Overview

The aim of the reviews in this course is to read papers that cover all of the different aspects of data center networking. Every student needs to complete 14 reviews in total on papers. Your posting should be based on the following template. Before the paper is presented in class (i.e., before 12:15pm on the day of class), your group must post its review to the Course Discussion Website (Piazza).

Your posting should contain:

1. A one or two sentence summary of the paper
2. A description of the problem they were trying to solve
3. A summary of the contributions of the paper
4. What did the paper evaluate and was it appropriate
5. At least one thing about the paper you would like to discuss in class

The writeup should not be more than a page in length. Late write-ups will receive a zero grade.

Part of your class participation grade is determined by your participation on the course discussion website (Piazza). To receive full class participation credit, you must read and comment on at least 2 other paper reviews before the start of class.

Advice

When discussing each paper (on Piazza), you are encouraged to consider the following questions: As you read, here are some questions you should consider:

• What problem are the authors trying to solve?
  • Why was the problem important?
  • Why was the problem not solved by earlier work?
• What is the authors solution to the problem?
  • How does their approach solve the problem?
  • How is the solution unique and innovative?
  • What are the details of their solution?
• How do the authors evaluate their solution?
  • What specific questions do they answer?
  • What simplifying assumptions do they make?
  • What is their methodology?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of their solution?
  • What is left unknown?
• What do you think?
  • Is the problem still important?
  • Did the authors solve the stated problem?
  • Did the authors adequately demonstrate that they solved the problem?
  • What future work does this research point to?

You should be prepared to discuss these questions in class. For each paper I will ask for a volunteer to summarize and address a few of these questions in class.

Here are a few links to advice on reading papers:

• Efficient reading of papers in science and technology by Michael J. Hanson
• The Many Faces of Systems Research – And How to Evalute Them by Aaron Brown, Anupan Chanda, Rik Farrow, Alexandra Fedorova, Petros Maniatis, and Michael Scott
• Advice on understanding related work by Jennifer Mankoff
• Research Papers and Review Considerations by David Wetherall

Responsibilities

For every lecture, you will be reading one or two research papers. For each paper, you have four responsibilities:

• Read the paper
• Submit a short writeup about the paper
• Discuss the paper on the course discussion website
• Prepare to summarize the paper in class

Each class, one student will be chosen to present a brief summary of the day’s papers.

Writeup Grading

What I’m looking for:

• Does the review include all sections (summary, problem, contributions, flaws, topic question)
• Are all assertions backed up (e.g. “X is a bad idea” is not acceptable, but “X is a bad idea because Y”) is acceptable
• Is the review concise? The summary should be a few sentences and give the essence of the design in the paper, not the problem. (E.g., “This paper is about how to build a multiprocessor operating system” is not acceptable, but “This paper is about building a multiprocessor operating system by layering abstractions that mask the existence of multiple processors” is acceptable)
• Did the student understand the material? Are there factual flaws in the review? For example, if the paper defines a term, does the student use it appropriately? As another example, if students state that a paper is relevant because modern operating systems do things the same way, is that true?
• Did the student consider whether the evaluation is sufficient? Does it show that the work doesn’t harm regular programs, even if it works well for some programs? Do they evaluate all the goals for the system?

Assigning grades:

• If the review does an excellent job on all four considerations, and provides genuinely insightful comments about the problem, contributions (going beyond what the paper claims are contributions), evaluation, confusions, it should receive a check plus
• If two or more of the four criteria are not met, the review should receive a check minus
• Otherwise, it should receive a check. A check plus is worth 1 point, a check is 3/4 point, a check minus is 1/2 point, and not turning a review in is worth zero points.