Advanced Topics in
Communication Networks Fall 2021

Networked Systems Group

This course covers advanced topics and technologies in computer networks, both theoretically and practically. In the Fall 2021, the course will cover advanced topics in Internet routing and forwarding.

The goal for this course is to provide students with a deeper understanding of existing and upcoming Internet routing and forwarding technologies used in large-scale computer networks such as Internet Service Providers (e.g., Swisscom or Deutsche Telekom), Content Delivery Networks (e.g., Netflix) and Data Centers (e.g., Google).

Besides covering the fundamentals, the course will be “hands-on” and will enable students to play with the technologies in realistic network environments, and even implement some of them on their own during labs and a final group project.

News

Sept 16 The semester is about to start, and we are super excited to kick it off with you next Tuesday
If you intend to take the course, please already join the dedicated team in Microsoft Teams.

Important To be able to join the team, you must have an MS Cloud subscription from ETH.
Here are the instructions to get one if you don't have it already.
If you are not an ETH student, please contact us .
Jul 26 Website for the Fall 2021 course edition goes live. Please stay tuned for more contents.
If you are interested in the lecture contents from last year, click here

Contact

Professor. Laurent Vanbever

Assistants

  • Romain Jacob   Head TA
  • Edgar Costa Molero
  • Alexander Dietmüller
  • Albert Gran Alcoz
  • Roland Meier
  • Ege Cem Kirci
  • Jurij Nota
  • Leonardo Rodoni

Research group. Networked Systems

MS Teams

Questions?

Location & time

Lecture
Tuesday 2:15 pm–4 pm in ML E 12

Exercise sessions
Tuesday 4:15 pm–6 pm in ML E 12

Content

The course will cover advanced topics in Internet routing and forwarding such as:

  • Tunneling
  • Hierarchical routing
  • Traffic Engineering and Load Balancing
  • Virtual Private Networks
  • Quality of Service/Queuing/Scheduling
  • IP Multicast
  • Fast Convergence
  • Network virtualization
  • Network programmability (OpenFlow, P4)
  • Network measurements

Prerequisites

  • Communication Networks (227-0120-00L), Computer Networks (252-0064-00L) or equivalents.
  • Good programming skills (in any language) are expected as both the exercises and the final project will involve coding.

Performance assessment

  • 6 ECTS credits
  • 60% of the final grade will be based on the final (written) exam, while the remaining 40% will be based on one graded group project (as a continuous performance assessment task). The project will start around week 3-5. Students repeating the course must decide at the beginning of the semester if they want to keep their previous project grade and inform the instructor accordingly.

We will add the lecture materials (slides, recordings, exercises) here when the lecture starts.

If you are interested in the materials from previous lectures, check out the website from 2020