Professor: John Heidemann
Class location: tbd (it will bein one of the OHE studios) Time: 10:00 to 11:50 Mondays and Wednesdays.
Office hours: Monday: 1:30pm to 3pm, or by appointment location: GCS basement B, room tbd.
- All CSci551/651 students in my section are required to fill out the 551/651 web information form before the second class.
- The primary web site for this class will be my CSci551/651 moodle (moodle is an open source course management system) like Brightspace or Blackboard.
- DEN manages video lectures at their d2l website for this class (link TBD)
- CSci551/651 requires that students have studied operating systems and networking at the undergraduate level. This requirement turns into two pre-requisites:
- OS: CS350 or CS402 or undergrad equivalent from elsewhere*
- network: EE450 or CS353 or undergrad equivalent from elsewhere*. The EE dept. offers a placement exam
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- “undergrad equivalent from elsewhere” means an equivalent course to the USC ones. To verify you have an equivalent course, please share your course title, location, semester and year, professor, textbook, and grade with me.
- if you want to review, some good undergaduate textbooks:
- in operating systems: Operating Systems Design and Implementation by Tanenbaum and Woodhaul (brought you Minix), Operating Systems: Three Easy Peices by Arpaci-Dusseau and Arpaci-Dusseau (PDF is free, or buy the book), Operating System Concepts by Silbersnatz, Galvin, and Gagne.
- in networking: Computer Networking: a Top Down Approach by Kurose and Ross, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach by Peterson and Davies, or Computer Networksby Tanenbaum and Wetherall
- Consistent with the FA2017 semester’s policy, we will admit someone who definintely meets one of those requirements and who also has the knoweldge of the other. We will plan a first week quiz and programming exercise to help students self-assess if they understand this material.
- CSci651 also requires that you be in a PhD program, or that you talk to the instructor.
- For D-Clearances:
- For CSci551 D-Clearance: log in to MyViterbi, click on “D-Clearance and Pre-Requisite Waiver Request Manager”, and request CSci551.
- For CSci651 D-Clearance: e-mail your graduate advisor.
- Remember, PhD Students must take CSci651; MS students may take CSci651 if they want, but it wil have slightly different work than CSci551, and you should e-mail me.
- Please talk to your graduate advisor if you have questions, or talk to me if necessary.
- If you want to contact me about D-Clearance, please include relevant information: (1) which of the pre-reqs did you have? (2) if they were not at USC, please share int info I requested above (course title, location, semester and year, professor, textbook, your grade). (3) if you didn’t have a course, where/how did you acquire the equivalent background? In general, I’m willing to admit students who want to take the course, but please recognize that the course moves fast and if you’re not prepared, you are unlikely to get the grade that you want.
- Until the FA2025 syllabus is available, you may find the FA2024 syllabus a guide that approximates what this year’s syllabus will be.
- Starting in Fall 2015 USC has split the beginning graduate-level networking course, CSci551, Computer Communications, into two course numbers: CSci551 and CSci651. CSci651 is targeted at PhD students, but MS students are allowed to attend with instructors permission and the expectation that class will move very quickly and will feature individualized, research-targeted projects. (MS students with specialization in networking are encouraged to attend.) CSci551 is targeted at MS students and will feature a class-wide project. Both courses have a similar syllabus and are 4 units. In general, we expect CSci651 to be offered about once a year and CSci551 every semester, although not always. The primary differene between the sections is CSci651 has a research project, while CSci551 has a practical project.
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We will begin lecture on first day class, including discussing the papers for that day (listed below). Students are strongly encouraged to download the papers for the first day and read them before coming to class. (For classes after the first day, reading the papers before-hand is required.)
The first four papers are publicly available on the web:
- The remainder of the papers will be available only through the moodle.