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Time & Place	:	Lectures: MW 2:00pm - 3:20pm in KAP 140.
Instructor	:	Leana Golubchik, Office Hours (in SAL 226): Tu 3:30-5:00pm or by appointment; E-mail: <leana@cs.usc.edu>.

P2P-based architectures are emerging as viable and cost-effective approaches to providing the necessary performance and quality-of-service required by distributed systems and applications. For instance, a recent measurement study (in Korea) showed that the load of a central Video-on-Demand (VoD) server was reduced by 95% through the use of a P2P aided architecture; even more strikingly 80% of the traffic demand of the VoD customers could be satisfied within a local Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM), which points to immense scalability potential of P2P systems.

Since, P2P architectures need to be highly efficient, highly scalable, and highly distributed, appropriate design and evaluation of P2P systems is fundamental to future distributed systems in general. Since P2P traffic forms the bulk of the bytes flowing on the Internet (current estimates put it at 75% which is likely to remain constant or grow), appropriate design of P2P systems is fundamental to the general health of communication networks as well. Thus, in this course, we will focus on P2P architectures, their appliations (including content delivery and streaming), and latest research directions in this area.

A detailed description of the course (including lectures, reading material, workload, and so on) is given below.

Description	:	topics covered, workload, grading policy, etc.
Lectures	:	schedule of lecture topics, slides, etc.
Readings	:	list of papers covered in the class.
Project	:	project information, deadlines, etc.
Reviews	:	information and suggestions for paper reviews.
Resources	:	research and career resources (this is an evolving list, if you recommend removing or adding something, please send me email at <leana@cs.usc.edu>).

• 4/18/2009: Reminders: there is no class on 4/20 and no office hours on 4/21. Please remember your paper and review deadlines. The PC meeting is on 4/27.

• 4/12/2009: Paper review forms and all updated deadlines and paper submission information are available (under "Reviews" and "Project").

• 2/25/2009: The second set of presentations assignments has been posted (under "Lectures").

• 2/17/2009: As per our discussion in class, the instructor's office hours are cancelled today.

• 2/9/2009: Additional information about Freenet keys is now available on the Lectures web page.

• 1/29/2009: The remainder of unstructured P2P papers are now available on the reading list.

• 1/28/2009: Freenet papers are now available on the reading list.

• 1/26/2009: Please note that the presentation schedule has changed a bit, and that we will cover Freenet first (i.e., on 2/2), before covering Gnutella.
• 1/26/2009: Please note that there is a class on Wed, 1/28, as discussed in class today.

• 1/21/2009: Lecture slides from today's lecture containing presentation assignments have been posted. Please note that we will have a small change and do the Freenet presentation first (i.e., before the Gnutella presentation).
• 1/21/2009: Lecture slides from the "overview" lecture have been posted (user id and password will be given in class).
• 1/21/2009: Instructor's office hours updated (above).
• 1/21/2009: Schedule of first sent of presentations will be discussed in class today.

• 1/12/2009: A tentative (and not yet complete) reading list is available now.

• 10/11/2008: Watch this area for important announcements.