Goal of the course is to provide students with knowledge on and insight in:
- The architectural and networking aspects of clouds and cloud services;
- Cloud management, i.e., how clouds can be deployed and managed in a cost-efficient way while providing the required service levels to the cloud users;
- Security aspects of clouds and cloud services;
- How users can optimally benefit from cloud services.
In addition, the setup of the course (see below) aims to further develop the students’ research skills and independent working, including also critically reading and understanding scientific publications (in the area of Cloud Networking).
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Clouds and cloud services play a crucial role in more and more domains (smart cities, smart mobility and logistics, Industry 4.0, services hosting, data centers, etc.). Large-scale deployment and usage of cloud services, however, brings along big challenges regarding networking, architectures and management of cloud infrastructures and services, as well as challenges regarding security. Therefore, since several years, a lot of research is going on in these areas.
The course will provide in-depth insight into the challenges and proposed solutions and approaches, where the focus will be on management issues. Important topics regarding the management of cloud infrastructures and services are, amongst others capacity management; traffic characterization and measurement; QoS provisioning and service reliability; service monitoring and measurement; autonomous service control; energy consumption. Regarding cloud architectures and networking important topics are, e.g., cloud federation and mobile edge/fog computing (in the context of loT and (beyond) 5G mobile networks). Cloud security covers the interaction between clouds and security, either when clouds are used to support security services, or when a cloud environment introduces specific security challenges.
Overall organization of the course
Main setup and guidance
- Lecture 1: general introduction to Cloud Networking, by one of the lecturers.
- Lectures 2—6: plenary discussion of 10 selected topics/papers concerning the topics mentioned above; 2 papers per lecture (45 minute per topic/paper). Discussions are guided by one of the lecturers.
- In the remaining time of the quarter, the students define and carry out ‘mini research projects’ related to one of the topics of the selected papers. Groups are guided by the lecturers (one (fixed) lecturer per group), who are available for at least one hour per week for each assigned group.
- We also plan to have a guest speaker from the industry.
Remarks
- The final paper selection will be determined shortly before the first lecture; for the general introduction a number of recently published state-of-the-art survey papers will be used.
- The first six lectures will be scheduled over a period of three weeks, in order to have sufficient time available for carrying out the research projects in the remaining 7 weeks of the quarter.
- The research projects will be carried out in small groups or individually, depending on the total number of participants.
- The total number of participants will be limited to 18 students.
Assessment
- Written exam on the topics addressed in lectures 1--6 (40%)
- Outcome + presentation of the research projects (60%)
- Overall grade is the appropriately weighted average, where both parts as such need to be graded higher than 5.5.
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