BSc: Distributed And Network Programming

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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: 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: http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~ ghosh/16615.html

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.

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