CS 7270 - Project Decription

The course will include a substantial group project requiring the design, implementation and evaluation of a non-trivial networked service in one of the following categories:

multimedia streaming,
multicast services,
peer-to-peer services
overlay networks,
networked games,
content distribution networks
wireless/ubiquitous computing services (time permitting).

Project Mechanics

The project will be conducted in teams of 4.

The project milestones are:

Project Description: A 2-page document listing your team and describing your project.
Project design: A 5-page document, further specifying your project and describing your design of the software and implementation plan. THIS SHOULD INCLUDE A DIVISION OF LABOR STATEMENT STATING THE WORK THAT WILL BE DONE BY EVERY MEMBER OF YOUR GROUP
Project Progress Report: This 5-7 page document should update us on the progress of your design and prototyping efforts and alert us to any major design changes or implementation problems you are running into.
Project Demonstration: You will demo your working application to the instructor and TA.
Final Report: A 10-page final report describing your system, and your implementation experience. (You may reuse portions of your previous documents for this with appropriate revisions.)

(See below for milestone schedule.)

Note: To avoid double counting, your project cannot be the same or similar to another project you are doing for another class. It also cannot be something you are already doing for your thesis research or as part of your GRA work. If you have any doubts please check with the instructor.

Some Examples

Your grade will be based in part on how creative you are. To help you start the creative juices flowing here are some ideas:

A video streaming system that accomodates both wired and wireless receievers.
A video Internet Phone,
A scalable and flexible group key management system.
A message forwarding system for wireless mobile PDAs.
A cheat-proof networked gaming system.
A large-scale, serverless, networked gaming system
A secure content control system for a peer-to-peer file sharing system.
A reputation system for a peer-to-peer file sharing systems.
A peer-to-peer system that allows video streaming.
A graceful failover content delivery system for web applications
A felxible overlay definition, construction nd management system.
A Gnutella-style p2p system over CAN or CHORD.
A measurement system for a P2P file sharing system.

Hardware and Software Platform:

You will need to build a prototype for your system and demonstrate the workings of the prototype to us.

YOu may build your prototype using

The College's Cities cluster
Generic machines available to you in one of the College's or other department research Labs. ( Make sure you the permission of the lab director/manager or faculty member in charge before you do this.)
Using EMUlab (see www.emulab.net).
iPAQs -- We have a set of 3 iPAQs that can be used by one group for a wireless/mobility service project.

Regardless of which platform you are using you are essentially responsible for supporting yourself in the design and construction of your software. That is, we are unable to help in detailed debugging of your code or otherwise support your programming efforts so choose carefully.

Finally, you may choose to build your system from "scratch" or you may choose to build it on top of some exisiting open source. For example, there is source available for P2P applications like Gnutella (e.g., Limewire, Gnucleus) and there is software available for some games (e.g. iMaze). Regardless of where your starting point is, the t your group does has to represent a signifcant amount of coding and design effort and not be a trivial extension of existing source code.

MAKE SURE YOU EXPLICITLY INDICATE IN YOUR REPORTS WHICH PART OF THE SYSTEM IS YOUR CODE AND WHICH PART IS SOMETHING THAT IS AVAILABLE PUBLICLY.

Project Milestones

Feb 4: PROJECT MILESTONE 1 DUE IN CLASS
MARCH 11: PROJECT MILESTONE 2 DUE IN CLASS
April 8 : PROJECT MILESTONE 3 DUE IN CLASS
April 21 - April 25: PROJECT DEMO WEEK
April 28: Final Project Report Due by 5pm.

Best Project Competition

We will have a competition for the best project. the competition will be judged by a panel of faculty to be announced and will run during demo week. The results of the competition will be totally independent from course grading. Awards will be:

First Prize: A $50 GT bookstore gift certificate per group member.
Second Prize: A $30 GT bookstore gift certificate per group member.