This is supplemental course information, designed to give you a fuller picture of the course and an expanded look at the topics covered. This is an unofficial document. The USC Course Catalog is the binding description of all university courses. Information such as books, materials covered, and the order of topics is subject to change. Please consult instructor for this semseter to get more upto date course information.

(from 2003-2004 catalog) Protocol modeling: flow and congestion control, dynamic routing, distributed implementation; broadcast communication media and multiple access protocols; local networks, satellite networks, terrestrial radio networks. Prerequisite: EE 550 or EE 555 or CSCI 551. Konstantinos Psounis, Department of Electrical Engineering-Systems

(i) Basic probability and queueing, with examples of usage in switching and active queue management. (A brief introduction to these research topics will be provided.)

(ii) Lyapunov functions and fluid analysis used in proving various stability and throughput results for network switches.

(iii) Combinatorics (bipartite matchings and stable marriages) used to analyze scheduling mechanisms in switches.

(iv) Fluid models used in modelling long- and ahort-lived TCP flows. (A brief review of TCP will be provided.)

(v) Simple control theory for Internet congestion control. (When not covered by a specialized 599 course.)

(vi) Probabilistic and statistical analysis of Internet and web traces. Topics include the study of the Poisson hypothesis and its applicability, the notions of self-similarity and long-range dependence, temporal correlation in traces, and the implications of heavy-tailed sizes in performance.

(vii) Basic elements of game theory used in pricing. (time permitting)

Course Objectives:

For each topic, the course first introduces the corresponding research problem/area (e.g. switching), then presents the corresponding mathematical tools/analysis (e.g. Lyapunov functions), and finally goes through recent publications (from networking venues, e.g. IEEE Infocom, ACM Sigcomm, ACM Sigmetrics, IEEE/ACM Transactions in Networking) that have successfully applied these tools/analysis. The objective of the
course is to expose students to some very useful mathematical tools and teach them how to use these tools in networks research.

Prepared by: Konstantinos Psounis
Date: 6/17/04