Reading Assignments

Reading assignments are compulsory parts of the course, and their content give parts of the tests and the home-assignments. Read the reading instructions carefully.

Reading assignments and instructions may be updated during the course, so please check this page regularly.

If you have not studied queuing theory: additional reading assignment for lecture 2 is Queuing theory basics (see Course material)

Traffic models

Reading assignment for lecture 2: A. Adas, “Traffic models in Broadband Networks”, IEEE Communications Magazine, July 1997., parts on Markov and embedded markov models, Long-range dependent traffic models, conclusions. You can skip the regression and the fractional ... models.

Reading instruction: After reading the text you should be able to answer questions like: What is the difference between a Poisson arrival process and embedded Markov models for arrival processes? How typical embedded Markov Models are constructed? How are they used for modeling voice or video traffic? Why is it necessary to consider other than Markovian traffic models? What is the definition of long-range dependence and self-similarity? How are these related? How can long-range dependent, self similar traffic arise?

Multiple Access Control

Reading assignment for lecture 5: Rom, Sidi, Multiple Access Protocols, excerpts:

• Ch.3: page 47 to 52 (ALOHA)
• Ch 4: page 79 to 83, 89 to top of 92, 94 to 98 (CSMA variations) 

Reading instructions: After reading the text you should be able to answer questions like:  Model and compare the maximum throughput of unslotted and slotted ALOHA.  What are the main assumptions on the packet arrival process when we model the ALOHA protocol? What is the main idea of CSMA. Model and evaluate the stability of slotted non-persistent CSMA and CSMA/CD.

Reading assignment for lecture 4: G. Bianchi,"Performance Analysis of the IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function," IEEE JSAC, vol 18, no 3, March 2000, Sections I-IV. You shuold have a quite good understanding of the derivations in Sections IV.A and IV.B. Read only the evaluation of the basic access scheme, not the RTS/CTS variant. 

Congestion and error control

Reading assignment (for lecture 6):

Bertsekas, Gallager, Data Networks, pp 500-505, 510.

This is the same material as the one presented at the lecture. Note, they call congestion control as flow control, this terminology has changed over the years. You should be able to answer questions like: How fixed window based congestion control works, how does it limit the amount of traffic in the network? What is the drawback of fixed window size based congenstion control? What is the basic idea of congestion control with dynamic window size adjustment?

J. Padhye, F. Firoiu, D. Towsley, J. Kurose, "Modeling TCP throughput: a simple model and its empirical validation," Sigcomm, 1998. Read sections 1, 2-2.1, 3, 4. Also, read the related "Comments" paper!

Reading instructions: After reading the text you should be able to answer questions like: what is the difference between the model presented on the lecture and in this paper? What is captured in the paper that is not captured in the simple model from the lecture? What are the factors that affect the throughput of a TCP flow? What did the authors miss in the paper that was corrected in the "Comments"?

Scheduling

Reading assignments( (for lecture 8):

[1] A. Parekh, R. Gallager, “A Generalized Processor Sharing Approach to Flow Control - The Single Node Case,” IEEE Transaction on Networking, 1993, Vol.1, No.3. (Read I-III-before part A)

After reading the text you should be able to answer questions like: what is the difference between GPS and PGPS, what are the main results of Theorems 1,2 and Corollary 1, explanation of Table 1 and Figure 1. Please also collect the notation (comapre it to the one used in class). Try to construct a case when a packet is delayed more in PGPS than in GPS.

[2] H. Zhang, “Service Disciplines for Guaranteed Performance Service in Packet-Switching Networks,” Proceedings of the IEEE, Oct, 1995, pp. 1374-1385 (I, II, III A,B,F,G, IV A,B,G)

After reading the text you should be able to answer questions like: what is the service model of guaranteed service, what are the performance parameters and traffic mdoels for guaranteed service? How/why does work-conserving scheduling increase traffic burstiness? How is throughput and delay coupled in the considered scheduling schemes? (NOTE: WFQ is the same as GPS, but called differently due to historical reasons...) Be sure you can explain the related explanatory figures and performance tables (I think these are fig 4, table 2, fig 10, fig 11, fig 13, table 4).

Fairness

Reading assignments (!) (for lecture 10):

[1] Betrsekas-Gallager, “Data networks", Flow control part.

After reading the text you should be able to prove that under max-min fair allocation each flow has to have a bottleneck link, and you should be able to calculate max-min fair allocations with the "water-filling" method.

[2] Massoulie, Roberts, Bandwidth sharing, Sections I, II.

After reading the text you should define what fairness is, what is the connection between fairness and TCP, list 2-3 possible fairness objectives and calculate max-min fair shares.

Multimedia networking

Reading assignments(!) (for lecture 12):

[1] N. Laoutaris, I. Stavrakakis, “Adaptive playout strategies for packet video receivers with finite buffer capacity,” IEEE ICC 2001.

After reading the text you should be able to explain how the considered playout buffer works and explain the related markov chain.

[2] X. Yu, J.W. Modestino, X. Tian, “The accuracy of Gilbert models in predicting packet-loss statistics for a single multiplexer network model,” EEE Infocom, 2005, read: I-II.

After reading the text you should be able to explain the difference between the bernoulli, gilbert (first order) and detailed queuing model. You should know what probability distributions are necessary to evaluate the performance of media independent (or block based) FEC.