CSEP 590A: Distributed Systems
Spring 2006

Overview

This course concerns the theory and practice of building secure, robust, efficient and evolvable distributed systems. Distributed systems are appearing at all granularities, from planetary scale web services such as Akamai, Ebay and Google, to distributed databases for managing multibillion dollar businesses, to massively parallel multiplayer games, to large scale sensor networks. In each case, there is a need for a deep understanding of fundamental principles if we are to achieve the desired system-level properties.

Course Information

Instructor:

Tom Anderson (tom AT cs...)

TA:

Kate Deibel (deibel AT cs...)

Time:

Wednesdays 6:30 - 9:30

Location:

EE1 037

Mailing List:

csep590a AT cs...

Office Hours:

by appointment

Readings

• Research papers (listed and linked in the syllabus.)
• Reliable Distributed Systems by Kenneth Birman

  This book is an extended position paper on how distributed systems should be constructed, rather than a classic textbook survey. Since it can be a bit high level, if you find you need more details of the underlying mechanisms, try Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms by Tanenbaum and van Steen.

Podcasting

The lectures for this course will be available through podcasting.

• Podcast Archive (UWNetID-required)
• Subscription Information
• Podcasting FAQ

Grading

The grades for the course will be based on the following distributions:

Important Dates

Accessibility Info

If you require academic accommodations, please contact Disability Resources for Students, 448 Schmitz, 543-8924 (TTY: 543-8925). They will give you a letter requesting academic accommodations. Please present the letter to the instructor and we will make the accommodations that you need for class.