Paper Reviews (25%): You are expected to read the papers before the lecture and write a review of the paper.

Please write "constructive" reviews. Here is a rough outline.

• Summary of problem being solved (1-2 lines)
• Why is the problem interesting? Perhaps, its a new problem? Perhaps, its an old problem but with a new twist (e.g., new workloads, new environment, new hardware)? Perhaps, its just an old classical problem? (1-2 lines)
• What are the main insights in the proposed solution? What is the main technical contribution? How does the solution advance the state-of-the-art? (4-5 lines)
• Can you think of cases where the proposed solution may not work well? (4-5 lines)
• What are the next few problems that you would solve in this space? What do you think is the holy grail in this direction? (5-10 lines)

For every lecture (via email to Rachit): You will need to submit a "constructive" review for each paper in the reading list of the corresponding lecture. The deadline for submitting the review is 11:59PM of the day before the lecture. Since the objective of this class is to have constructive discussions on the assigned readings, late review submissions will not be accepted.

Paper Presentations (15%): You are expected to present 5-6 papers during the semester.

Please plan for 35 minutes. The paper presentations must provide a broad overview of the space (corresponding topic) and should cover all the compulsory and recommended readings. Here is a rough outline.

• What is the problem being solved? (2-3 slides)
• Why is the problem interesting? Perhaps, its a new problem? Perhaps, its an old problem but with a new twist (e.g., new workloads, new environment, new hardware)? Perhaps, its just an old classical problem? (1-2 slides)
• What is the most related work and how is this paper different? (3-4 slides)
• What is the main technical contribution? What are the main insights used to build the proposed solution? How does the solution advance the state-of-the-art? (2-3 slides)
• Techniques used in the paper to solve the problem (4-5 slides)
• Can you think of cases where the proposed solution may not work well? (2-3 slides)
• What are the next few problems that you would solve in this space? What do you think is the holy grail in this direction? (4-5 slides)

Slides for paper presentation (via email to Rachit) are due one week in advance. That is, for Monday lecture, you should have sent the slides to Rachit by Monday of the previous week.

Research project (50%): Students will work on research projects (either alone, or in a team of two). There are regular deadlines for the project:

• 02/01: Choose the project area (Internet, datacenter networks, cellular networks, inter-datacenter networks, etc.), and context (network software, network hardware, network algorithms, network measurements, etc.).
• 02/15: Preliminary report due: must include a problem definition, and detailed literature review on the problem.
• 03/15: Mid-term report 1 due: must extend preliminary report to include preliminary solution.
• 04/15: Mid-term report 2 due: must extend mid-term report 1 to include preliminary implementation.
• 05/15: Final report due..

Class Participation (10%): You are expected to actively participate in class discussions.