Lecturer: Alessandro Mei

laurea magistrale in Informatica

Sapienza University of Rome

academic year 2016-2017

Objectives

Our goal in this course is to unfold the beautiful theory of distributed system, and then show the amazing impact that this theory has to real world systems like p2p systems, bit-coin and the other crypto-coins, tor (how to get anonymity in the Internet), akamai, the google file system, content delivery networks, and so on.

Class info

Welcome! To get the best out of this course, please:

1. 1. join our mailing list! 
   

2. 2. Import the course calendar into your calendar client to receive alerts of lectures and other events.
   

3. 3. Don’t forget to check the schedule!
   

Let’s make a deal: You show up at every lecture and listen to what I say, I make sure it is worth it. If you are not in a position to come to class, join the mailing list and to study all the material in the schedule.

Lectures

Lectures start on September 27 in Alfa Room, via Salaria 113. Here is the schedule:

1. •Tue, 10:00 - 12:00;
   

2. •Wed, 08:00 - 10:00.
   

Exams

Exam of September will take place on 13th Sep 2017, 10AM, Seminari room, third floor, via Salaria 113.

Syllabus

4. 4. Introduction;
   

5. 5. global states, consistent cuts, logical clocks, vector clocks;
   

6. 6. state machine replication;
   

7. 7. atomic commit and rollback recovery;
   

8. 8. consensus and impossibility of consensus;
   

9. 9. failure detectors;
   

10. 10. Paxos and Fast Paxos;
    

11. 11. Byzantine Fault Tolerance;
    

12. 12. Shared memory;
    

13. 13. P2P systems and other modern distributed systems.
    

Exam

The best way to pass this course is to do the mid-term (a written test based on the material in the first half of the course) and the final written test (based on the material of the second part of the course). Those of you that get a reasonable score in the two tests pass the course right away. Otherwise, all other examinations performed during the year are oral examination on the material of the whole course.

FAQ

Is this course offered every year?

answer: Yes. This course was not offered during academic year 2010-2011, when I left Sapienza for a year to be a visiting professor at University of California San Diego. Unfortunately Sapienza is not going to let me do that again anytime soon.

What is the textbook?

answer: We don’t have any textbook in this course.

Prof, I just read the Fast Paxos paper and I have no idea how this protocol works and why! I am desperate!

answer: I know. That’s normal. Keep calm and come to class.

I missed the midterm. Can I do the final written test?

answer: Sure.