(Theory of) Distributed Systems
Graduate Course - Summer Term 2023
Fabian Kuhn
Course description
The course provides an introduction to the fundamentals of distributed systems and algorithms. The course will in particular cover the following topics:
- distributed systems models
- time and global states in distributed systems
- sychronous and asynchronous systems
- fault tolerance
- basic distributed algorithms for coordination and agreement tasks
- basic distributed network algorithms
- distributed and parallel graph algorithms
- impossibility results and lower bounds
Schedule
- Lecture: Monday 14:15 - 16:00, room 101-01-016/18
- Exercise Tutorial: Wednesday 12:15 - 14:00, room 101-01-016/18
Information about lectures on June 12 & 19
For the two lectures on June 12 and June 19, we have provided video
lectures (see lecture
materials). The lectures on June 12 and 19 will take place. We
will however only give a summary of the content of the videos and
will use the rest of the lecture to discuss questions related to
the material in the videos.
For offline questions and discussions regarding the lecture and the exercises, we use Zulip as a discussion forum. Information on how to get access to our Zulip server can be found in the technical section below.
Lecture Material
All material regarding the lecture (literature, slides, videos, etc.) are available on the lecture materials web page of the course. In order to limit access to this material, this page is only visible from within the university network (i.e., use VPN to access the page from home).
Exercises
Below you find the weekly exercise sheet. Details on how to hand in your exercise solutions is found in the technical section below.
| Exercise | Assigned | Due (12 pm) | Solution | |
| Exercise 01 | 19.04.2023 | 26.04.2023 | Solution 01 | |
| Exercise 02 | 27.04.2023 | 03.05.2023 | Solution 02 | |
| Exercise 03 | 10.05.2023 | 17.05.2023 | Solution 03 | |
| Exercise 04 | 17.05.2023 | 25.05.2023 | Solution 04 | |
| Exercise 05 | 25.05.2023 | 07.06.2023 | Solution 05 | |
| Exercise 06 | 07.06.2023 | 14.06.2023 | Solution 06 | |
| Exercise 07 | 14.06.2023 | 21.06.2023 | Solution 07 | |
| Exercise 08 | 21.06.2023 | 28.06.2023 | Solution 08 | |
| Exercise 09 | 28.06.2023 | 05.07.2023 | Solution 09 | |
| Exercise 10 | 05.06.2023 | 12.07.2023 | Solution 10 | |
| Exercise 11 | 12.06.2023 | 19.07.2023 | Solution 11 | |
| Exercise 12 | 21.07.2023 | 26.07.2023 | Solution 12 | |
Technical Information
Data Access Zulip
The link on how to access get access to our Zulip server is available here. Note that the information is only visible from within the university network (i.e., use VPN to access the page from home or access the internet via the university eduroam).
Daphne and Subversion (SVN)
The exercises are submitted via Daphne. On Daphne, an overview of the points you achieved so far is given. Exercises are also available there. Please click on this link to register for the course with your rz-account.
After registration, a SVN repository will be created for you with an URL of the following form:
https://daphne.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/ss2023/DistSys/svn/your-rz-account-name
You should do a "checkout" of your SVN-repository (using the URL described above) to get a local copy on your pc. With the command "update" you synchronize your local copy with the current version on the server. Through the command "commit" you upload your local files to your repository on the server. A more detailed overview can be found here. There are different subversion clients you can use. For Windows Tortoise-SVN is recommended.
Note that every solution of an exercise sheet must be uploaded ("committet") to a separate folder named exercise-XY, where XY is the exercise number (with a leading 0 if smaller than 10). This folder will be automatically locked (that is, no commits are possible anymore) after the submission deadline!
Literature
Some of the content is for example covered by the following books:
-
Distributed Computing: Fundamentals, Simulations and Advanced Topics
Hagit Attiya, Jennifer Welch.
McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0-07-709352 6
-
Distributed Computing: A Locality-Sensitive Approach
David Peleg.
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), 2000, ISBN 0-89871-464-8
Additional literature for each chapter will be provided where available.