An Annotated Bibliography

Computer Networking
Fall 2014

Book Selecting Guidelines

Here are some guidelines for winnowing the available books to a handful of candidates:

Once you have the candidate books, you can use your tastes and preferences to pick the final one or two books for the course.

Books with call numbers can be found in the Guggenheim Library. Linked material from the ACM or the IEEE can be downloaded for free from the library within the monmouth.edu domain.

Textbooks

Computer Networks, 5th edition, by Andrew Tanenbaum and David Wetherall from Prentice Hall, 2010. TK 5105.5 T36 1988 (2nd edition)

A detailed and general approach to networking.

Computer Networking: A Systems Approach, 5th edition, by Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie, Morgan-Kaufman, 2011.

An Internet-heavy approach to networking, but detailed and complete.

Guest review from Jeff at Goodreads: Good end-of-chapter questions, with text depth appropriate for a smart child or an average 2nd year CS undergrad.

Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach, 5th edition, by James Kurose and Keith Ross, Addison Wesley, 2009. Blog

An Internet-centric, top-down view of computer networking.

Computer Networks: An Open Source Approach by Ying-Dar Lin, Ren-Hung Hwang, and Fred Baker, McGraw-Hill, 2012.

An Internet-centric trip through the protocol stack (there is no network layer, just an Internet Protocol layer), larded with code from open-source implementations, linux primarily.

Other Material

Calculating the Maximum Mean Data Rate in Local Area Networks by Bart Stuck in IEEE Computer, May 1983.

A once-over lightly characterization of several LAN media (bus and ring) and access protocols (token and CSMA) to deliver traffic under various conditions, including load, propagation delay, and message length.

Comparison of Two LAN Bridge Approaches by Michael Soha and Radia Perlman in IEEE Network, January, 1988.

A comparison of spanning-tree and source-based MAC routing algorithms. *Spoiler Alert* spanning-tree routing wins, although source-based routing is available in 802.5 networks.

The Dawn of the Stupid Network by David Isenberg in ACM netWorker, Spring, 1998.

Stupid vs Intelligent networks, and why stupid wins (technology helps).

Delayline: A Wide-Area Network Emulation Tool by David Ingham and Graham Parrington in compsys(), Summer, 1994.

Distributed applications developed in a LAN environment get killed when released into a WAN environment. Delayline is an emulator for wide-area network performance characteristics that lets you watch the carnage at full scale.

Design and Validation of Computer Protocols by Gerard Holzmann, Prentice Hall, 1991.

How to design communication protocols using the Promela language and check them with the Spin model checker.

The Desk Area Network by Mark Hayter and Derek McAuley in ACM Operating Systems Review, October, 1991.

A network spanning the gap between the interconnection network found within a single computing system and the LAN connecting multiple computing systems. A rare, sensible use of ATM, although a desk area network uses basic ATM data-transfer capabilities and no advanced ATM features (not to mention the hilarious mismatch between the scale of an ATM switch in a desk area network and the anticipated scale for ATM networks).

Detection and Classification of Peer-to-Peer Traffic: A Survey by João Gomes, Pedro Inácio, Manuela Pereira, Mário Freire and Paulo Monteiro in ACM Computing Surveys, June, 2013.

Good network management requires recognizing peer-to-peer network traffic because such traffic requires special handling and is popular enough to require attention. Numerous techniques automatically recognize and classify network traffic, including peer-to-peer traffic.

Distributed, Adaptive Resource Allocation for Sensor Networks by Geoffrey Mainland and Matt Welsh in ;Login:, October, 2005.

Self-organizing resource allocation distributes resource-management decisions to individual agents, which use machine learning to direct adaptive strategies, producing behaviors maximizing objectives.

Distributed Scheduling Schemes for Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey by Kanthaiah Vijayalayan, Aaron Harwood and Shanika Karunasekera in ACM Computing Surveys, October, 2013.

State-of-the-art survey of random, pseudo-random, and cyclic MAC protocols for wireless mesh networks.

The Early History of Data Networks by Gerald Holzmann and Björn Pehrson, IEEE Computer Science Press, 1995.

Networking before the Internet, even before electricity.

Elements of Network Protocol Design by Mohamed Gouda, Wiley, 1998.

A formal, abstract approach to designing network communication protocols.

End-To-End Arguments in System Design by Jerome Saltzer, David Reed and David Clark in ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, November, 1984.

A classic in network design, and system design more generally. The end-to-end argument is a key technical point underlying the recent debates on network neutrality.

End-to-End Echo Response Time Analysis on Large Mainframe Unix Systems by Matt Merges and Hansan Mutlu in the 15th Conference on Local Computer Networks, 1990.

An example of a simple, end-to-end network performance analysis on a simple network, in this case involving character echo times.

End-to-End Routing Behavior in the Internet by Vern Paxson in the Computer Communication Review, October 2006.

An analysis of 40,000 end-to-end route measurements between 37 Internet sites. Analysis determined routing behavior, stability and symmetry.

An Experimental User Level Implementation of TCP by T. Braun, C. Diot, A. Hoglander and V. Roca, INRIA technical report 2650, September 1995.

A TCP implementation split between the kernel and user-space; the kernel half does demultiplexing, the user-space half does everything else. The objective is to make it easier to study new protocols for application-level framing and integrated layer processing.

Formal Analysis of the Alternating Bit Protocol by Temproal Petri Nets by Ichiro Suzuki in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, November, 1990.

Once again the alternating bit protocol goes under the knife, and once again it passes with flying colors. The knife this time is Petri nets constrained with temporal-logic formulas, which allows for a total-correctness analysis of safety and liveness properties.

Game Theory Meets Network Security and Privacy by Mohammad Manshaei, Tansu Alpcan, Tamer Basar and Jean-Pierre Hubaux in ACM Computing Surveys, June, 2013.

Game-theoretic approaches to security and privacy in computer and communication networks, including physical and MAC layers security, self-organizing network security, intrusion detection systems, anonymity and privacy, network security economics, and cryptography.

Getting Student’s Hands Dirty with Clean-Slate Networking by Nick Feamster and Jennifer Rexford in Computer Communication Review, August, 2011.

A networking course combining clean slate networking research with hands-on experience in analyzing, building, and extending real networks. A network-management focus provides a way to explore different ways to split function across the end hosts, network elements, and management systems.

Hands-On Networking with Internet Technologies by Douglas Comer, Prentice Hall, 2005.

Hands-on exercises designed to teach Internet concepts.

How to Lease the Internet in Your Spare Time by Nick Feamster, Lixin Gao and Jennifer Rexford in Computer Communications Review, January 2007.

Decoupling network-infrastructure management and end-user service provisioning with Cabo, an architecture separating infrastructure and services.

How to Own the Internet In Your Spare Time by Stuart Staniford, Vern Paxson and Nicholas Weaver in 11th USENIX Security Symposium, August 2002.

An analysis of Code Red and Nimda worms, followed by three techniques for improving infection rates (more quickly or more steathily), followed by a proposal for a cyberCDC to deal with such threats.

In VINI Veritas: Realistic and Controlled Network Experimentation by Andy Bavier, Nick Feamster, Mark Huang, Larry Peterson and Jennifer Rexford in Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Applications, Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communications (SIGCOMM '06).

VINI provides a realistic and controlled environment for evaluating new protocols and services. It supports simultaneous experiments with arbitrary network topologies on a shared physical infrastructure. This paper describes VINI’s high-level design and evaluates a basic implementation on PlanetLab.

Introduction to Stream Control Transmission Protocol by Jan Newmarch in Linux Journal, September, 2007.

SCTP was developed by Ma Bell to be the signaling protocol for SS7, and extended by the IETF to be another IP transport protocol. See also.

Multicast Routing in Datagram Internetworks and Extended LANs by Stephen Deering and David Cheriton in ACM Transactions on Computing Systems, May, 1990.

How to multicast when store-and-forward routers interconnect LANs by extending distance-vector and link-state routing algorithms. How to improve scaling for large LANs and LAN interconnections.

Multiple Associations with Stream Control Transmission Protocol by Jan Newmarch in Linux Journal, November, 2007.

How to associate SCTP end-points with multiple hosts. See also.

On Physical-Layer Identification of Wireless Devices by Boris Danev, Davide Zanetti, and Srdjan Capkun in ACM Computing Surveys), November, 2012.

Identifying wireless devices by their radio circuitry characteristics.

On the Practicality of Cryptographic Defences Against Pollution Attacks in Wireless Network Coding by Andrew Newell, Jing Dong and Cristina Nita-Rotaru in ACM Computing Surveys, June, 2013.

Wireless network coding improves throughput, reliability, and energy efficiency, but is subject to packet pollution attacks, which degrade or deny service. Cryptographic defenses against pollution attacks vary in their costs and benefits. Analysis shows, among other things, that symmetric cryptographic defenses are better than asymmetric cryptographic defenses, and that defending against multiple colluding adversaries is expensive.

Operating System Design, vol. II: Internetworking with XINU by Douglas Comer, Prentice Hall, 1987.

Continues the XINU operating system development started in volume I by implementing a TCP/IP protocol stack. Dated, but a necessary first step to learning your way around a kernel networking stack.

P2P Group Management Systems: A Conceptual Analysis by Timo Koskela, Otso Kassinen, Erkki Harjula, and Mika Ylianttila in ACM Computing Surveys, February, 2013.

How group management protocols can be integrated into various peer-to-peer network architectures, and what happens after they’re integrated.

PathFinder: A Pattern-Based Packet Classifier by Mary Bailey, Burra Gopal, Larry Peterson and Prasenjit Sarkar in Proceedings of the First Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, November, 1994.

A pattern-based packet classifier implementable in software or hardware and able to keep up with OC-12 (622Mbps) network links.

Peer-to-Peer Architectures for Massively Multiplayer Online Games: A Survey by Amir Yahyavi and Bettina Kemme in ACM Computing Surveys, October 2013.

The techniques, advantages, and disadvantages of applying peer-to-peer network architectures to massively multiplayer on-line role-playing games.

Peer-to-Peer Computing by Quang Vu, Mihai Lupu and Beng Ooi, Springer, 2010.

A comprehensive guide to peer-to-peer networking and applications. This is a suggested textbook for the section on peer-to-peer networking. You will need another textbook for the other sections. A copy of this book is on reserve in the library.

Performance Issues in Parallelized Network Protocols by Erich Nahum, David Yates, James Kurose and Don Towsley in Proceedings of the First Conference on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, November, 1994.

TCP and UDP restructured to provide packet-level parallelism and run on multiprocessor machines in an attempt to get better network performance. Among the conclusions: multiple connections get more speed-up than a single connection, and performance takes a hit from the packet re-ordering that occurs in parallel implementations.

Principles of Protocol Design by Robin Sharp, Prentice Hall, 1994.

Describing and defining network protocols using communicating sequential processes (CSP).

A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn in IEEE Transactions on Communication, May, 1974.

TCP!

SCTP: A Proposed Standard for Robust Internet Data Transport by Armando Caro, Janardhan Iyengar, Paul Amer, Sourabh Ladha, Gerard Heinz and Keyur Shah in IEEE Computer, November, 2003.

Another alternate transport layer protocol providing a reliable, multiplexed message-based service.

Security Mechanisms in High-Level Network Protocols by Victor Voydock and Stephen Kent in ACM Computing Surveys, June, 1983.

Taking a network and making it secure by adding cryptography. Despite the title, the paper also talks about link-level security.

Selecting Sequence Numbers by Raymond Tomlinson in Operating Systems Review (Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM/SIGOPS Workshop on Interprocess Communications), July, 1975.

Selecting and synchronizing sequence numbers for bounded network characteristics and adequate data error detection.

Some Properties of Timed Token Medium Access Protocols by Adriano Valenzano, Paolo Montuschi and Luigi Ciminiera in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, August, 1990.

Performance analysis of a token-based protocol designed to provide real-time and non-real-time service classes.

Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) Associations by Jan Newmarch in Linux Journal, October, 2007.

SCTP associations generalize end-point binding, enabling multi-homed connections. See also.

Standardized Protocol Interfaces by Gerard Holzmann in Software—Practice and Experience, July, 1993.

Another try at that old favorite: arbitrary and dynamic protocol operation via interpreters and code downloading.

A Survey and Comparison of Peer-to-Peer Overlay Network Schemes by Eng Lua, Jon Crowcroft, Marcelo Pias, Ravi Sharma and Steven Lim in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, vol 7, no. 2, 2005.

A survey and comparison of various structured and unstructured P2P networks with respect to design, function, and performance.

A Survey and Projection on Medium Access Control Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks by Yi Zhao, Chunyan Miao, Maode Ma, Jing Zhang and Cyril Leung in ACM Computing Surveys, November, 2012.

A survey of MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks using the categories contention-based protocols, contention-free (scheduled-based) protocols, hybrid protocols, and preamble sampling protocols. Covers protocol background, main features, operation, major design issues, and advantages and disadvantages.

A Survey of Adaptive Services to Cope with Dynamics in Wireless Self-Organizing Networks by Cigdem Sengul and Aline Carneiro Viana and Artur Ziviani in ACM Computing Surveys, August, 2012.

Considers adaptive services for self-organizing wireless networks, such as mobile ad hoc, wireless sensor, wireless mesh, and delay-tolerant networks.

A Survey of Peer-to-Peer Content Distribution Technologies by Stephanos Androutsellis-Theotokis and Diomidis Spinellis in ACM Computing Surveys, December, 2004.

Describes a framework for analyzing peer-to-peer content distribution technologies.

Survey on Application-Layer Mechanisms for Speech Quality Adaptation in VoIP by Leandro Carvalho and Edjair Mota in ACM Computing Surveys, June, 2013.

How VoIP adaptively adjusts application-layer parameters to maintain speech quality given problems such as delay and packet loss. Emphasizing the feedback loops used by adaptive techniques helps design better recovery mechanisms.

A Survey on the Design, Applications, and Enhancements of Application-Layer Overlay Networks by Jinu Kurian and Kamil Sarac in ACM Computing Surveys, November, 2010.

A survey of recent advances in application-layer overlay networks with respect to multicast, QoS support, denial-of-service (DoS) defense, and resilient routing.

A Survey on Service Quality Description by Kyriakos Kritikos, Barbara Pernici, Pierluigi Plebani, Cinzia Cappiello, Marco Comuzzi, Salima Benrernou, Ivona Brandic, Attila Kertész, Michael Parkin and Manuel Carro in ACM Computing Surveys, October, 2013.

A comparison of several QoS description models and metamodels. Possibly the most boring paper in this list.

A Taxonomy and Survey of SCTP Research by Lukasz Budzisz, Johan Garcia, Anna Brunstrom and Ramon Ferrús in ACM Computing Surveys, August 2012.

SCTP can be thought of as TCP amped-up with lots of knobs and dials. The combination of well-trodden research ground and new shiny fiddly bits acts on network researchers as a catnip yarn-ball acts on cats. This is a report from the field (of network research), including a field re-plowing in the form of a taxonomy of SCTP research.

TCP/IP Illustrated, vol. 1: The Protocols by W. Richard Stevens, Addison-Wesley, 1994.

TCP/IP Illustrated, vol. 2: The Implementation by W. Richard Stevens and Garry Wright, Addison-Wesley, 1995.

TCP/IP Illustrated, vol. 3: TCP for Transactions, HTTP, NNTP, and the UNIX Domain Protocols by W. Richard Stevens, Addison-Wesley, 1996.

This three-volume series is the bible for TCP/IP on UNIX (and therefore, for TCP/IP everywhere).

The Tempest—A Practical Framework for Network Programmability by J. E. Van der Merwe, S. Rooney, I. Leslie and S. Crosby in IEEE Network, May-June 1998.

The Tempest programmable network environment dynamically introduces and modifies network services. Switchlets partition physical switches into virtual-switch sets. Connection closures organize switchlets into custom networks. ATM-centric, but the ideas extend with a little work.

Tools for Implementing Network Protocols by Norman Hutchinson, Shivakant Mishra, Larry Peterson and Vicraj Thomas in Software—Practice and Experience, September, 1989.

Two efficient and general-purpose software tools: a message manager for splitting and joining PDUs and a map manager for pairing external and internal identifiers - useful when implementing network protocols.

Topology Control in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks by Paolo Santi in ACM Computing Surveys, June, 2005.

How to control the communication-link topology between network nodes to maintain some global property (e.g., connectivity), while reducing energy consumption and interference related to the nodes’ transmitting range.

The UDP Calculus: Rigorous Semantics for Real Networking by Andrei Serjantov, Peter Sewell and Keith Wansbrough in Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Software, October, 2001.

An operational model for a subset of UDP and ICMP, including loss and failure. The model, bound to an OCaml subset, has been validated in socket programs compared against actual systems.

Wireless Sensor Networks by Ian Akyildiz, and Mehmet Vuran, Wiley, 2010.

A comprehensive guide to wireless sensor networking. This is a suggested textbook for the sensor-networking section. You will need another textbook for the other sections. A copy of this book is on reserve in the library.
This page last modified on 2014 September 24.

Creative Commons License