Distributed Systems Syllabus

Course Description 

The course introduces basic knowledge to give an understanding how modern distributed systems operate. The focus of the course is on distributed algorithms and on practical aspects that should be considered when designing and implementing real systems. Some topics covered during the course are causality and logical clocks, synchronization and coordination algorithms, transactions and replication, and end-to-end system design. In addition, the course explores recent trends exemplified by current highly available and reliable distributed systems.

Course objectives

The objective of the course is to make familiar with different aspect of the distributed system, middleware, system level support and different issues in designing distributed algorithms and finally systems.

1. Introduction

teaching hours: 4 hrs

1.1 Characteristics 

1.2 Design Goals 

1.3 Types of Distributed Systems

1.4 Case Study: The World Wide Web

1. Introduction to Mobile and Mobile Programming

teaching hours: 2 hrs

Mobile Device (Features, Categories, History, Brands, Models and Platforms), Introduction to Mobile Programming.

2. Architecture

teaching hours: 4 hrs

2.1 Architectural Styles

2.2 Middleware organization

2.3 System Architecture

2.4 Example Architectures

3. Processes

teaching hours: 6 hrs

3.1 Threads

3.2 Virtualization 

3.3 Clients

3.4 Servers

3.5 Code Migration

4. Communication

teaching hours: 5 hrs

4.1 Foundations

4.2 Remote Procedure Call

4.3 Message-Oriented Communication 

4.4 Multicast Communication

4.5 Case Study: Java RMI and Message 

    Passing Interface (MN)

5. Naming

teaching hours: 5 hrs

5.1 Name Identifiers, and Addresses

5.2 Structured Naming



5.3 Attribute-based naming

5.4 Case Study: The Global Name Service

5. Coordination

teaching hours: 7 hrs

6.1 Clock Synchronization

6.2 Logical Clocks

6.3 Mutual Exclusion

6.4 Election Algorithm

6.5 Location System

6.6 Distributed Event Matching 

6.7 Gossip-based coordination

6. Coordination

teaching hours: 7 hrs

6.1 Clock Synchronization

6.2 Logical Clocks

6.3 Mutual Exclusion

6.4 Election Algorithm

6.5 Location System

6.6 Distributed Event Matching 

6.7 Gossip-based coordination

7. Consistency and Replication

teaching hours: 5 hrs

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Data-centric consistency models 

7.3 Client-centric consistency models 

7.4 Replica management

7.5 Consistency protocols

7.6 Caching and Replication in Web

8. Fault Tolerance

teaching hours: 5 hrs

8.1 Introduction to fault tolerance 

8.2 Process resilience

8.3 Reliable client-server communication 

8.4 Reliable group communication

8.5 Distributed commit

8.6 Recovery

9. Security

teaching hours: 4 hrs

9.1 Introduction to security

9.2 Secure channels

9.3 Access control

9.4 Secure naming

9.5 Security Management