Lecture Materials

Slides, readings, and related lecture material will appear here gradually throughout the semester.

1. Introduction and Overview (1 week)
   Course outline. Administrative details. Course objectives. Examples. Background basics in statistics and probability.
   Slides: Perf Eval Overview (PPT, 90 KB) Probability Review (PPT, 50 KB)
   Examples: Random Variate Generation (C)
2. Analytical methods (3 weeks)
   Markov chains. Erlang formula. Basic queueing theory. Stability requirements. Open queueing networks. Closed queueing networks. Mean value analysis. Approximate MVA. Asymptotic analysis. Fluid modeling. Petri nets. Stochastic reward nets.
   Slides: Markov Chains (PPT, 50 KB) Queueing Theory (PPT, 70 KB) More Queueing Theory (PPT, 72 KB) Petri Nets (PPT, 40 KB) Fluid Modeling (PPT, 520 KB)
   Examples: Erlang B Formula Calculation (C) M/M/1 Queue Simulation (C) Open Queueing Network (xls) Closed Queueing Network (xls)
3. Simulation methods (3 weeks)
   Time-driven simulation. Discrete-event simulation. ns-2. Monte Carlo simulation. Fluid simulation. Rare-event simulation. Parallel and distributed simulation issues. Random number generation. Simulation verification and validation.
   Slides: Simulation (PPT, 70 KB) Random Number Generation (PPT, 60 KB) Simulation Validation (PPT, 40 KB) Statistical Inference (PPT, 50 KB) ns-2 Network Simulator (PPT, 52 KB)
   Examples: Linear Congruential Generator (C) Random Charitable Donations (C) Bernouilli Charitable Donations (C) Chi-Square Testing (C) Avg (C) iat (C) Bucket Analysis (C) 1-D Grid Test (C) 2-D Grid Test (C) 3-D Grid Test (C) Poisson Distribution Testing (pdf) TCPdemo (tcl) Webdemo (tcl) Web workload (tcl)
4. Experimental methods (2 weeks)
   Experimental design. Empirical measurement. Instrumentation. Prototyping. Benchmarking. Internet measurement. Network emulation. Statistical methods. Analysis of variance. Presentation and analysis of results.
   Slides: Experimental Design (PPT, 60 KB) Network Measurement (PPT, 115 KB) Self-Similar Traffic Modeling (PPT, 115 KB) Results Analysis and Presentation (PPT, 54 KB)
   Examples: Taxis Paper (PDF, 130 KB) Taxis Slides (PPT, 1.4 MB)
   file1.dat file2.dat file3.dat file4.dat file5.dat file6.dat file7.dat file8.dat file9.dat file10.dat
   questions.pdf all10.gnuplot
   file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf file4.pdf file5.pdf file6.pdf file7.pdf file8.pdf file9.pdf file10.pdf
5. Student Presentations (3 weeks)
   Presentation and discussion of selected papers from the current research literature, featuring performance evaluation studies of enterprise systems, media streaming, peer-to-peer systems, Web-based systems, and wireless networks.
6. Final Topics (1 week)
   Tuesday April 13: P2P vs ISP paper from IFIP Performance 2007 (slides)
   Thursday April 15: Discuss performance evaluation conferences and journals; course evaluations