COMP/ELEC 529

COMP/ELEC 529 - Advanced Computer Networks
Rice University

Spring 2026

Instructor

Prof. T. S. Eugene Ng
Office: Duncan Hall 2095
Email: eugeneng at cs.rice.edu
Meeting by appointment

Meeting

9:25am - 10:40am, Tuesdays & Thursdays
Room: DCH 1075

URL

http://www.clear.rice.edu/comp529/

Course Overview

This course explores advanced solutions in computer networks that are driven by the need to go beyond the best-effort capabilities of the Internet. Topics include network fault tolerance, traffic engineering, scalable data center network architectures, network support for big data processing, network support for cloud computing, extensible network control via software defined networking, denial-of-service-attack defense mechanisms. Readings from original research papers. Also include design project and oral presentation components. This course assumes students already have a good understanding of the best-effort Internet.

The goals of this graduate level course are to provide students with a solid understanding in the advanced concepts in computer networking, and to introduce students to research methodologies in computer networking, including problem formulation, literature research, problem solving technique, scientific experimentation, and performance evaluation.

Prerequisites

Undergraduate experience with operating systems, computer networking, and algorithms is required.

Course Format

The course consists of:

Lectures and discussions based on research papers. All students must read the assigned papers before each lecture and actively participate in discussions.
A group project. Students will form teams (minimum and maximum team size is to be determined) to tackle a well-defined research project during the semester. Projects are subjected to approval by the instructor.
Homeworks and quizzes. Test your knowledge about the research papers we have studied during the semester, and your ability to apply the knowledge to solve problems.

Approach to Analyzing Research Papers

When reading a paper, you should consider the paper's contributions, strengths as well as weaknesses.

What problem is being solved?
What solution already exist?
What is the novelty of the proposed solution?
How scientifically and thoroughly is the proposed solution evaluated?
Think also in terms of what makes good research? What qualities make a good paper? What are the potential future impacts of the work?

Here are some additional questions to consider:

What are the 3 most important things the paper says? These could be some combination of their motivations, observations, interesting parts of the design, or clever parts of their implementation.
- from author's perspective at the time
- from your perspective with the benefit of hindsight
What is the paper's single most glaring deficiency. Every paper has some fault. Perhaps an experiment was poorly designed or the main idea had a narrow scope or applicability. Being able to assess weaknesses as well as strengths is an important skill for this course and beyond.
What were the key observations that had led to the research direction? Where did the observations come from? Personal experience? Work environment?
What were the key obstacles or risks that could have prevented the research from being successful? Were the researchers aware of them? How were these obstacles eventually overcome?

When reading the papers, it is important to understand the contexts in which the research was done. First, check out the year of the paper. Then you may want to consider the following contexts:

Intellectual context: major research directions/themes at the time, assumptions that are taken for granted at the time. Best way is to glance through the relevant ACM conferences in the previous couple of years.
Industry context: competitive landscape, technology/industry trends, primary industry concerns.
Personal context: researcher's stage of career, researcher's physical and people environment

Honor Code and Issue of Cheating

First and foremost, when in doubt of whether a specific behavior is acceptable, ask the instructor for a written clarification. Broadly speaking, for homework and project assignments, it's acceptable to ask someone about the concepts, algorithms, or approaches needed to do the homework and project assignments. We encourage you to do so; both giving and taking advice will help you to learn. However, what you turn in must be your own, or for projects, your group's own work; copying other people's code, solution sets, or from any other sources is strictly prohibited. For exams, you are strictly prohibited from receiving any form of outside aid. Do not go on GitHub or use any other Internet search tools or Chatbots to search for solutions. Do not publicly share your own solution to GitHub or any other sites. Any such act is considered a violation of the Honor Code. Suspected honor code violations will be reported to the Honor Council. For further information about the honor system at Rice, visit honor.rice.edu.

Accomodations for Students with Special Needs

Student with a disability requiring accommodations in this course is encouraged to contact me and Disability Support Services in the Allen Center, Room 111.

Title IX

Rice University cares about your wellbeing and safety. Rice encourages any student who has experienced an incident of harassment, pregnancy discrimination, gender discrimination, or relationship, sexual, or other forms interpersonal violence to seek support through The SAFE Office. Students should be aware when seeking support on campus that most employees, including myself, as the instructor/TA, are required by Title IX to disclose all incidents of non-consensual interpersonal behaviors to Title IX professionals on campus who can act to support that student and meet their needs. For more information, please visit http://safe.rice.edu or email titleixsupport@rice.edu.

Schedule

Under construction, subject to changes.

Here's the SIGCOMM conference website with links to videos and PDFs.

Class	Date	Assigned paper	Discussion lead	Remarks
1	1/13	Overview
2	1/15	Coaching
3	1/20	DistTrain (p) (v)	Yuanyuan, Rixin
4	1/22	Coaching
5	1/27	PtCAM (p) (v)	Ryan, Alex
6	1/29	Coaching
7	2/3	MegaScale-Infer (p) (v)	Bruce
8	2/5	Coaching
9	2/10	MixNet (p) (v)	Mehrdad, Yehya
10	2/12	Spring recess
11	2/17	Alibaba Stellar (p) (v)	Daniel, Yunfei	Coaching TBD
12	2/19	Coaching		Project proposal due
13	2/24	ByteScale (p) (v)	Jingwei
14	2/26	Coaching
15	3/3		Kaijian
16	3/5	Coaching
17	3/10	Hattrick (p) (v)	Omkar, Zhouxiang
18	3/12	Coaching
19	3/17	Spring break
20	3/19	Spring break
21	3/24	Confucius (p) (v)	Nikki, Cathy
22	3/26	Coaching
23	3/31		Haotian
24	4/2	Coaching		Project progress presentation
25	4/7		Feng
26	4/9	Coaching
27	4/14	SyCCL (p) (v)	Chima
28	4/16	Coaching
29	4/21	Agua (p) (v)	Harrison, Aneesha
30	4/23	Quiz		Quiz and Final project report due