Princeton University Computer Science Dept.

Computer Science 461 Distributed Computing and Networking Spring 1999

General Information

Lectures:

TTh 9:00 - 10:20, CS Bldg. 103.

Instructor:

Larry Peterson, CS Bldg. 308, 258-6077, llp@cs, office hours by appointment.

Teaching Assistants:

Chad Mynhier, CS Bldg. 214, 258-1793, cmynhier@cs, office hours Mon & Wed 2:00-3:00, or by appointment.

Geliang Tong, CS Bldg. 415, 258-1798, tong@cs,office hours Monday 10:00-noon, or by appointment..

Required Textbook:

Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, Peterson and Davie.

Optional Textbooks:

Java in a Nutshell, Flanagan (2nd edition). You can buy this book cheaply at amazon.com.

Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design, Coulouris, Dollimore, and Kindberg (2nd edition).

Other Resources:

x-kernel documentation

cs461@princeton.edu : post questions about assignments

pu.cos.461 : announcements and discussion about class material

Accounts:

Setup and Usage

Assignments

Programming Assignments

Course Project

You may do the project as an individual, or you may work in a group of up to four students. (Larger groups will naturally be expected to do more difficult projects.) We encourage you to work in groups, since this will generally allow you to manage a more interesting project.

You will be expected to hand in a Project Proposal in class on April 13. This should be a short document that clearly describes the project you would like to do, and briefly describes the approach you will take. If you plan to do a group project, the entire group should hand in a single proposal; it should say something about how you will divide up the work among the group members.

The project is due on May 11. It must be completed on time.

Submitting Assignments

     /u/cs461/bin/submit number files

     /u/cs461/bin/submit 31 readme makefile main.c strings.c

The submit command copies your files to the directory /u/cs461/submit/login/number and lists all the files that you have submitted for assignment number. login is your user account name. If you execute submit after the assignment deadline, your files are placed in directory number-late. You can run submit more than once, and you can submit partial lists of files.

There's also an unsubmit command that allows you to undo a submit of one or more files. For example,

     /u/cs461/bin/unsubmit 31 main.c

Submissions must include a file named index.html that contains a brief description of your solution and its modification history. (It may include links to other files that you submit, or to the on-line course documentation.) It should describe your high-level design, the design decisions you faced, the tradeoffs you made, and a brief justification for your decisions. It should also include information about testing your code, if you want the TAs to be able to evaluate problems if your code does not pass their test suites. (If you have specific scripts you use to test the code, submit those as well.) This will be used to guide the TAs in evaluating your submissions.

The index.html file need not be fancy, as long as it conveys the necessary information clearly. We won't grade you on the beauty of your HTML writeup. The only requirement is that the index.html file be viewable with a standard Web browser. You may choose to submit several .html files connected by hyperlinks; it's up to you.

Grading

Undergraduates

• programming assignments: 40%
• course project: 20%
• midterm exam: 15%
• final exam: 25%

Graduate students

• A description of the project
• A time-line of what will be done when (2-3 weeks per action item)
• If there are multiple students involved, you should indicate which student is doing what.
• A description of deliverables -- how will you show you are done?

The half-hour oral exam will be scheduled during the final-exam period and will cover the full semester's material.

Undergraduates who might wish to pursue this option will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Undergrads must still take the written exams, and the project will count for 60% of the grade, in lieu of homeworks and a shorter project. See the instructor for approval.

Grads who do not wish to choose this option can simply submit the homeworks and take the exams.

Policies

Attendance

Exams

Collaboration

Do not, under any circumstances, copy another person's program. Writing code for use by another or using another's code in any form is academic fraud and will be dealt with harshly. You are also responsible for ensuring that the code you write for the assignments is not readable by others.

Due Dates & Late Work

Assignments turned in late will be graded according to the following formula: S = R min(.95, exp(-t/c)), where S is the grade given, R is the grade the work would have gotten if turned in on time, t is the amount of time by which the work was late, and c is equal to three days. Thus, the value of a late assignment decays exponentially, with a half-life of just over two days, but with a minimum of a 5% penalty. Examples: work turned in five minutes late gets 95% credit, one hour late gets 95% credit, six hours late gets 92.0% credit, one day late gets 71.7% credit, three days late gets 36.8%, and one week late gets 9.7%. If the code is turned in completely on time but the documentation is late, only half the penalty will be assessed as long as the TA has not yet begun to grade the assignment.
 

Facilities

Students who have already registered for this course should already have their accounts. Students who had accounts in past semesters will have the same login (userid) and password. Other students must go to the CIT Clinic at 87 Prospect to set their password. Students taking several courses using CIT facilities will have one account and their disk quota will be the sum of the disk quotas for all courses.

Acknowledgements