4243 - Computer Networks and Distributed Systems (CNDS)

Description

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) age has firmly arrived in our daily life, not only during work and business hours, but also in entertainment and social interactions. Thus, society has to cope with such fast-paced developments of digitization. Many of those human-centric statements only refer to or try to analyze the impact of these changes on society. However, in many cases, the fundamentals to derive reliable, correct, and transparent conclusions require detailed know-how of "Communication Networks and Distributed Systems (CNDS)."

Therefore, once stand-alone systems are discussed, their interconnection across the physical boundaries of an office or building forms the major development of the ICT society. Since fundamental communication architectures introduced communications by technical means over the past 100 years, the development of telephone communications to today's Internet will be covered. Protocols, reliable, unreliable, and secure services, algorithms for finding the corresponding receiver, routing, and basic mechanisms for Internet operations will form this lecture's first part.

Furthermore, once stand-alone systems have been interconnected, they constitute a Distributed System. While formed from a collection of independent computers, it appears to the users as a single coherent system. Even though, the system comprises a variety of embedded hardware and software, allowing for a collection of fully autonomous machines. Thus, this lecture's second part covers the basic theory and techniques of Distributed Systems.  Driven by an introduction, naming principles, and outlines of distributed file systems. Consequently, application-driven interoperability lies at the core of Distributed Systems. Thus, approaches for synchronization and coordination are discussed, including various in-use system overviews.

Lastly, the role of security in Distributed Systems and Communication Systems will conclude this class.

Content

Students will receive the required insights into the basic foundations of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems. The lecture will specifically teach communication architectures, network building blocks, shared links, packet switching, end-to-end protocols, security mechanisms, selected Internet applications, naming principles, distributed file systems synchronization, coordination, and security elements. Overall, students will be able to understand which communication systems exist, how Internet-based systems operate world-wise, which communications can be reliable, which ones may be secured, and how the basic interoperation of Distributed Systems works.

Requirements

The lecture "Communication Networks and Distributed Systems CNDS" runs as an introductory course with no specific technical requirements. However, basic mathematical and programming language skills help.