The course takes place in person at HPI on Wednesdays during the winter semester
from 11:00 - 12:30 in room (tentative). All seminar announcements and course materials
will be shared on Moodle.
Description
The Internet has become the foundation of global digital communication, commerce, and innovation. This course offers students with the knowledge and skills to navigate the complex landscape of emerging trends in Internet technologies - from its design and standards development to its implementation and operations in the real-world. By mastering these concepts, students will be prepared to tackle the standardisation and operational challenges of modern Internet technologies and cybersecurity. This course provides the foundational knowledge essential for success in the digital age, regardless of one's aspirations, whether to become a technological engineer, entrepreneur, a computer scientist, or a policy maker. The course delves into the latest advancements in Internet protocols, examining their technical intricacies, deployment challenges, and impact on emerging application areas. It provides a comprehensive understanding of the evolving Internet ecosystem and Internet attacks on privacy and information controls emphasising both theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary to this end.
Teaching and learning methods
The lectures are weekly conducted. We will use weekly lectures as primary means to convey the course contents. Those will be complemented by invited guest speakers who will provide an external insight on real-world scenarios and everyday operations. This will offer students a valuable industry perspective and practical knowledge to complement the academic curriculum. Project-based assignments will allow students to perform hands-on tasks to either build new tools or leverage (in some cases) existing tools to understand the operation of different Internet protocols and applications to evaluate the impact they have on the user experience. Finally, students will also get an opportunity to enhance their soft-skills by giving lightning talks intermittently during the course duration. The talks will be based on state of the art papers published on the topics being covered in the course.
Learning outcomes
The course will enable students to articulate the need for new Internet protocols and their significance in the current network landscape. It will also enable students to analyse the technical details of advanced Internet protocols and architectures, evaluate adoption trends and performance metrics of presented protocols, assess the state of network infrastructure needed for supporting emerging Internet applications, and apply knowledge to real-world scenarios through hands-on projects. These comprehensive learning outcomes will equip students with the skills and understanding necessary to navigate and contribute to the rapidly evolving field of Internet technologies.
(Recommended) Requirements
The students are expected to be prepared by an undergraduate-level course on computer networks and networking protocols. Some familiarity with networking tools used for performance evaluation may be beneficial, though not required.
Course Outline and Literature
A detailed course outline will be made available on Moodle.
Introduction to Advanced Internet Concepts
Internet Governance and Infrastructure
Next-Generation Protocols (IPv6, QUIC, HTTP/3, etc.)
Emerging Network Technologies and Applications
User Experience and Security Considerations
Future Internet Paradigms (Decentralized Web, Anonymity Networks)
Course materials will be drawn from recent papers in top conferences and journals, including:
ACM SIGCOMM and USENIX Networked System Design and Implementation
ACM Internet Measurement Conference
USENIX Security and IEEE Security and Privacy (S&P)
Internet Engineering Task Force documents
Internet Protocol Journal articles
Grading Scheme
Instructors
