Schedule

The schedule is subject to change over the course of the semester. All deadlines are at 11:59pm (CT) by default, except for paper reviews, which are due at 11:59pm the night before the class in which the paper is discussed.

The required readings below are finalized through October 20. Later readings may change.

Date	Topic	Readings & Action Required
Aug 25 (Tue)	Class 1 Course overview, Internet history	Optional As we may think (Bush, Atlantic Monthly, 1945) On Distributed Communication Networks (Baran, 1962) A brief history of the Internet (Leiner et al., 1997)
Aug 27 (Thu)	Class 2 Networking review and challenges	Required Browse recent HotNets, SIGCOMM, or NSDI programs, and skim through papers that intrigue you to start generating project ideas Optional Why the Internet only just works (Handley, BT Technology Journal, 2006) How to read a paper (Keshav, CCR 2007)
Sep 1 (Tue)	Class 3 IP architecture	Required DARPA Design Philosophy (Clark, SIGCOMM 1988) Optional A protocol for packet network intercommunication (Cerf et al., IEEE Trans. on Comm., 1974)
Sep 3 (Thu)	Class 4 Architectural principles	Required End-to-end argument (Saltzer et al., TOCS, 1984) Optional RFC 1958
Sep 8 (Tue)	Class 5 Invited talk: Loqman Salamatian: Inference as Measurement: Models and Systems for Auditing the Internet	Optional metAScritic (Salamatian et al., IMC 2024)
Sep 10 (Thu)	Class 6 Data Plane and Switching	Required 50 Gb/s IP Router (Partridge et al, ToN 1998) Optional Tag switching (MPLS) (Rekhter et al, Proc. IEEE, 1997) P4 (Bosshart et al, Computer Communication Review July 2014)
Sep 13 (Sun)		Deadline Sign up for paper presentation
Sep 15 (Tue)	Class 7 Intradomain routing	Required TeXCP (Kandula et al, SIGCOMM 2005)
Sep 17 (Thu)	Class 8 Software-defined networking (SDN)	Required Ethane (Casado et al., SIGCOMM 2007) Optional OpenFlow (McKeown et al., CCR 2008) Video: The Future of Networking (Shenker, ONS 2011) NVP (Koponen et al., NSDI 2014) (2026 Test of Time Award)
Sep 22 (Tue)	Class 9 Traffic engineering	Required SWAN (Hong et al, SIGCOMM 2013) Optional B4 (Jain et al, SIGCOMM 2013)
Sep 24 (Thu)	Class 10 Interdomain routing	Required Stable Internet Routing Without Global Coordination (Gao et al., SIGMETRICS 2000) Optional BGP routing policies in ISP networks (Caesar et al., IEEE Network Magazine, 2005) Anatomy of a Large European IXP (Ager et al., SIGCOMM 2012) InterTubes (Durairajan et al, SIGCOMM 2015)
Sep 25 (Fri)		Deadline Submit project proposal
Sep 29 (Tue)	Class 11 Internet routing security	Required How Secure are Secure Interdomain Routing Protocols? (Goldberg et al., SIGCOMM 2010) Optional Survey of BGP security (Butler et al., Proc. of the IEEE, 2010)
Oct 1 (Thu)	Class 12 Classic congestion control	Required Congestion Avoidance and Control (Jacobson, SIGCOMM 1988) Optional Analysis of AIMD (Chiu et al., Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 1989)
Oct 6 (Tue)	Class 13 Modern congestion control	Required BBR (Cardwell et al., ACM Queue, 2016) Optional Dismantling a Religion (Briscoe, CCR 2007) PCC (Dong et al., NSDI 2015) Pantheon (Yan et al., USENIX ATC 2018)
Oct 8 (Thu)	Class 14 Competing agents	Required Are we heading towards a BBR-dominant Internet? (Mishra et al, IMC 2022) Optional Selfish routing (Qiu et al, SIGCOMM 2003)
Oct 13 (Tue)	Class 15 Data center topology	Required Jellyfish (Singla et al, NSDI 2012) Optional Clos networks for DCNs (Al Fares et al, SIGCOMM 2008) Jupiter Evolving (Poutievski et al, SIGCOMM 2022) Random graphs at Amazon (Bernardi et al, arXiv 2025)
Oct 15 (Thu)	Class 16 Data center transport	Required NDP (Handley et al., SIGCOMM 2017) (see also NDP The Movie) Optional DCTCP (Alizadeh et al., SIGCOMM 2010)
Oct 20 (Tue)	Class 17 Invited talk: Maria Apostolaki, Princeton University: Making Network Knowledge First-Class: A Neurosymbolic Approach to Network Management	Required This session will take place in 2405 Siebel Center NetNomos (He et al, NSDI 2026)
Nov 8 (Sun)	Class 18 ML in networking (reinforcement learning)	Required Pensieve (Mao et al., SIGCOMM 2017) Optional Genet (Xia et al., SIGCOMM 2022) Mowgli (Agarwal et al., NSDI 2025)
Nov 13 (Fri)	Class 19 TBA
Nov 15 (Sun)	Class 20 ML in networking (explainability)	Required Agua (Patel et al., SIGCOMM 2025) Optional Metis (Meng et al., SIGCOMM 2020) Trustee (Jacobs et al., CCS 2022)
Nov 20 (Fri)	Class 21 Video conferencing	Required Salsify (Fouladi et al., NSDI 2018) Optional GCC (Carlucci et al., MMSys 2016) Tambur (Rudow et al., NSDI 2023)
Nov 21 (Sat)	Class 22 First project check-in	Deadline First project check-in
Nov 22 (Sun)	Class 23 Reliability (guest lecture by Yuchung Cheng)	Required Protective ReRoute (Wetherall et al., SIGCOMM 2023) Optional Protective Load Balancing (Qureshi et al., SIGCOMM 2022)
Nov 27 (Fri)	Class 24 SDN architecture	Required Ethane (Casado et al., SIGCOMM 2007) Optional OpenFlow (McKeown et al., CCR 2008) NVP (Koponen et al., NSDI 2014) (Test of Time Award 2026)
Nov 29 (Sun)	Class 25 SDN control	Required Onix (Koponen et al., OSDI 2010) Optional NOX (Gude et al., SIGCOMM CCR 2008) Video: The Future of Networking (Shenker, ONS 2011)
Nov 10 (Tue)	Class 26 Microservices	Required Autothrottle (Wang et al., NSDI 2024) Optional Leveraging service meshes (Ashok et al., HotNets 2021)
Nov 19 (Thu)	Class 27 TBA	Deadline TBA
Fall break (Nov 21-29)
Dec 1 (Tue)	Class 28 GPU communication	Required TBA
Dec 3 (Thu)	Class 29 Project presentations (1)
Dec 8 (Tue)	Class 30 Project presentations (2)
Dec 17 (Thu)		Deadline Submit final paper