These figures show, in order, (1) a peer to peer system (Gnutella), (2) a datacenter, (3) a sensor network, (4) the Internet ISP topology.

CS 525 Spring 2014

Advanced Distributed Systems

[Tuesdays and Thursdays] @ [3.30 PM - 4.45 PM] @ [DCL 1310]

Instructor: Dr. Indranil Gupta ("Indy"), indy at cs dawt illinois dawt edu, 3112 SC.

Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 4.45 pm - 5.30 pm (class days only) in 3112 SC.

TA: Mainak Ghosh, mghosh4 at cs dawt illinois dawt edu, Office hours by appointment.

Class Discussion Forum: Piazza

Important Links and Handouts

This is a course on distributed systems. It brings together research centered in cloud computing, peer-to-peer systems, distributed algorithms and on sensor networks. The course reviews classical work in these scattered areas of distributed computing research, and explores overlaps across them. The course has one semester-long project that is aimed at producing either an entrepreneurial effort for industry or  a conference/workshop-quality research paper. The entrepreneurial effort must make a technological case and a reasonable business case for innovation in today's world. The paper must address an open research problem, prove bounds and/or propose new algorithms, and contain analytical and experimental evaluation. Previous course projects have had high success rates at conferences/workshops (see past CS525/CS598IG projects at the bottom of this page). Three to five "best projects'' at the end of the semester will be earmarked for expedited submission to a renowned conference, with the help of the instructor's involvement even after the semester is over. 

Experimental Testbeds: Students who need access to AWS are encouraged to apply to their student grants (on their page). You can also request course staff for a PlanetLab slice, or Emulab project, or CCT (Cloud Computing Testbed) account (there are limited number of slots available for each: about 5 projects on each testbed). Therefore, (1) all requests will be granted on an as-needed basis, and (2) you will be given an account on typically only one of these testbeds, so please choose carefully depending on your project requirements!

This course is now over. You should have received comments on your final report from Indy via email. You will hear about your course grade directly from the University. Have a great summer!

Poster Session Award Winners (based on popular demand from almost 300 votes cast). Prizes courtesy Google (and thanks to Prof. Narhstedt).

1. First Prize: HVS-Aware Bandwidth Adaptation in 3DTI Systems, Mohammad Hosseini and Rasoul Etesami
2. Second Prize: Enabling Elasticity in Graph Processing, Mayank Pundir and Manoj Kumar
3. Third Prize: YARN vs Mesos: Managing it wisely, Atul Bohara, Koushik Roy, Seokje Seo, Shubho Banerjee
   

Demo Session Award Winners (based on popular demand from about 200 votes cast). Prizes courtesy Google (and thanks to Prof. Narhstedt).

1. First Prize: An online auction system for service contracts, Gopalakrishna Holla and Vikas Mallapura
   
2. Second Prize: Gurugamer: Dota 2 Real Time Strategy Coach, Shy-Yauer Lin, Kam Cheung Ting, Ruisheng Shi
   

Best Project Reports (Entrepreneurial), in no particular order (selected by Indy)

• An online auction system for service contracts, Gopalakrishna Holla and Vikas Mallapura
  
• Gurugamer: Dota 2 Real Time Strategy Coach, Shy-Yauer Lin, Kam Cheung Ting, Ruisheng Shi
• CoBuy: Share the deal and save your money, Anku Adhikari, Hao Wu, Zhuotao Liu

Best Project Reports (Research), in no particular order (selected by Indy)

• Enabling Elasticity in Graph Processing, Mayank Pundir and Manoj Kumar
• BP STEP-UP: Backpressure-based routing protocol, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, Gourav Khaneja
• YARN vs Mesos: Managing it wisely, Atul Bohara, Koushik Roy, Seokje Seo, Shubho Banerjee

Latest News

5/12: This course is now over. You should have received comments on your final report from Indy via email. You will hear about your course grade directly from the University. Have a great summer!

4/18: Poster/Demo Sessions scheduled for May 9th 1pm-4pm

This semester, we will have a poster (and demo) session on May 9th afternoon for all the projects in the CS525 class -- both research and entrepreneurial projects are required to have a poster (demo is optional but recommended), and entrepreneurial projects must have a poster+demo. The poster/demo will be open to the entire CS department. The grade for the poster/demo will be part of the final report submission grade. (The final report is due May 11th, so the poster/demo will give you some feedback that will be useful for your final report.)
 
The poster/demo session is scheduled for:
 
May 9th @ 1pm-4pm in 2405 Siebel + the 2nd floor atrium area.
 
We will provide easels. You need to print the posters and set up and man the demos.
 
If you have a conflict with this slot (e.g., an exam that overlaps) then please let me know directly via email.

2/4: There is a lecture today. However, office hours are canceled.

2/4: Student-led presentations and reviews start Feb 13th. If you have not yet signed up for a presentation, you must review all sessions. You may also choose to be placed on a waitlist for presentations (but in the meantime, you must do all reviews).

1/14: Course web page online. Happy New Year 2014!

Policies on Ethics, Attribution and Cheating

• Reviews: You may discuss papers with others in the class, but reviews should be written independently. In other words, if two reviews are found to have been copied from each other, both students will be punished. The best way to ensure that you are safe is by mentioning right at the top of your review that "This review was written after discussion with Mr. John Doe and Ms. Jane Joe".

• Presentation: Your work (presentations and reviews) should be original and independent, although you are allowed to cooperate with your partner for your session. Reusing slides from someone else's presentation should be done only if it is absolutely necessary, but should be acknowledged right at the beginning of the presentation. 

• The standard university policies on original work, cheating and attribution apply to all work in the course. Violation of these may result in either lowering of course grade by one letter, or failing the course, or a different final decision left to the instructor.

A Sampling of Past CS525/CS598IG Projects that were Subsequently Published in Conferences/Journals (check http://dprg.cs.uiuc.edu for copies of papers)

Some Spring 2013 CS525 CS525 Project Papers that became conference/journal papers

• Furquan Shaikh, Fangzhou Yao, Indranil Gupta, Roy Campbell, "VMDedup: Memory De-duplication in Hypervisor," Proc. IEEE International Workshop on Cloud Analytics (IWCA), 2014.
• Shannon Chen, Klara Nahrstedt, Indranil Gupta, "3DTI Amphitheater: A Manageable 3DTI Environment with Hierarchical Stream Prioritization," Proc. ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (MMSys), 2014.

Some Spring 2010 CS525 CS525 Project Papers that became conference/journal papers

• (Awarded Best Paper!) Liangliang Cao, Hyun Duk Kim, Min-Hsuan Tsai, Brian Cho, Zhen Li, Indranil Gupta, ChengXiang ZHai, Thomas S. Huang, "Delta-SimRank Computing on MapReduce," Proc. 1st International Workshop on Big Data, Streams and Heterogeneous Source Mining (BigMine), 2012.

Some Spring 2009 CS525 Project Papers that became conference/journal papers

• Abhishek Verma, Nicolas Zea, Brian Cho, Indranil Gupta, Roy Campbell, "Breaking the MapReduce Stage Barrier," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing, 2010. (Extended version in Springer Journal of Cluster Computing, 2011)

Some Spring 2008 CS525 Project Papers that became conference/journal papers

• Md. Ahsan Arefin, Yusuf Sarwar, Indranil Gupta, Klara Nahrstedt. "Q-Tree: A Multi-Attribute Based Range Query Solution for Tele-Immersive Framework," Proc. International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), 2009.
• Mirko Montanari, Riccardo Crepaldi, Indranil Gupta, Robin Kravets. "Using Failure Models for Controlling Data Availability in Wireless Sensor Networks," Proc. IEEE Infocom Minisymposium, 2009.
• Rahul Malik, Chandrasekhar Ramachandran, Sangkyun Kim, Xin Jin, Jiawei Han, Indranil Gupta, Klara Nahrstedt. "MLR-Index: An Index Structure for Fast and Scalable Similarity Search in High Dimensions," Proc. 2009 Int. Conf. on Scientific and Statistical Database Management (SSDBM'09), 2009.
• Rahul Malik, Chandrasekhar Ramachandran, Indranil Gupta, Klara Nahrstedt. "A Scalable and Memory-Efficient Feature Extraction Algorithm for Short 3D Video Segments," Proc. IMMERSCOM, 2009.

Some Spring 2007 CS525 Project Papers that became conference/journal papers

• I-Hong Hou, Yu-En Tsai, Tarek Abdelzaher, Indranil Gupta. "AdapCode: Adaptive Network Coding for Code Updates in Wireless Sensor Networks," Proc. INFOCOM, 2008
• Vijay Anand Korthikanti, Prateek Mittal, Indranil Gupta. "Fair K Mutual Exclusion Algorithm for Peer to Peer Systems," Proc. International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), 2008.
• Ramses Morales, Brian Cho, Indranil Gupta. "AVMEM - Availability-Aware Overlays for Management Operations," Proc. ACM/IFIP/USENIX Middleware, pp. 266-286, (Springer LNCS 4834), November, 2007.
• Wanmin Wu. Zhenyu Yang, Indranil Gupta, Klara Nahrstedt. "Towards Multi-Site Collaboration in 3D Tele-Immersive Environments," Proc. International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), 2008.

Some Spring 2006 CS598IG Project Papers that became conference/journal papers

• Long Vu, Indranil Gupta, Jin Liang, Klara Nahrstedt. "Measurement and Modeling of a Large-scale Overlay for Multimedia Streaming," Invited Paper in Proc. Intnl. Conf. on Heterogeneous Networking for Quality, Reliability, Security and Robustness (QShine) , 2007. Also in TOMCCAP journal.
• Ercan Ucan, Nat Thompson, Indranil Gupta. "A piggybacking approach to reduce overhead in sensor network gossiping," Proc. 2nd Intnl Wshop on Middleware for Sensor Networks (MidSens), 2007.

Some Fall 2004 CS 598IG Project Papers that became conference/journal papers

• Jin Liang, Indranil Gupta, Klara Nahrstedt. "Reliable On-Demand Management Operations for Large-scale Distributed Applications," ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review (OSR) Special Issue on Gossip-Based Networking, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 82-88, October, 2007.
• Steve Ko, Indranil Gupta, Yookyung Jo. "A New Class of Nature-Inspired Algorithms for Self-Adaptive Peer-to-Peer Computing," ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS), to appear, September, 2008.
• James Newell, Indranil Gupta. "The P2P MultiRouter: a Black Box Approach to Run-time Adaptivity for P2P DHTs," IEEE Conference on Collaborative Computing (CollaborateCom), 2005.
• Romit Roy Choudhury, Pradeep Kyasanur, Indranil Gupta. "Smart Gossip: An Adaptive Gossip-based Broadcasting Service for Sensor Networks", Proc. IEEE Conf. Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), pp. 91-100, 2006.
• Jin Liang, Indranil Gupta, Klara Nahrstedt. "MON: On-demand Overlays for Distributed System Management," Usenix WORLDS, 2005.
• And more!