BSc: Distributed And Network Programming

Distributed and Network Programming

• Course name: Distributed and Network Programming
• Course number: XYZ
• Knowledge area: xxx

Course characteristics

Key concepts of the class

• Network programming concepts: Layered architecture, TCP and UDP sockets, multithreaded servers
• Distributed systems concepts: system architecture, inter-process communication, remote procedure calls, peer-to-peer systems, coordination, replication, and fault tolerance.

What is the purpose of this course?

Distributed and networked systems have become an integral part of our life, we use various applications such as chatting, online transactions, or cloud storage apps. All these popular applications are supported by an infrastructure (of servers) that is organized based on some concepts of distributed systems. The purpose of this course is to provide the students with the necessary concepts, models, and real-world problem-solving techniques of network programming and distributed systems.

Course Objectives Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy

What should a student remember at the end of the course?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to recognize and define

• Concepts of network programming
• Different distributed system architectures
• Various synchronization and coordination techniques
• Different consistency models and replication methods
• Approaches to achieve fault tolerance and security in distributed systems

What should a student be able to understand at the end of the course?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to describe and explain (with examples)

• Difference between different transport protocols, when and why one is preferred over another
• Difference between different distributed system architectures (centralized, decentralized, and hybrid)
• How a mutual exclusion is achieved between concurrent servers (centralized, distributed, token-ring, and decentralized)
• How a new leader is elected in peer-to-peer systems (bully, ring)
• How to achieve a consistent replicas across distributed systems (consistency models and protocols, content replication and placement)
• Some methods to achieve the fault tolerance in distributed systems

What should a student be able to apply at the end of the course?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to apply

• Building a custom application protocols on top of the existing transport protocols
• Writing multithreaded server and client apps with sockets
• Using RPC for inter-process communication: command execution, file transfer
• Building peer-to-peer systems with distributed protocol such as Chord
• Building fault-tolerant systems with failure detection and leader election

Course evaluation

Course grade breakdown

Component	Points
Laboratory assignments	55%
Final exam	35%
Attendance	10%

Important: In order to successfully finish the course, the student is required to score at least 50% in final exam.

Grades range

Course grading range

A. Excellent	90-100
B. Good	75-89
C. Satisfactory	60-74
D. Poor	0-59

Resources and reference material

• Textbook: Maarten Van Steen, and Andrew S. Tanenbaum. Distributed systems (3rd Edition) Leiden, The Netherlands: Maarten van Steen, 2017. Available online: https://www.distributed-systems.net/
• Reference: George F. Coulouris, Jean Dollimore, and Tim Kindberg. Distributed systems: concepts and design (5th Edition) Addision Wesley, 2012. Available online: https://www.cdk5.net/wp/
• Reference: Sukumar Ghosh. Distributed systems: an algorithmic approach (2nd Edition) Chapman&Hall /CRC, Author’s own course material, Spring 2015. Available online: http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~ghosh/16615.html

Course Sections

The course is organized in 8 weeks, with every weeks 4 academics hours of lectures and 4 academic hours of tutorials/labs. The main sections of the course and approximate hour distribution between them is as follows:

Course Sections

Section	Section Title	Teaching Hours
1	Introduction to subject, network programming, threading	12
2	distributed system architecture, inter-process communication, and remote procedure calls	24
3	Coordination, consistency, and replication in distributed systems	24
4	Fault tolerance and security in distributed systems	30

Section 1

Section title: Introduction to subject, network programming, threading

Topics covered in this section

• General introduction to the course
• Computer networks basic
• Socket programming
• UDP socket programming
• TCP socket programming
• Multithreaded socket programming

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

	Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code	1
Homework and group projects	1
Midterm evaluation	0
Testing (written or computer based)	1
Reports	0
Essays	0
Oral polls	1
Discussions	1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. Explain the difference between an include file and a library.
2. Is a parameter of a macro a “real” parameter?
3. Discuss the importance of the conditional compilation.
4. What happens when a function returning a pointer returns the address of a local variable?
5. Detail the meaning of the keyword static and external for supporting information hiding.
6. Describe how the use of virtual functions can make the code more flexible.

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. Given a source .c file including a .h header file, show the results of preprossing in terms of the generated c file.
2. Write a macro and a function in C for the same purpose and discuss pros and cons of both approaches.
3. Show how you can write a generic swap function as a macro.
4. Write the code allocating dynamic memory for a 2 dimensional array and initializing it.
5. Provide an example of how with pointers it is possible in the called function to alter values of variable located in the calling function.
6. Using function pointers, write a sorting function having the sorting rule as a parameter of such function.

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. Discuss the difference in the compiled code when using function and when using macros instead.
2. Provide examples of functions that cannot be transformed into macros, also discussing the motivation for such impossibility.
3. Describe the rules for scope and extent for local variables, static variables (in all cases), and pointers, supplying also code examples of them.
4. Detail the structure of the address space of a process when using a three dimensional array allocated as a local variable of a function and when such array is allocated dynamically, also describe the types of the variables in use and how the compiler checks them.
5. Outline the assembly code for a function calling another function passed as a parameter of it.

Administrative details

• Faculty: Computer Science and Engineering
• Year of instruction: 4th year of BS
• Semester of instruction: 2nd semester
• No. of Credits: 4 ECTS
• Total workload on average: 144 hours overall
• Frontal lecture hours: 2 per week
• Frontal tutorial hours: 2 per week
• Lab hours: 2 per week
• Individual lab hours: 0
• Frequency: weekly throughout the semester
• Grading mode: letters: A, B, C, D

Prerequisites

• Introduction to Programming I
• Introduction to Programming II
• Operating Systems
• Networks

Course outline

This course focuses on the programming aspects of computer networks. Students will understand the current trends in communication protocols, socket programming and interprocess communication. Network programming will be covered for what concerns both wired networks and wireless networks.

Expected learning outcomes

• Understanding issues in concurrent network applications
• Understand issues in implementing client/server systems using distributed programming techniques
• Implementing multithreaded client/server applications

Expected acquired core competences

• Network programming
• Socket programming
• Client/Server applications
• Peer to peer network programming

Textbook

Reference material

• Lecturing and lab slides and material will be provided
• Several resources are available online and will be pointed during the course

Required computer resources

Students should have laptops.