CSE 40771/60771 Distributed Systems - Fall 2021
Prof. Douglas Thain
TA: Yuanbo Guo
9:25-10:15 MWF, Debartolo Hall 201
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Notre Dame

Course Overview

A distributed system is any computer system consisting of multiple machines that work together on a common problem. Distributed systems appear in many areas of computing, including cloud computing, mobile computing, edge computing, the internet of things, aerospace systems, and more. Distributed systems have been both interesting and difficult to build because their components may be autonomous and highly failure-prone. Students will learn the fundamental principles of distributed systems, build a distributed hash table through a series of cumulative assignments, and undertake a course project of their own choice. This will be a fun and challenging class for students who like to build working software systems.

Course Materials

• Syllabus
• Textbook: Distributed Systems, Third Edition
• Research Papers for Graduate Students
• General Instructions for Assignments
• Course Sakai Home Page

Office Hours

Office hours will be held simultaneously in person starting on August 27th. If you prefer to talk via Zoom, please indicate that via a Slack message, and we will dial into Zoom.

• Prof. Thain: Mon/Fri 1-3PM in 384C Fitzpatrick (CSE Main Office) (office hours zoom on request)
• Yuanbo Guo: Tue/Wed 1-3PM 150B Fitzpatrick (CSE Student Commons) (office hours zoom on request)
  (except Sep 1st: 1:30-3:30)

Course Schedule

	Monday	Wednesday	Friday	Grad Readings
Aug 23	Intro and Purposes Ch 1	Architectural Styles Ch 2.1-2.2	System Architectures Ch 2.3-2.4	A Note on Distributed Computing
Aug 30	Processes Chapter 3	Clients and Servers Chapter 3 A1 Due: Measuring	Server Clusters Chapter 3	Scalability! But at what COST?
Sep 6	Communications Chapter 4.1	Remote Procedure Call Chapter 4.2	RPC Semantics Chapter 8.3	Reducing Cross Domain...
Sep 13	State Management	Case Study: NFS Chapter 2.4 RFC 1094 A2 Due: Remote Procedure Call	Messaging Chapter 4.3	Kafka/RabbitMQ
Sep 20	Naming Chapter 5.1-5.2	Structured Naming Chapter 5.3 A3 Due: Persistence	Attribute Naming Chapter 5.4	Chord
Sep 27	What is Time? Chapter 6.1	Logical Clocks Chapter 6.2	Vector Clocks Chapter 6.2	Distributed Snapshots
Oct 4	Mutual Exclusion Chapter 6.3 A4 Due: Concurrency	Catch Up	Mutex / Leases	Impossibility of Consensus
Oct 11	Midterm Exam	Elections Chapter 6.4	Consistency Intro Project Proposal Due
Oct 17	Fall Break
Oct 25	Replication Strategies Chapter 7.1	Data Centric Consistency Chapter 7.2	Client Centric Consistency Chapter 7.3	Leases
Nov 1	Consistency Contd	Two Phase Commit Chapter 8.5 A5 Due: Replication	Chain Replication (Paper)	Keeping CALM
Nov 8	Security - General Chapter 9.1/9.3	Symmetric Key Systems Chapter 9.2	Asymmetric Key Systems Chapter 9.2	Byzantine Generals
Nov 15	Case Study: HTCondor (Paper)	Case Study: Ceph (Paper) Progress Report Due	Case Study: Kafka (Paper)	Bitcoin
Nov 22	Case Study: Bitcoin (Paper)	Thanksgiving Break
Nov 29	Project Talks Distributed Chat - Nishcal Sapkota and Barry Sly-Delgado Distributed Password Cracker - Justin Pajak and Erik Meier Chord - Timothy Redgrave and Theodore Chambers Peer to Peer Chat - Matthew Ahrens and Jake Feehery	Project Talks Distributed Chess Solver - Jason Jakubik and Michael Lee Kademlia + Parakeet - Jonathan Abbott and Steven Good Distributed Euchre - Ted Donegan and Jack Strong JBcoin - Bradley Budden and Josh Bottelberghe	Project Talks Aria - Gerry Fernandez and Harrison Snow P2P Blockchain - Jack Bijeg and Nick Locasio NDCoin - Thanh Son Phung and Jack Rundle Hash Armonica - Jason Brown and Graham Fisher Peer to Peer Chat - Carlo Preciado and Kristen Friday
Dec 6th	Project Talks Among Us - Ryan Destefano and Gabriel Simoes Lag Fighters - Rafael Mendizabal and Joshua Cepeda Decentralized P2P Ring - Bryan Ingwersen and Colton Kammes Caliban - Jacob Mazur and Ben Lyons	(No Class) Final Project Due Wed at 5PM
Final Exam - Wednesday, December 15 8:00-10:00AM in 131 DeBartolo Hall