Advanced Networking - Spring 2026

Instructor: Antonio Carzaniga
Assistants: Pasquale Polverino.
Lecture schedule: Wednesday 11:00–12:30 in D0.10, Friday 11:00–12:30 in D1.13. See the course weekly schedule for details and updates.
Instructors' Office Hours: by appointment
Assistants' Office Hours: by appointment

Objectives and Contents

This course covers advanced topics in computer networks, with a blend of theoretical and practical topics. On the theoretical side, the syllabus will cover mathematical foundations of networking, including discussions of queuing theory, simulation, and traffic engineering and optimization. On the practical side, the syllabus will cover concepts and designs related to modern network architectures and technologies (e.g., data-center networks, software-defined networks), as well as protocols at various levels (e.g., HTTP/2, QUIC, DCTCP, IPSec, MPLS). Students will gain hands-on experience by using network applications, simulators, and emulators, and by developing solutions for a series of exercises more or less related to the topics discussed in class.

A new and revised course program, still subject to change, is here.

Policies

See this page for assessment criteria and general course policies.

Learning Material and Other Useful Links

• Textbook: Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross, published by Addison-Wesley.
See also the authors' page for the book.
• Other suggested reading: Mathematical Foundations of Computer Networking by Srinivasan Keshav, published by Addison-Wesley Professional.

Lectures and Related Material

• Introduction to Advanced Networking
  Material: slides used in class
• Short introduction on peer-to-peer file transfer and BitTorrent.
  Material: slides used in class
• Basics of network application programming with sockets.
  Material: notes on sockets programming, tcp_client.c, tcp_server.c
• Recap on Basic Networking Concepts: Network architecture, application protocols, TCP, datagram network service, router architecture, forwarding, routing, and in particular link-state routing.
  Material: slides used in class
• Queuing Models and Theory: Basics of queueing models; basic results in queuing theory; Little's theorem and applications; Poisson processes; analysis of an M/M/1 queue and applications; statistical multiplexing.
  Material: Notes on queuing theory
• Network Emulation and Mininet: Network namespaces; basic network configurations using direct manipulation of interfaces, links, and routing tables; mininet. Automatic creation of a complex network topology.
  Material: lecture notes
• Traffic Engineering: Flow problems; linear programming; whole-flow optimization; integer linear programming; randomized routing schemes.
• Random Walks and Sampling: Graph model; Monte-Carlo simulation; analytic solutions; design and optimization.
  Material: notes on random walks witeh IP forwarding
• Network Modeling and Simulation: Packet-level modeling and simulation. Discrete-event simulation.
• Network and Communication Security: Basics of communication security; modern cryptography and provable security; basics of symmetric cryptography; basics of public-key cryptography; concrete protocols and systems: IPSec.
  Material: notes on the OpenSSL library
• Advanced Architectures and Protocols: The modern Web: HTTP/2; the future Web: HTTP/3? Data-center networking: architectures and protocols; DCTCP; Timely.
• Programmable Networks: SDN: programming the control plane: the OpenFlow interface. Programmable data plane: P4.
• Advanced Topics in Networking: Student seminars.