wish to continue after the term
ends---but it does need to be something that can be clearly
demonstrated/evaluated/graded.
A description of any resources you believe you will need to
complete the assignment, such as access to testbeds, software,
hardware resources, etc. We expect most of you will be able to
complete your projects on resources already available to you, but if
you have some particular needs please call them out and we'll see what
we can do. Note that if the successful completion of your project
depends on these (as opposed to "it would be nice if") please make
sure you discuss this with the instructor before
submitting.
2/19: Each group will submit a 1-2 page summary of their progress. We will schedule meetings with each project group to discuss the status updates.
3/07: Submit a 1-2 page summary of your progress since the last
checkpoint. In particular, concisely describe the deliverables you
have completed, and provide a brief preview of what you expect to
present during the term project presentations.
3/21 All groups will give a 20-minute presentation, with an
additional 3-4 minutes afterwards for questions. All group members
are expected to participate in the presentation and answer questions.
In addition, students are expected to attend three presentations in
addition to their own and actively participate by asking questions
of the presenters. This will count toward your class participation
grade.
3/22: Final project reports are due by midnight. All groups
are expected to submit an 8-10 page project report in the format of
the papers we've read in class (i.e., double column, single spaced).
You are free to submit in another format, but it is likely the report
will be much longer in, e.g., single column double spaced. The report
should include references and citations to related work, as well as
graphs, figures, etc., documenting the performance of your software
prototype to the extent possible.
Please email your final report, along with either a tarball of or
pointers to (e.g., in github or similar) your code, to me.
Last updated: 2019-03-21 14:42:44 -0700
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