About this course: You pick up your iPhone while waiting in line at a coffee shop. You google a not-so-famous actor, get linked to a Wikipedia entry listing his recent movies and popular YouTube clips of several of them. You check out user reviews on Amazon and pick one, download that movie on BitTorrent or stream that in Netflix. But suddenly the WiFi logo on your phone is gone and you're on 3G. Video quality starts to degrade, but you don't know if it's the server getting crowded or the Internet is congested somewhere. In any case, it costs you $10 per Gigabyte, and you decide to stop watching the movie, and instead multitask between sending tweets and calling your friend on Skype, while songs stream from iCloud to your phone. You're happy with the call quality, but get a little irritated when you see there're no new followers on Twitter. You may wonder how they all kind of work, and why sometimes they don't. Take a look at the list of 20 questions below. Each question is selected not just for its relevance to our daily lives, but also for the core concepts in the field of networking illustrated by its answers. This course is about formulating and answering these 20 questions.
Created by: Princeton University
Taught by: Mung Chiang, Professor
Electrical Engineering
Taught by: Christopher Brinton, Visiting Researcher and Lecturer
Department of Electrical Engineering
| Language | English |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Introduction
An introduction to what we will explore in this course: 20 practical questions and their answers, about your networked life.
5 videos, 2 readings
What Makes CDMA Work for My Smartphone?
We study cellular network technology, the air interface between end-user devices and base stations, and an important algorithm which has been developed to manage interference between our devices as they share this medium: Distributed Power Control.
6 videos, 2 readings
WEEK 2
How Does Google Sell Ad Spaces?
How does Google sells the ads that appear on its search results page through auctions? We learn about different types of auction mechanisms, including those for single and multiple items. QUESTION 3: We explore PageRank, the famous algorithm that underlies how...
5 videos
How Does Google Rank Webpages?
In this lecture, we will explore PageRank, the famous algorithm that underlies how Google orders its list of search results whenever we type in a query.
5 videos, 2 readings
WEEK 3
How Does Netflix Recommend Movies?
As a user of Netflix, you may have had movies recommended for you to watch. Behind the scenes, Netflix is leveraging powerful machine learning to determine which will be recommended to you specifically. In this lecture, we will study some of the fundamental al...
5 videos
When Can I Trust an Average Rating on Amazon?
The decision of whether or not to make an online purchase is often driven by feedback that has been left by past customers, commonly in the form of star ratings. In this lecture, we will study Amazon's review system. In doing so, we will explore some of the me...
5 videos, 2 readings
WEEK 4
Why Does Wikipedia Even Work?
In this lecture, we focus on the concepts of crowdsourcing and consensus formation, which are two of the mechanisms allowing Wikipedia to be both a scalable and (reasonably) accurate encyclopedia. In particular, we will look at different voting systems, which ...
5 videos
How Do I Viralize a Youtube Video?
In this lecture, we will study models that have been developed for the popularity of products over time, motivated by the phenomenon of videos going "viral" on YouTube. Overall, the theme will be the dependence of opinions, as opposed to the wisdom of crowds d...
5 videos, 2 readings
WEEK 5
How Do I Influence People on Facebook?
In this lecture, we continue with the theme of information spread in networks, turning to the effect of graph topology. In particular, we will discuss influence models for social networks like Facebook, and how to measure importance.
5 videos
Can I Really Reach Anyone in 6 Steps?
Six degrees of separation, or the small world phenomenon, has become one of the most widely told stories in popular science. In this lecture, we will study different models to explain both how short paths can exist in realistic networks, and how they can be di...
4 videos, 2 readings
Graded: Midterm
WEEK 6
Does the Internet Have an Achilles' Heel?
At one time, there were rumors that the Internet has an Achilles' Heel, or a few center points which if attacked would completely disconnect the Internet. In this lecture, we debunk this myth, by showing that the fact the Internet is a "scale-free" network doe...
4 videos
Why Do Mobile Carriers Charge Me $10/GB?
In recent years, mobile carriers have introduced a usage-based component to their data plans, where you are charged proportionally to the amount of data you consume. In this lecture, we will look at the reasons behind the switch to usage-based pricing, in term...
5 videos, 2 readings
WEEK 7
How Do I Save on Each GB?
In the last lecture, we studied flat-rate and usage-based pricing schemes for mobile carriers. What these both fail to model is the time varying aspect of demand: consumption varies throughout the day, leading to peaks and troughs in usage. In this lecture, we...
4 videos
How Does Traffic Go Through the Internet?
It is hard to overestimate the impact that the Internet has had on society. In this lecture, we will overview the layered architecture on which the Internet was designed, and will dive into the process of determining how packets of information are transported,...
5 videos, 2 readings
WEEK 8
Why Doesn't the Internet Collapse Under Congestion?
When the demand for capacity on the Internet exceeds the available supply on the network links, we have congestion. In this lecture, we will discuss the principles of distributed congestion control, and will detail protocols that have been designed to regulate...
5 videos
How can Skype and BitTorrent be free?
The amount of content on the Internet continues to grow at a rapid pace. One of the ways that content distribution at such massive scale is made possible is through peer to peer (P2P) protocols. In this lecture, we will study P2P applications like Skype and Bi...
4 videos, 2 readings
WEEK 9
What's Inside the Cloud?
The Cloud is another rapidly growing Internet service, allowing users to rent storage and computation resources inside the network. In this lecture, we will see how the large data centers operated by Cloud providers can be constructed from a multitude of small...
5 videos
Which Way to Watch Video on the Internet?
We have seen that the Internet provides a "best effort" service. In this lecture, we will look at how it supports video distribution, which often imposes stringent demands on throughput and delay.
4 videos, 2 readings
WEEK 10
Why is WiFi Faster at Home Than at Hotspot?
WiFi hotspots have become an essential feature of our wireless lifestyle. In this lecture, we will study WiFi, and focus specifically on common link layer protocols that are used to manage interference. In doing so, we will see why WiFi does not scale well bey...
4 videos
Why Am I Only Getting 3% of the Cellular Speed?
Advertised network speeds are typically only those that can be obtained at the physical layer under ideal channel conditions. In this lecture, we will study various factors that impact the actual speeds we obtain at the application layer under realistic channe...
4 videos, 2 readings
WEEK 11
Is It Fair that My Neighbor’s iPad Downloads Faster?
In this final lecture of the course, we will study a subject that we touched upon many times previously and forms an essential part of both social choice theory and technology network design: quantifying fairness of resource allocation.
4 videos
Course Summary
Here, we will summarize the important points of what we have learned in this course.
2 videos
Graded: Final
WEEK 12
Guest Lectures
This contains various guest lectures from renowned members of academia and industry who are experts across the topics covered in this course.
8 videos
FAQs
How It Works
Coursework
Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects.
Help from Your Peers
Connect with thousands of other learners and debate ideas, discuss course material, and get help mastering concepts.
Creators
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. It is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution.
Ratings and Reviews
Very interesting topics.
It is really a exceptional course which illustrates networking problems and answers with real life examples.
Very enlightning course.
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EM
Útil, interesante y reflexivo.