CS 638: Multimedia Networking and Operating Systems

Spring 2005

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/fahmy/cs638s05/

Overview:

This course explores the latest developments and open research issues in multimedia networking and operating systems. Special emphasis will be given to research areas where there has been a lot of recent activity in the Internet and telecommunications communities. The topics to be covered (tentatively) include:

Multimedia formats and compression

Multimedia network traffic characteristics and measurements

Network resource management (e.g., bandwidth, buffers) for multimedia traffic

Congestion control for multimedia traffic

End system resource management and scheduling (e.g., CPU and disk scheduling)

Synchronization and content (e.g., image) processing

Multicasting at the network layer and at the application layer

Peer-to-peer systems and content distribution

Multimedia applications

Multimedia in wireless and sensor networks

Security problems and protocols.

Objectives:

Upon completion of this course, students will grasp multimedia networking and operating systems concepts and problems, and recently proposed solutions.

Each student will choose to either (i) write an original survey paper on a topic of his/her choice, or (ii) conduct an implementation/simulation/analysis research project and write a short report describing it. The students will give brief presentations on their projects. Students can choose to work alone or in teams of 2 to 3.

Click here for the list of suggested projects and the project plan format

In addition to the project, students will present some of the assigned papers. The presentation should discuss the main ideas of the paper, in addition to pointing out their significance, applications, limitations, and relationship to other work.

Readings:

Assigned from the literature. These will either be important or recent papers in top networking and operating systems conferences, journals, and magazines, and a few Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or forum documents.

Click here for the list of papers and course schedule

Since one of the main aims of this course is to discuss papers, everyone is expected to read them by their assigned dates and be prepared to discuss them in depth. This means you should read the assigned papers critically and carefully, paying special attention to novel results, potential applications, and possible flaws.

Click here for the slides and anonymized reviews (password protected)

There are a number of general networking, operating systems, and performance analysis books that you will find useful, most of which you can borrow from the library or from my office. I can recommend specific books based upon your background in networking/operating systems. There are also some good tutorials in my office and online.

The following books are highly recommended: