CSCI 3325
Distributed Systems
Fall 2026
Instructor: Sean Barker
The course schedule is tentative and subject to change. This page will be updated frequently to reflect the most up-to-date schedule. Chapter sections refer to the free Distributed Systems textbook.
| Date | Class | Topic | Readings | Slides | Papers | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wed | Sep 2 | 1 | Introduction, Project 0 | Ch. 1.2 | Intro Slides | |
| Mon | Sep 7 | 2 | Servers and Sockets | Ch. 3.1, 3.4.1, 4.3.1 | Server Slides | |
| Wed | Sep 9 | 3 | Sockets, Project 1 | |||
| Mon | Sep 14 | 4 | Networking Fundamentals | Ch. 4.1 | Networks Slides | |
| Wed | Sep 16 | 5 | Protocol Stack, End-to-End Argument | End-To-End Arguments In System Design (1984) | ||
| Mon | Sep 21 | 6 | Network Services | |||
| Wed | Sep 23 | 7 | Transport Layer & TCP | Transport Slides | ||
| Mon | Sep 28 | 8 | TCP Congestion Control | |||
| Wed | Sep 30 | 9 | Giant-Scale Services | Giant Slides | Lessons from Giant-Scale Internet Services (2001) | |
| Mon | Oct 5 | 10 | Giant-Scale Services, Remote Procedure Calls | Ch. 4.2, 8.3 | Rpcs Slides | |
| Wed | Oct 7 | Midterm Exam 1 | ||||
| Mon | Oct 12 | No Class: Fall Break | ||||
| Wed | Oct 14 | 11 | Remote Procedure Calls, Project 2 | |||
| Mon | Oct 19 | 12 | Naming & DNS | Ch. 5 | Naming Slides | |
| Wed | Oct 21 | 13 | Email & Porcupine | Porcupine: a Highly Scalable, Cluster-Based Mail Service (1999) | ||
| Mon | Oct 26 | 14 | Time & Clocks | Ch. 6.1-6.2 | ||
| Wed | Oct 28 | 15 | Distributed Coordination | Ch. 6.3-6.4 | ||
| Mon | Nov 2 | 16 | MapReduce, Project 3 | |||
| Wed | Nov 4 | 17 | Distributed File Systems | Ch. 2.4 (NFS) | ||
| Mon | Nov 9 | 18 | Storage Systems | |||
| Wed | Nov 11 | 19 | Peer-to-Peer Systems, Project 4 | Ch. 2.3 (P2P) | ||
| Mon | Nov 16 | Midterm Exam 2 | ||||
| Wed | Nov 18 | 20 | Replication & Fault Tolerance | |||
| Mon | Nov 23 | No Class: Thanksgiving Break | ||||
| Wed | Nov 25 | No Class: Thanksgiving Break | ||||
| Mon | Nov 30 | 21 | Clouds & Virtualization | |||
| Wed | Dec 2 | 22 | Content Distribution Networks | Ch. 7.6 | ||
| Mon | Dec 7 | 23 | Distributed Hash Tables | |||
| Wed | Dec 9 | 24 | Project Presentations | |||
| Mon | Dec 14 | 25 | Project Presentations & Wrap-up | |||