A distributed system consists of a set of independent subsystems that fulfill a specific task in a coordinated fashion. The subsystems rely on a communication network to exchange messages. Besides the basic networking functionality, non-functional aspects such as robustness, dependability and performance need to be provided. This seminar will cover such topics in a conference-style setup.
(This seminar used to be called “Distributed and Networked Systems (DNet)” until Winter 2023. If you attended the DNet seminar already, you cannot attend DSS. Instead, you can attend the Networked Systems Seminar (DSS) in the summer term.)
- Audience: B.Sc. and M.Sc. students enrolled in one of the Faculty of Computer Science’s study programs
- Language of Instruction: English
- Lecturers: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Steffen Bondorf, Wlad Pesotsky
- Course credits: 3 CP
- Grading Scheme
- eCampus: link
Learning goals: Students will learn to work with a either a technical or a scientific paper, understand its contents and its context, critically reflect on it, and will learn to present their findings in a concise fashion.
Workflow:
- get one of the eight place via the faculty’s central allocation system, you will then be enrolled in this seminar’s Moodle course
- kick-off meeting
- first common meeting where each participant gives a very brief overview over the assigned paper (approx. two weeks after kickoff meeting)
- individual meetings with supervisor during the semester (at least one of which will be mandatory)
- deliverables at the end of the lecture period: survey (text document) and presentation (slides and / or poster)
- conference day (i.e., seminar presentation day, second common meeting) in the lecture-free period
Schedule
- Summer 2025: faculty-central allocation (you cannot enroll directly with the DNet group!)
- 2025-09-2x: Participants will be enrolled into the Moodle course (no self-enrollment here either!)
- 2025-10-06 to 2025-10-13: Paper Assignment in Moodle: FCFS!
- 2025-10-14: 1st common meeting: Kickoff in MC 1/54 at 3pm
- 2025-10-28: 2nd common meeting, pt. 1: Overview presentations of M.Sc. students in MC 1/54 at 3pm
- 2025-11-04: 2nd common meeting, pt. 2: Overview presentations of B.Sc. students in MC 1/54 at 3pm
- 2025-11-24 to 2025-12-19: Individual meetings (one per person, TBD)
- 2026-02-08: Submission of final deliverables
- Between 2026-03-02 and 2026-03-13: 3rd common meeting: Presentation Day (>= one full day, TBD)
Topic: Research by Nancy Lynch (see here), in particular
- Models for distributed systems
- Resource allocation in networks
- Distributed consensus
- Atomic transactions
- Timed (and untimed) system models