Advanced Topics in
Communication Networks Fall 2022

Networked Systems Group

This course covers advanced topics and technologies in computer networks, both theoretically and practically. In the Fall 2022, 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

Mar 22 Website for the Fall 2022 course edition goes live (yes, we are early). Please stay tuned for more contents.
If you are interested in the materials from the previous years, you will find everything in the p4-learning repository on GitHub.

Contact

Professor Laurent Vanbever

Assistants

  • Romain Jacob   Coordinator
  • Albert Gran Alcoz
  • Edgar Costa Molero
  • Ege Cem Kirci
  • Roland Schmid

Research group. Networked Systems

Questions?

Location & time

Lecture TBA

Exercise sessions TBA

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 new materials (slides, recordings, labs) here when the course starts.

If you are interested in the materials from previous editions, you will find everything in the p4-learning repository on GitHub.