Syllabus

Instructor Dr. Hanan Lutfiyya Middlesex College 418 Ext Office Hours: Wednesday 5-6; Thursdays 4-6 or by appointment

Prerequisites CS Operating Systems CS Computer Architecture (sometimes not enforced) CS Computer Communications Networks It is expected that you have good C skills and some knowledge of makefiles. This course is an antirequisite to SE 466 (from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering)

Textbooks Required textbook u Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Maarten van Steen, Distributed Systems:Principles and Paradigms, Prentice-Hall References u G. Colouris, J. Dollimore and T. Kindberg, Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design, 3rd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2001 u J. Kurose and K. Ross, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet, Addison-Wesley, u R. Stevens, Unix Network Programming, Volume 1, Prentice-Hall u Links to web pages on various topics; man pages

Lecture Notes Lecture overheads will be available (hopefully) before each lecture. They will be available in powerpoint format.

Contact All that I send will be to your GAUL account. It is your responsibility to check your GAUL account or to forward the to another account. I will ignore from hotmail accounts and other UWO accounts unless you cc your UWO account in the message.

Student Evaluation Final Exam: 40% (April 21) Quiz: 15% (Feb 20) 3 Programming Assignments: 35% 2 Concept Assignments: 10% No makeup quiz except for religious reasons. I need two weeks warning and you must go through your Dean’s office. If you miss your quiz for a non-religious reason and present valid documentation to the Dean’s office, your Final exam mark will be reweighed to include the weight of the Quiz.

Special Note for Graduate Students Instead of concept assignments, you must complete paper reviews.

Student Evaluation To be eligible to pass the course, a student must receive at least 40% in the quiz/exam component and at least a 40% in the individual assignments. To be eligible to receive an overall grade of 60% or higher in the course, a student must receive at least 50% in the quiz/exam component and at least 50% in the individual assignments.

Assignments Three programming and two concept Concept assignments are meant to help you keep up with the material. This should be good preparation for the quiz and exam. Assignments are made available through the course web page. All assignments are due by midnight. You must submit to both the locker and electronically.

Late Assignments There is a penalty of 2^n marks, where n is the number of days late. The weekend counts as one day. Extensions will be granted only on serious medical or compassionate grounds. Extensions will NOT be given for minor illness.

Late Coupons You are given 3 “late coupons” Late coupons may be applied toward the individual assignments but not toward the group assignment. Each coupon is a one day extension. Rules u No transfer to other students u Once used, you may not receive it back u Coupons cannot be redeemed retroactively u Unused coupons are not redeemable for extra marks u Use of a late coupon does not change the final date on which an assignment will be accepted.

More Assignment Information Keep a backup! Requests for an adjustment in an assignment mark must be made within 2 weeks after the assignment is returned in class. All such requests are to be written and submitted to me. Assignments must satisfy the specifications given in the assignment description!

Course Objectives The main objective is to study the principles of distributed computing. Distributed computing is a broad subject. This course roughly focuses on the following: u Topics related to distributed system services such as support for RPCs and file systems. u Topics related to the development of reliable distributed applications. This includes socket programming, RPC, replication, election algorithms, time, consistency and security. Your programming assignments will focus on this.

Topics Communication u Network organization u Socket Programming u RPC Processes u Iterative vs. Concurrent servers u Thread Programming u Design Issues Naming Synchronization Consistence and Replication Security File Systems Distributed object-based systems (CORBA, DCOM) (time permitting)

Any Questions?

Frequently Asked Questions Will you be providing previous exams? u No Why? u This is almost the first time that I have taught the course. Can I use last year’s CS402 book and not this year’s CS402 book? u The answer is probably “yes”, but I think this year’s book is better written which is one of the reasons it was chosen. This course seems to be a heavy load. Is it? u We will find out