Lecturers:

• Asst. Prof. Anwitaman Datta
  Contact: anwitaman @ ntu (Please note that I will not check/answer emails till 9th January)

• Visiting Professor Rassul Ayani (From KTH Sweden)

Aims and objectives

This subject introduces graduate students to the advanced topics in distributed computing models, algorithms, and software systems. It deals with design issues, implementation techniques, and software tools and environments to support the implementation of distributed systems, and aims to prepare graduate students to carry out research in distributed systems. A selection of topics from the following list will be covered:

·         Principles of Distributed computing 

·         Internet and Web technologies and applications

·         Distributed simulation 

·         Grid computing

·         P2P systems

Case studies on real distributed systems will be conducted, and the recent research literature in the subject area will be reviewed.

Syllabus

Distributed System Fundamentals

• Basic concepts and models
• Distributed synchronization: clock synchronization, logical clocks, global state, distributed election and mutual exclusion

Distributed Simulation 

• Fundamentals: discrete-event simulation, synchronization, interoperability, reusability, and scalability
• Distributed simulation standards: SimNet, DIS, ALSP, and HLA/RTI
• Time management: conservative synchronization, optimistic time management, and HLA time management services
• Interests/data distribution management: region and grid-based relevant filtering, and HLA data distribution management

Grid Computing and P2P systems

• Grid computing
• Semantic web
• Structured overlays e.g., Distributed Hash Tables (DHT)
• Application Layer Multicasting
• Security issues in peer-to-peer and distributed systems
• P2P file sharing technologies
• Architectures and measurement studies of real deployed systems (like BitTorrent, Skype, ...)
• Peer-to-Peer Storage Systems

Assessment

This course is graded. Continuous assessments (no final exam) based on two project assignments and reading/presenting research papers and quizzes.
Note: Good programming skills will be necessary for the projects, however you can use whichever programming language you wish to use.

Time and Venue

Tuesdays 2:30-5:30pm, Venue: TBD