Description
The increased significance of the Internet in all aspects of our life revealed weaknesses in the original design of the used protocols. Due to the continuous usage, flaws in the original protocol design became more apparent. The protocols needed to be adjusted and replaced to live up to the current security and trust requirements of Internet communication. This course is designed to teach students the operational challenges and protocol requirements to cope with emerging security and privacy threats. The course teaches the current considerations required for working with interconnected devices from policy makers, network administrators, or software developers. The course provides insights into modern infrastructure design, modern transport layer protocols, alternative content distribution, and the secure design of Internet communication. It provides a comprehensive understanding of the evolving Internet ecosystem and Internet attacks on privacy and information controls emphasizing 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.
- Internet Infrastructure
- IPv6 and Modern Routing
- Modern Transport Protocols
- DNS Security and Privacy
- Modern and Secure Web
- Decentralized Web
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
- Hands-on Assignments - 40%
- Lightning Talks - 30%
- Quiz - 30%