Alan Kaminsky Department of Computer Science Rochester Institute of Technology 4486 + 2220 = 6706
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Advanced Computer Networks 4005-741-01 Fall Quarter 2009
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4005-741-01 Advanced Computer Networks
Team Project

Prof. Alan Kaminsky -- Fall Quarter 2009
Rochester Institute of Technology -- Department of Computer Science

Team Formation
Research Investigation
Literature Search
Team Reports
Team Presentation 1
Team Presentation 1 Grading
Team Presentation 2
Team Presentation 2 Grading
Team Deliverables
Team Deliverables Grading
Absences
Late Submissions
Plagiarism


Team Formation

Half of the graded work throughout the course will be done in a two- or three-person team. You get to pick your own partners. You must do the following by 11:59pm Monday 14-Sep-2009:

  1. Pick your partners. I would strongly prefer three persons on each team. I will accept two persons on a team if necessary; for example, if the number of students in the class is not divisible by 3.

  2. Pick a name for your team.

  3. Set up a web site for your team. You may use the web site in your CS account (public_html directory). Initially, the web site should just list the team name and the team members.

  4. Send me an email giving the team name, the names of the team members, the email addresses of the team members, and the URL of the team web site.

Team formation is worth 4% of your final course grade. If you complete the above steps by the deadline, you will get 4%. Otherwise, you will get 0%; furthermore, I will assign you arbitrarily chosen partners.


Research Investigation

You will do a research investigation to answer this question: "If a network becomes congested, is it better to drop packets or to re-route packets?" I am deliberately leaving this question somewhat vague. Part of your assignment is to decide specifically what this question means and how you will investigate it.

You must do the following:

  1. Do a literature search to find research papers relevant to the topic.
  2. Formulate a precise, testable hypothesis.
  3. Build a simulation program or programs.
  4. Run your simulation program(s) and collect data.
  5. Analyze your data to determine if your hypothesis was proven or refuted.
  6. Do two oral presentations of your work in class.
  7. Submit a written final report of your investigation as well as other deliverables.


Literature Search

You must do a literature search and identify a minimum of three research papers in the topic area. The papers must be dated 1999 or later (i.e., within the past ten years). The papers must be published in refereed archival research journals or conference proceedings -- that is, in publications aimed at researchers. You will analyze these three research papers and present your analyses in class.

For help with your literature search, take a look at the "Information Sources for Primary Research," use the resources on the Wallace Library's web site for the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, or contact the College's specialist reference librarian, Roman Koshykar (see the web site).

Not every magazine published by the IEEE or ACM carries original research papers. Publications titled Transactions on ... or Proceedings of the Conference on ... generally do carry original research papers. Publications titled Journal of ... may or may not carry original research papers. ACM Computing Surveys does not carry original research papers, rather it carries articles that survey others' work. Magazines like IEEE Computer, IEEE Network, and Communications of the ACM do not carry original research papers. While these magazines' articles superficially resemble research papers in format, these articles are generally aimed at a broad audience including practitioners and casual readers, not primarily researchers. You may use such articles for background material, but they are not acceptable for the original research paper that you are to analyze for this assignment. (However, such articles often include original research papers among their references.) If you have any question about whether a certain publication or article is acceptable, please ask me.


Team Reports

Each team will record its progress on the team web site and will report its progress in class. Each team will give two presentations during the course, one during Week 6, the other during Week 10, as shown on the Course Schedule. Specific dates and times for each team's presentations will be assigned later.

For each presentation, the team must prepare electronic slides (using Microsoft PowerPoint, OpenOffice Impress, or the like) and must respond to questions from the audience. All team members must participate in the presentation. The team must also post the prepared slides on the team web site, before giving the report in class, in the form of a PDF file, along with any other supporting materials. The topics to be covered in each presentation are listed below.

You will project your slides using the classroom's PC projector. You may use your computer or my computer. If you want to use my computer, be aware that I don't run Microsoft software. I can display Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files, OpenOffice Writer (document) and OpenOffice Impress (presentation) files, PostScript files, and HTML files using the Mozilla browser.


Team Presentation 1

The teams' first presentations will take place on Monday 12-Oct-2009 and Wednesday 14-Oct-2009. You will have 50 minutes for your presentation. Cover the following topics:

Your presentation must be posted on your team web site before the class session in which you give your report, in the form of a PDF file. You may post other versions of your presentation as well (e.g. PowerPoint or OpenOffice).


Team Presentation 1 Grading

All team members will receive the same grade for the first team project presentation. I will grade the presentation by evaluating the following items:

Each item will be assigned points as follows:
 
2 = Satisfactory
1 = Needs improvement
0 = Unsatisfactory

However, if your electronic slides are not posted on the team web site in the form of a PDF file before giving the report in class, I will deduct 6 points from your grade.

After I have evaluated your presentation, I will add your grade for the presentation and any comments I have to your encrypted grade file. See the Course Policies and the Encrypted Grades for further information.


Team Presentation 2

The teams' second presentations will take place on Monday 09-Nov-2009 and Wednesday 11-Nov-2009. You will have 50 minutes for your presentation. Cover the following topics:

Your presentation must be posted on your team web site before the class session in which you give your report, in the form of a PDF file. You may post other versions of your presentation as well (e.g. PowerPoint or OpenOffice). Don't remove your previous presentation from the web site.


Team Presentation 2 Grading

All team members will receive the same grade for the second team project presentation. I will grade the presentation by evaluating the following items:

Each item will be assigned points as follows:
 
2 = Satisfactory
1 = Needs improvement
0 = Unsatisfactory

However, if your electronic slides are not posted on the team web site in the form of a PDF file before giving the report in class, I will deduct 8 points from your grade.

After I have evaluated your presentation, I will add your grade for the presentation and any comments I have to your encrypted grade file. See the Course Policies and the Encrypted Grades for further information.


Team Deliverables

You must post the following items on your team web site. These team deliverables will be graded and must be posted by 11:59pm Wednesday 04-Nov-2009.

For the final report, you may use any word processing software you wish, as long as the final output is a PDF file. One way to get a PDF file is to print your word processing document into a PostScript file, then use the "ps2pdf" command to convert the PostScript file to a PDF file. The "ps2pdf" command is installed on the Computer Science Department systems and usually comes with Linux distributions.


Team Deliverables Grading

All team members will receive the same grade for the team project deliverables. I will grade the deliverables by evaluating the following items:

After I have evaluated your deliverables, I will add your grade for the deliverables and any comments I have to your encrypted grade file. See the Course Policies and the Encrypted Grades for further information.


Absences

If you are absent from class when one of your team presentations is scheduled, you will receive a grade of zero for the presentation unless on or before the date of the presentation you make an alternate arrangement with me. I am normally willing to permit this only for absences due to illness or unforeseen personal emergency. However, if you feel you have a valid reason for your absence, please discuss it with me.


Late Submissions

If your team deliverables are not posted on your team web site by the deadline, your team deliverables will be late and will receive a grade of zero. You may request an extension for posting your team deliverables. See the Course Policies for my policy on extensions.


Plagiarism

Each team presentation and the team deliverables must be entirely your team's own work. I will not tolerate plagiarism. If in my judgment any team presentation or the team deliverables is not entirely your team's own work, you will automatically receive, as a minimum, a grade of zero for the assignment. See the Course Policies for my policy on plagiarism.

There are only two exceptions to the prohibition on plagiarism:

  1. You may reuse without modification a source file from the Computer Science Course Library or the Parallel Java Library.
     
  2. You may take a source file from the Computer Science Course Library or the Parallel Java Library and add your own modifications, provided you state that you have done so and give credit to the original author.

If you wish to use another third-party library as part of your investigation, you must obtain my permission before starting to use it.

Advanced Computer Networks 4005-741-01 Fall Quarter 2009
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Alan Kaminsky Department of Computer Science Rochester Institute of Technology 4486 + 2220 = 6706
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Copyright © 2009 Alan Kaminsky. All rights reserved. Last updated 14-Sep-2009. Please send comments to ark­@­cs.rit.edu.