CPSC 601.38 Performance Issues in High Speed Networks
Course Project Requirements

The course project in CPSC 601.38 requires students to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of some important aspect of high-speed networks and/or network performance. Your project accounts for a significant portion (50%) of your final grade for the course, and thus should represent a month or two of significant independent research effort. Projects are to be done individually, of course.

The project should take the form of a research paper, similar to those found in the published networking literature. (Of course, there is no requirement that your paper be publishable!) The research paper should present your own (novel) research results on a relevant network performance issue or problem. Results may be obtained analytically, through simulation, or experimentally through direct performance measurement of an existing system or implementation. The paper should be 15-18 pages in length, including abstract, figures, tables, and bibliography. Use a reasonable word processing package, a readable font size, and single-column formatting.

A lot of background reading may be required to do a good research paper on a given topic, and should be reflected in your bibliography. Note, however, that it is NOT sufficient to do just a SURVEY PAPER. Creativity, originality, and your own contribution are also required. This may involve applying previously known approaches to new network data or scenarios, or applying new approaches or analyses to previously studied data or scenarios, or new approaches to new problems entirely.

Project topics are to be mutually agreed upon between you and me. Topics of your own choosing are preferred, but if you are stuck for ideas, I can offer several suggestions, and point you to relevant literature. Several possible project ideas are included below. In any event, put your thinking caps on, and discuss your idea(s) with me as soon as possible.

Deadlines

The timetable for project requirements is as follows:

  • by Thursday, February 13 (4:00pm): hand in (or email to me) a one page project proposal. The proposal should describe your planned project, identifying its purpose, the problem being addressed, its importance, and your proposed approach. This proposal will be my record of what you are working on. Informal feedback will be provided on the scope and suitability of your proposed project, though the project proposal itself will not be marked. Small deviations from the proposed project at a later stage are not a problem, but substantial changes in direction should be discussed with me first.
  • by Friday, April 18 (4:00pm): hand in (or email to me) the completed research paper. Projects involving significant implementation effort can be accompanied by documentation and (where appropriate) a demo, if desired.

    • Project Suggestions

    You are encouraged to come up with your own original project idea. If you are stuck, here is a list of several possible topics to get some ideas flowing:

    Network traffic measurements and analysis:

  • Internet traffic measurements (tcpdump)
  • Wireless LAN traffic measurements
  • Video traffic measurements
  • Web server performance measurements/analysis

    Traffic modeling techniques:

  • Multi-fractal traffic modeling using semi-random cascades
  • Wavelet-based traffic modeling/forecasting
  • Traffic multiplexing/demultiplexing effects in ATM networks
  • Internet flow calculus

    Congestion control:

  • Evaluation of Connection Admission Control (CAC) schemes
  • Evaluation of Available Bit Rate (ABR) traffic control schemes
  • Effective bandwidth estimation techniques
  • Interaction of nested rate-based and window-based flow control

    Routing:

  • Quality of Service routing
  • Pre-emptive routing
  • Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)
  • Multi-Protocol Lambda Switching (MPLS)
  • Mobile IP
  • Multicast routing
  • Scalable reliable multicast (SRM)
  • Multi-hop ad hoc networks

    Quality of Service issues:

  • Buffer management schemes for QoS fairness
  • Cell scheduling disciplines
  • Traffic isolation effects of per-VC queueing
  • Traffic policing functions in ATM switches
  • Network provisioning

    Trends and technologies:

  • DiffServ (Differentiated Services) Internet
  • IntServ (Integrated Services) Internet
  • Optical internets
  • Wireless networking
  • Internet scalability
  • Network security
  • Intrusion detection
  • Grid computing
  • Electronic commerce
  • Mobile commerce
  • Peer-to-peer networking

    Experiments/Simulation/Emulation:

  • RealMedia video/audio streaming
  • Wireless PDA networking
  • Wavelength assignment strategies for WDM networks
  • Web server performance with dynamic content
  • TCP SACK performance

    Web performance:

  • Web server response time analysis and modeling
  • Hierarchical versus distributed caching architectures
  • Web proxy placement problem
  • Web cluster load balancing issues
  • Parallel TCP connections: friend or foe?

    Back to Course Home Page