Advanced Topics in
Communication Networks Fall 2024

 Lecture    Introduction, Course organization. Building scalable networks (Part 1)

• Introduction (Transcript)
• Building Scalable Networks, Part 1 (Transcript)

Exercise   None this week. Start in week 2.

 Lecture    Building scalable networks (Part 2)

• Slides (Transcript)

Exercise  

• Assignment ( Solutions )

Extra readings

• iBGP Deceptions: More Sessions, Fewer Routes. Vissicchio et al., IEEE INFOCOM, 2012
• Using routers to build logic circuits: How powerful is BGP? Chiesa et al., IEEE ICNP, 2013
• Network Recovery. Protection and Restoration of Optical, SONET-SDH, IP, and MPLS. Vasseur et al., 2004 (Check Section 4.14 "Incremental Dijkstra" for a more in-depth description of iSPF. Free access from within the ETH network!)
• Constructing optimal IP routing tables. Draves et al., IEEE INFOCOMM, 1999. (Introduces the ORTC algorithm.)
• On the Aggregatability of Router Forwarding Tables. Liu et al., IGI Global, 2014 (Introduces the 4 level of aggregability.)
• SMALTA: Practical and Near-Optimal FIB Aggregation. Uzmi et al., ACM CoNEXT, 2011 (ORTC, with updatability in mind.)
• Scaling the Internet Routing System Through Distributed Route Aggregation. Sobrinho et al., IEEE/ACM TON, 2016 (Introduces DRAGON.)
• On the Correctness of IBGP Configuration. Griffin and Wilfong, ACM SIGCOMM, 2002 (Proves the complexity of checking iBGP configuration correctness alongside with propose 2 sufficient conditions for ensuring it.)

 Lecture    Fast convergence and MPLS

• Slides (Transcript: Fast Convergence, MPLS)

Exercise  

• Assignment ( Solutions )

Extra readings

• Achieving Sub-Second IGP Convergence in Large IP Networks. Francois et al. ACM SIGCOMM CCR, 2005
• Basic Specification for IP Fast Reroute: Loop-Free Alternates. Atlas and Zini. IETF RFC 5286, 2020
• Remote Loop-Free Alternate (LFA) Fast Reroute (FRR). Bryant et al. IETF RFC 57490, 2015
• Blink: Fast Connectivity Recovery Entirely in the Data Plane. Holterbach et al. USENIX NSDI, 2019
• FAst in-network GraY failure detection for ISPs. Costa Molero et al. ACM SIGCOMM, 2022

 Lecture    Data-plane programmability (Part 1)

• Slides (Transcript)

Exercise   Building a L2 switch using P4

• README

Extra readings

• P4 Language and Related Specifications
• P4 Learning. A compilation of useful resources for data plane programming made and maintained by our group.
• Aggregate-Based Congestion Control for Pulse-Wave DDoS Defense. Gran Alcoz et al. ACM SIGCOMM, 2022
• FAst in-network GraY failure detection for ISPs. Costa Molero et al. ACM SIGCOMM, 2022
• SP-PIFO: Approximating Push-In First-Out Behaviors using Strict-Priority Queues. Gran Alcoz et al. USENIX NSDI, 2020
• Blink: fast connectivity recovery entirely in the data plane. Holterbach et al. USENIX NSDI, 2019
• ditto: WAN Traffic Obfuscation at Line Rate. Meier et al. NDSS, 2022
• Hardware-Accelerated Network Control Planes. Costa Molero et al. ACM HotNets, 2018

 Lecture    Data-plane programmability (Part 2)

• Slides (We'll finish 04_p4.pdf)

Exercise   Load balancing in P4

• README

Extra readings

• Programming the Forwarding Plane. Nick McKeown. (Explains the genesis of data-plane programmability and what enabled it hardware-wise.)
• Programmable Data Plane at Terabit Speeds. Vladimir Gurevich, 2017 (Complements the presentation just above with some more details about the Tofino platform.)
• Design Principles for Packet Parsers, Gibb et al., ANCS, 2013 (Explains in details how to build a programmable parser, a key building block of a programmable switch.)

 Lecture    Network measurements (Part 1)

• Slides

Exercise   Network tomography

• Assignment ( Solutions )

Extra readings

• Network neutrality inference. Zhang et al., ACM SIGCOMM, 2014
• SIMON: A Simple and Scalable Method for Sensing, Inference and Measurement in Data Center Networks. Geng et al., USENIX NSDI, 2019

 Lecture    Network measurements (Part 2) + Network verification (Part 1)

• Slides
• Verification Slides

Exercise   AS-level topology inference

• Assignment ( Solutions )

Extra readings

• Stable Internet routing without global coordination. Gao et al. ACM SIGMETRICS '00.
• AS relationships, customer cones, and validation. Luckie et al. ACM IMC, 2013.
• Modeling on quicksand: dealing with the scarcity of ground truth in interdomain routing data. Gill et al. ACM SIGCOMM CCR, 2012.
• What is the next hop to more granular routing models? Kirci et al. ACM Hotnets, 2024.
• A General Approach to Network Configuration Verification. Beckett et al. ACM SIGCOMM, 2017.

 Lecture    Network verification (Part 2)

• Slides

Exercise   Building a simple (but functional!) network verifier

• README ( Solutions)

Extra readings

• A General Approach to Network Configuration Verification. Beckett et al. ACM SIGCOMM, 2017
• Metha: Network Verifiers Need To Be Correct Too! Birkner et al. USENIX NSDI, 2021
• Probabilistic Verification of Network Configurations. Steffen et al. ACM SIGCOMM, 2020
• Program Synthesis by Sketching. Armando Solar Lezama, Ph.D dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2008.
• Syntax Guided Synthesis. Rajeev Alur et al., IEEE FMCAD'13.
• Network-wide Configuration Synthesis. Ahmed El-Hassany et al., CAV'17.
• NetComplete: Practical Network-Wide Configuration Synthesis with Autocompletion. Ahmed El-Hassany et al., NSDI'18.
• Learning to Configure Computer Networks with Neural Algorithmic Reasoning. Luca Beurer-Kellner et al., NeuroIPS'22.
• On the Complexity of Network-Wide Configuration Synthesis. Tibor Schneider et al., ICNP'22.
• Config2Spec: Mining Network Specifications from Network Configurations. Rüdiger Birkner et al., NSDI '20.
• Snowcap: Synthesizing Network-Wide Configuration Updates. Tibor Schneider et al., SIGCOMM '21.
• Taming the transient while reconfiguring BGP. Tibor Schneider et al., SIGCOMM '23.

 Lecture    Routing algebras

• Slides

Exercise   Routing algebras

• Assignment ( Solutions )

Extra readings

• An algebraic theory of dynamic network routing J. L. Sobrinho.
• Scaling the Internet Routing System Through Distributed Route Aggregation J. L. Sobrinho, L. Vanbever, F. Le, A. Sousa, and J. Rexford.
• Optimal Routing for Quantum Networks M. Caleffi.
• Path Problems in Networks J. S. Baras and G. Theodorakopoulos. (Different instances of the algebraic path problem, notation differs slightly from the lecture)

 Lecture    Transport protocols

• Slides

Exercise   Evaluating and comparing transport protocols

• Assignment (and solutions)

Extra readings

• CUBIC: A New TCP-Friendly High-Speed TCP Variant
• RFC 8684: TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with Multiple Addresses
• RFC 9000: QUIC: A UDP-Based Multiplexed and Secure Transport

 Lecture    Congestion control

• Slides

Exercise   Analyzing congestion control

• Assignment

Extra readings

• Bufferbloat: Dark Buffers in the Internet
• HPCC: High Precision Congestion Control
• Data center TCP (DCTCP)
• Homa: A Receiver-Driven Low-Latency Transport Protocol Using Network Priorities
• BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control
• Congestion Control in Machine Learning Clusters
• Sammy: smoothing video traffic to be a friendly internet neighbor

 Lecture    Network security

• Slides

Exercise   Defending against DDoS attacks

• README ( Solutions )

Extra readings

• The Age of DDoScovery: An Empirical Comparison of Industry and Academic DDoS Assessments, Hiesgen et al., IMC 2024.
• Could you clean up the Internet with a Pit of Tar? Investigating tarpit feasibility on Internet worms, Griffioen et al., IEEE SP 2023.
• BGP Flowspec Doesn't Suck. We're Just Using it Wrong, J. Ryburn, NANOG 2024.
• Aggregate-Based Congestion Control for Pulse-Wave DDoS Defense, Gran Alcoz et al., ACM SIGCOMM 2022.

 Lecture    Sustainable networking (Part 1)

• Slides

No Exercise

 Lecture    Sustainable networking (Part 2)

• Slides

Exercise   Proportionality and power saving energy in the Switch networks

• README

Disclaimer!
Please be mindful that most of the topics are new this year and therefore are not covered in previous years' exams. Also, topics in common (e.g. p4) were not necessarily covered at the same technical depth.

• 2021
• 2022 (Feb)
• 2022 (Aug)
• 2023
• 2024