Announcements:

May 21: The final exam solutions. You can pick up your corrected final exam from Sanjit.

May 12: The eSearch question.

May 12: The final exam will be in Walker from 1:30 to 4:30 on Monday May 17th. It will cover lectures and readings from March 30th through the end of the course. The format will be similar to that of the midterm. You can bring paper copies of your notes, the papers, and my lecture and paper notes. Please do not bring any electronic devices (for example cell phones or laptops).

May 10: The Untangling the Web question.

May 8: Please read the Untangling the Web from DNS paper for Tuesday's class.

May 5: The Coral question. The project reports are due on Thursday May 6th at 23:59.

May 3: The Freenet question.

Apr 28: The final project presentation schedule is now up.

Apr 26: The Frangipani question.

Apr 25: Please read the Frangipani paper for Tuesday; you may also want to glance at the Harp paper, which will form the basis for the lecture.

Apr 21: The Quicksilver question.

Apr 14: The Amoeba question.

Apr 14: You should seriously consider attending Scott Shenker's Distinguished Lecture at 3:30 on Thursday in the Wong Auditorium. Scott always gives excellent talks, and this one looks pretty relevant to 6.824; it's about distributed hash tables and the Internet architecture.

Apr 12: The Tra question.

Apr 7: The Treadmarks question.

Apr 5: The Hive question.

Mar 31: The Hypervisor question.

Mar 29: Project report first drafts are due on Tuesday (March 30th), look here to see what we're expecting.

Mar 28: We'll be talking about performance on Tuesday -- the papers and question have been posted on the schedule. We'll discuss both papers during class. There is only one question.

Mar 20: Here are the quiz answers. The average score was 86.

Mar 16: The class machines will all be turned off around 7:30 on Thursday morning, and will be down for 24 to 48 hours.

Mar 15: There will be an 80-minute quiz during class on Thursday. Please bring copies of the papers and the class notes. Here's last year's quiz. This web site will be down on Tuesday morning, and the class machines will be down all day Thursday.

Mar 13: Look at the Lab 5 page for information about db->remove().

Mar 10: The SUNDR question.

Mar 10: Grades for labs 1-3 have been sent out. If you completed the assignments but did not receive any email, please see the TA.

Mar 8: We've e-mailed comments to every group from which we received a project proposal. If you sent us a proposal but have not received e-mail, please let us know.

Mar 8: Here's the XOM question.

Mar 2: The 6.824 web site will be down all day on March 16th due to the move to the Stata center. That's the due date for Lab 5, and means the assignment page won't be available. The class machines should be up on the 16th. However, we'll be moving the class machines on March 18th, so they will be down for at least that day and perhaps the 19th as well.

Mar 1: Lab 5 is now available.

Mar 1: Here's the Porcupine question.

Feb 25: Read just sections 1 through 4 of the Echo paper. Here's the question.

Feb 23: Lab 4 is now available.

Feb 23: Here's the question for Tuesday's Cedar file system discussion.

Feb 22: Office hours are now every weekday from 3-4pm.

Feb 18: Lab 3 is now up. Remember to check out the libasync tutorial before getting started.

Feb 18: Students still searching for teammates should visit the Project Teams page.

Feb 17: Submit team lists for the final project to 6.824-staff@pdos.lcs.mit.edu. If you have fewer than three people, send us your partial team list and preferences.

Feb 11: Here's the question for Thursday's lecture.

Feb 8: The Lab 2 starter files now include the tester.

Feb 8: Lab 2 is up, along with the question for Tuesday's lecture.

Feb 4: Lab 1 is now available.

Feb 3: If you're taking 6.824, you should sign up for 6.824 labs.

Feb 3: Don't forget about the reading and question for Thursday, which you can find in the schedule and the question page.

What is 6.824 about?

6.824 is a core 12-unit graduate subject with lectures, programming labs, quizzes, and a final project. It will present abstractions and implementation techniques that allow the design of Internet systems that can deal with real-world workload. Topics include server design, network programming, naming, storage systems, security, and fault tolerance.

Prerequisites: 6.004 and one of 6.033 or 6.828, or equivalent. Substantial programming experience with C/C++ will be helpful for the lab assignments and final project.

If you feel you know enough about systems engineering, an alternative subject to 6.824 is 6.829. 6.829 focuses on the engineering of networks. If you are a graduate student in systems or networking, we recommend you take both classes during your graduate career. You should not take them both in the same term, though, since both have heavy-duty projects.

If you want to learn more about operating systems in particular, you should consider 6.828.