Attachment 2: Prospective Contributors and Support

In response to a draft of this proposal, experts in universities and industry provided enthusiastic comments via e-mail about the utility of the sort of repository proposed here:

From kurose@gaia.cs.umass.edu  Fri Dec 29 19:00:44 1995
Received: from gaia.cs.umass.edu by upeksa.sdsc.edu via ESMTP 
	for kc@upeksa.sdsc.edu id TAA29225; Fri, 29 Dec 1995 19:00:43 -0800
X-Authentication-Warning: upeksa.sdsc.edu: nobody owned process doing -bs
Received: from kurose@localhost) by gaia.cs.umass.edu (8.6.11/8.6.9) id
WAA06724 for kc@upeksa.sdsc.edu; Fri, 29 Dec 1995 22:00:13 -0500
From: Jim Kurose kurose@gaia.cs.umass.edu
Message-Id: 199512300300.WAA06724@gaia.cs.umass.edu
Subject: Re: online course notes
To: kc@upeksa.sdsc.edu (k claffy)
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 95 22:00:12 EST
In-Reply-To: 199512300119.RAA28882@upeksa.sdsc.edu; from "k claffy" at Dec
29, 95 5:19 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Status: RO

Hey.  Great idea. [I don't need any convincing - I've put my notes up
for a number of years and a number of people [including Lixia] have used 
them.] I've got ~ 300 overheads, programming
assignments and environments, and homeworks available
via ftp at ftp://gaia.cs.umass.edu/cs653_1995.  See the README there for
info.  

I am in the process of updating them for 1996.  The newest notes
are being put in ftp://gaia.cs.umass.edu/cs653.  
I should have a complete set there by end of next week.

I'd be willing to help you out with the project (beyond contributing
my own stuff), if your looking for help.

Jim

> 
> Jim
> 
> Lixia mentioned you have tons
> of cool course notes on your web site, 
> and i was trying to put together
> a prototype of a whole on-line
> hypertext Internet curriculum 
> that professors could contribute to
> and snarf from 
> [and i was told i must convince
> you it was a good idea :) ]
> 
> but i couldn't find it poking
> around gaia -- i must be tired  :)
> (or is it hidden?)
> 
> k
>

>From schooler@cs.caltech.edu  Wed Jan  3 18:25:14 1996
Received: from vlsi.cs.caltech.edu by upeksa.sdsc.edu via SMTP 
	for kc@upeksa.sdsc.edu id SAA26443; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 18:25:13 -0800
X-Authentication-Warning: upeksa.sdsc.edu: nobody owned process doing -bs
Received: from fides.cs.caltech.edu by vlsi.cs.caltech.edu (4.1/1.34.1)
	id AA05966; Wed, 3 Jan 96 18:28:03 PST
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 96 18:28:03 PST
From: schooler@cs.caltech.edu (Eve Schooler)
Message-Id: 9601040228.AA05966@vlsi.cs.caltech.edu>
To: kc@upeksa.sdsc.edu
Subject: Re: seeking counsel on webtext book
Cc: schooler@cs.caltech.edu
Status: RO

hi kc,

>so i wanted to get folks' take on the idea and
>also suggestions for topics/contributors-to-ask
>for materials.  [oh yeah, and volunteers, 
>if you've already done any of these for your own classes
>or plan to in the next year.]

you might have a look at "http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~cs138", which
is the homepage for the year-long core algorithms class at
caltech (it covers sequential, distributed and parallel algorithms).
i think it offers a pretty good model of what needs to be made
available as webtext (caltech's name for this is "etext").

we don't believe in handouts.  everything's on the web and most
lectures are given directly from the slides that are also 
available on-line.  the web includes distilled notes, homeworks.  
homework solutions, example problems/solutions, other pointers.
right now there are reference texts, but the course could still use a 
better/more complete outside reading list (hopefully next year).  
the on-line course has already been 2 years in the making.

>[the ideal is that contributing instructors don't have 
>to do much work except provide the url of the online stuff 
>they prepare for the one or two classes they teach, 
>then gather it all in one place.  
>reality i'm sure will be more complicated: 
>i'll plan to have an html-nerd available for profs 
>who don't take their stuff that far, coordinate it
>into one web site, keep things up to date, etc.]

unlike your proposal, the caltech course draws on one person's
expertise (mani chandy) and a host of grad student drones to 
help out :-)  your idea about having a collection of instructors
as well as drones could be a great improvement in terms of the time
it takes to make all course material available digitally.
this task is certainly one of the BIGGEST time sinks.

>so, soliciting, at your convenience/inclination:
>(a)  your general take on the idea, and how i should modify
>     it to improve what you don't like about it/
>     make it more useful to instructors you know 

i think the idea is great.  for me, residing at a school which does not
offer a hardcore networking course has been extremely frustrating,
so i can appreciate your efforts to attack the problem by looking
for help elsewhere.  over the last year, i've been collecting lists of 
peoples' favorite networking journal readings, textbooks, course syllabi 
(from other schools), etc.  lixia's list is a wonderful example.

two other considerations:
(1) making the course an official offering across multiple schools.
(2) forming some kind of on-line consortium among local or
    southern california schools (ucsd, ucla, usc, caltech, uci, ucr)
    to meet this challenge :-)
    we could certainly find supporters/participants at ucsd, ucla, usc 
    and caltech.

>(b)  topics i've left out/should leave out

looks like mobility is missing.  also, maybe mention collaborative
computing somewhere, either in your discussion of multicast and
the mbone, or when you talk about extensions to http and the web.

>(c)  recommendations of who i should ask to help with given topics
>(d)  topics you're interested/willing to do, or URLs if 
>     you've already done them

see below. [ed: very good recommendations deleted,
we will be following through on]

SAMPLE INITIAL CURRICULUM

Possible Chapter Topics

bandwidth and resource reservation, quality of service: the usual culprits: scott shenker, lixia, deborah estrin, dave clark, van and sally, craig partridge, maybe even someone from the ST2 camp from bbn?
multicast: The Internet multicast backbone (Mbone), steve deering, bill fenner (also at parc), someone from cisco, steve casner, idmr-types to talk about present day multicast routing efforts like pim, jon crowcroft or mark handley to talk about the hierarchical pim. some cool requirements for distributed simulation; perhaps the post-naval graduate school in monterey types as well as bbn dsinet/simnet folks could shed some light here.
multimedia: ucsd has venkat rangan (sp?) who might have a good perspective here, or joe pasquale. someone from cornell who i like/respect very much is brian smith. also, steve mccanne from lbl. too often, multimedia = video, and in reality there are interesting audio issues as well. perhaps someone like henning schulzrinne could help here. also, music/synchronization concerns; perhaps julio escobar re the synchronization protocol work at bbn. additionally, you could get the berkeley music lab folks to talk about zippy the follow-on to midi, or even the ucsd music lab folks to talk about their latest network-based developments. i have a decent survey paper i could contribute on "conferencing and collaborative computing".
cell switching and ATM: allison mankin. might want to include alternatives to atm, if what you are getting at here is the "high-speed" aspect. other technologies: fddi, fast ethernet, myrinet (bob's company :-)
pricing: as the common carriers become more involved in the scott shenker and collaborators at usc/isi.
http and successors: the hypertext protocol and markup alas the w3c, java, or netscape folks. other extensions might fall under the multimedia or collaborative computing realm.
MUDs and MOOs: these forms of online meeting are becoming xerox parc jupiter project folks like ron fredericks.
large database mining and directed discovery: large mike schwartz or peter danzig. very cool work at digital on the altavista database search engine, or the berkeley inktomi project.
wide-area distributed parallelization of code: lot o' work at caltech on parallelization but i'm afraid it is not necessarily focused on the wide-area. excellent folks to talk to here might include: steve taylor, mary hall, carl kesselman, perhaps even a few jpl types.
then there's the "now" effort at bezerkeley. not sure they are working so much on distributed parallelization as they are on distributed computing.
problems with current transport protocol (TCP) in the face bob braden.

p.p.s. - i think webtext is too confining a term. altho i know you are playing on the term "textbook", the term text doesn't seem all-encompassing enough. is there a shakespearian phrase we could borrow about spiders and webs and weaving that might supply a richer name? it just occured to me that webster's dictionary has an implicitly cool pun; webster = someone who uses the web.

bye for now....

From J.Crowcroft@cs.ucl.ac.uk  Wed Mar  6 02:40:19 1996
Received: from upeksa.sdsc.edu by kasina.nlanr.net via ESMTP 
	for kc@kasina.nlanr.net> id CAA12511; Wed, 6 Mar 1996 02:40:18 -0800
Received: by upeksa.sdsc.edu 
	for kc@nlanr.net> id CAA01202; Wed, 6 Mar 1996 02:40:17 -0800
Received: from bells.cs.ucl.ac.uk(128.16.5.31) by upeksa.nlanr.net via smap
(V1.3)
	id sma001197; Wed Mar  6 02:38:28 1996
Received: from mortimer.cs.ucl.ac.uk by bells.cs.ucl.ac.uk with local SMTP 
          id g.07544-0@bells.cs.ucl.ac.uk>; Wed, 6 Mar 1996 10:36:04 +0000
To: kc@nlanr.net (k claffy)
Subject: Re: proposal to form a living Internet engineering curriculum,
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 29 Feb 1996 16:35:01."
199603010035.QAA03128@kasina.nlanr.net>
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 1996 10:36:00 +0000
Message-ID: 1387.826108560@cs.ucl.ac.uk>
From: Jon Crowcroft J.Crowcroft@cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Status: RO



 >anyway requested 1-pager below 
 >tell me if it needs something
 

ok - this is fine

but consensus is that we should give you more at the start - say 10k
now, and 5 k next year, rather than 5 k per year for 3 years....

we now need 2 things
1/ who to write the cheque to? (and where to send it etc!)
2/ and (of course, there is a quid pro quo!) - the ACM say you have to
put a link back to the sigcomm home page with a logo:-)

thanks

jon
 >   
 >
 >
 >	Proposal for an Internet Engineering Curriculum
 >		Request for Support from SIGCOMM
 >
 >The National Laboratory for Applied Network Research 
 >(NLANR) has proposes to coordinate and make available 
 >on the web a distributed ``living curriculum'' in network 
 >engineering.  Our resources are the current teachers, and our 
 >objective is to help them draw together the myriad topics and 
 >integrate them into a continually changing online curriculum, a 
 >resource for both teachers and students.  A central trove of 
 >multimedia minicourses, containing problem sets and real, 
 >online projects, can speed the development of the required 
 >engineering talent.  It can be instrumental, ultimately, in creating 
 >a stable network infrastructure whose reliability and throughput 
 >at various levels will be secured by the activities of engineers, 
 >users, and service providers alike. 
 >
 >We have submitted a proposal to the National Science 
 >Foundation, but the community has expressed such vehement
 >interest in this site that we are now sorry that we
 >had done it sooner, since NSF review cycles take 6 months
 >to a year.    If we had additional funding to carry us 
 >through to the review, we could afford to dedicate 
 >a part-time staff member to getting  a working prototype
 >up before the 1996-97 school year begins (we would shoot
 >for 1 August 1996).
 >
 >SIGCOMM could be a huge help here if they could funding to 
 >cover a part-time web site developer from April to 
 >September.   Since having such a site up as soon as possible
 >would seem to be in SIGCOMM's interests as well.
 >we hope they would deem it appropriate to help us out.
 >The funding would cover for the developer to 
 >    .  establish an initial web framework
 >    .  establish contact points at major sites that
 > 	already have resources available and just need
 >	reasonable formatting/integration
 >    .  establish mechanism for contributors to communicate
 > 	about site contents
 >    .  put in glue to tie the topics together
 >    .  develop prototypes of more advanced uses of
 >	the web for classroom material that contributors 
 >	could use as templates for developing their future
 >	contributors
 >
 >Admittedly this work scope also covers what we want
 >to do for the entire project, but we'd like to get 
 >a useful skeleton up as quickly as possible, and without
 >a SIGCOMM contribution it we have no resources to 
 >accomplish the task at this time.
 >
 >If we finish earlier we will put the remaining funds
 >into disk space or machine peripherals to support the
 >Iec server or Mbone component of the project (camera,
 >microphone, LCD equipment).  
 >(We are hoping to get workstation/disk donations 
 >from industry (e.g., Sun, SGI, HP, or Digital), 
 >if SIGCOMM can have any positive influence over that 
 >process we would be more than grateful.
 >
 >Deatils and a set of initial links from which we will
 >try to boostrap are at http://www.nlanr.net/.

 jon

From yemini@cs.columbia.edu  Mon Sep 16 08:43:40 1996
Received: from nlanr.net ([192.172.226.25]) by kasina.nlanr.net
(8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA11291 for kc@kasina.nlanr.net>; Mon, 16 Sep
1996 08:43:40 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cs.columbia.edu (root@cs.columbia.edu [128.59.16.20]) by
nlanr.net (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA06643 for kc@nlanr.net>; Mon, 16
Sep 1996 08:44:08 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from verdi (verdi.cs.columbia.edu [128.59.25.21]) by
cs.columbia.edu (8.7.5/8.6.6) with SMTP id LAA06016; Mon, 16 Sep 1996
11:44:05 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 11:44:05 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: 199609161544.LAA06016@cs.columbia.edu>
X-Sender: yemini@cs.columbia.edu
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.1.2
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: kc kc@nlanr.net>
From: Yechiam Yemini yemini@cs.columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: early prototype of an Internet Engineering Curriculum
  repository
Cc: iec-dev@nlar.net
Status: RO


Hi 

Several month ago I got an email on the project.  I feel this is
a great project and plan to use it as well as contribute. I have
prepared a complete introductory course on networking and it is all posted
at our web site. You can see it at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/netbook.
In addition to detailed class foils the site contains class projects, 
exams and review questions. During the Spring semester I plan to improve and
expand these notes significantly. If you feel this material could contribute
to the project I will be pleased to make it available.  I also have similar
notes for a course on network management which I will be happy to provide.
Please let me know whether this is of interest.

Tnx YY

>
>Dear Professors and Educators,
>
>We have an early prototype of an Internet Engineering
>Curriculum (IEC) project that some NLANR interns have been
>trying to get together for a few months.  IEC is a repository 
>of Internet related university level instructional material.
>Its primary short term objective is to assist professors in 
>teaching Internet-related classes that they might otherwise 
>not teach because the field is moving so fast that it is too 
>difficult to keep syllabus and presentation materials current.   
>We hope by creating this repository we can leverage the work 
>of many professors that have done particularly outstanding 
>jobs with online classroom material.
>
>Internet engineering is a sorely needed and little emphasized
>area of engineering curricula now; indeed we expect that the
>need for well-trained Internet  engineers knowledgeable about
>current operational infrastructure will be so critical for the
>next few years that universities would do the industry well by 
>developing Internet engineering departments as a discipline 
>parallel to other engineering scienes.  We hope that this site
>could, in addition to improving the quality of Internet 
>engineering instruction at the university level, also perhaps
>provide foundations for Departments of Internet Engineering
>[ok, maybe pick a less web-related acronym] 
>
>In the medium-term (1 to 2 years), we'd like to see the site
>used as the basis for classes actually taught over the mbone. 
>Sponsored and accredited by multiple universities, such courses
>would potentially multicast each lecture from whichever university 
>is inhabited by an appropriate luminary
>[assuming the existence of someone with enough chutzpah to 
>pull off the administrative side of the accrediation thing shudder>.]
>
>Anyway, topics in the repository so far include 
>routing, TCP, HTML, security, DNS, wireless technology, 
>ATM, and more.  Materials include slide presentations, 
>lecture notes, sometimes sample homework assignments, 
>problem sets, and exams, as well as background reference material. 
>
>We are currently in the early stages of development. If
>you have time and inclination, please check out 
>
>	http://iec.nlanr.net/
>
>It is particularly important to us to get feedback and criticism
>in the early stages of the project so that we can refine its
>direction to be most helpful to the educational community.
>
>If you have any URLs or instructional/tutorial material you would 
>be willing to contribute, please contact us. We can help convert your 
>material into HTML or other desired format. You can contact us at:
>iec-dev@nlanr.net
>
>thanks
>kc@nlanr.net
>(619) 534 8333
>
>[sorry i didn't quite make the 
>opening of fall semester...tried.. ]
>
QAA05682.842742612/kasina.nlanr.net
>

From bill.st.arnaud@canarie.ca  Tue Sep 17 12:10:41 1996
Received: from nlanr.net ([192.172.226.25]) by kasina.nlanr.net
(8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id MAA17673 for kc@kasina.nlanr.net>; Tue, 17 Sep
1996 12:10:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: bill.st.arnaud@canarie.ca
Received: from tweetie.canarie.ca (root@tweetie.canarie.ca [199.212.24.2])
by nlanr.net (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id MAA03734 for kc@nlanr.net>; Tue,
17 Sep 1996 12:11:19 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from beige.canarie.ca by tweetie.canarie.ca  with SMTP id
PAA06207; Tue, 17 Sep 1996 15:03:21 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 96 15:04:44    
Sender: "Bill St. Arnaud" bstarn@canarie.ca>
Subject: RE: early prototype of an Internet Engineering Curriculum repository 
To: kc kc@nlanr.net>
X-PRIORITY: 3 (Normal)
X-Mailer: Chameleon 5.0, TCP/IP for Windows, NetManage Inc.
Message-ID: Chameleon.842987353.bstarn@beige.canarie.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Status: RO

KC:

Great minds think alike.

CANARIE is in the process of funding a program to develop a distance education 
program in Internet Engineering.  This will be a distributed program involving 
several engineering schools in Canada. The first 2 schools involved will be UBC 
and Technical University of Nova Scotia (TUNS).  TUNS is working closely with 
CISCO to develop the first CCIE Master's Degree in Internet Engineering.

We have offered to fund up to $15K per course in the Internet Engineering 
program that is offered as a distance education course using Mbone and other 
tools.

We would love to collaborate with your program to do joint development in this 
area.

Bill

On Sat, 14 Sep 1996 16:10:11 -0700 (PDT)  kc kc@nlanr.net> wrote:

>
>
>Dear Professors and Educators,
[intro message deleted]

=====
Bill St. Arnaud        Phone:  +1 613 660-3497
CANARIE Inc            FAX:    +1 613 660-3806
Ste 400                Home:   +1 613 238-8912
410 Laurier Ave W      voice: bill@beige.canarie.ca
Ottawa, CANADA         e-mail: bill.st.arnaud@canarie.ca
K1P 6H5                web: http://www.canarie.ca/bstarn
********************************************************
       The Canadian Network for the Advancement of
            Research, Industry and Education
********************************************************

From schulzrinne@cs.columbia.edu  Tue Sep 17 12:37:57 1996
Received: from nlanr.net ([192.172.226.25]) by kasina.nlanr.net
(8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id MAA17703 for kc@kasina.nlanr.net>; Tue, 17 Sep
1996 12:37:57 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cs.columbia.edu (root@cs.columbia.edu [128.59.16.20]) by
nlanr.net (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id MAA10888 for kc@nlanr.net>; Tue, 17
Sep 1996 12:38:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from erlang.cs.columbia.edu (erlang.cs.columbia.edu
[128.59.27.35]) by cs.columbia.edu (8.7.5/8.6.6) with ESMTP id PAA11672 for
kc@nlanr.net>; Tue, 17 Sep 1996 15:35:49 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from erlang.cs.columbia.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by
erlang.cs.columbia.edu (8.7.5/8.6.6) with SMTP id PAA25443 for
kc@nlanr.net>; Tue, 17 Sep 1996 15:38:34 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: hgs@cs.columbia.edu
Message-ID: 323EFE3A.D0B@cs.columbia.edu>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 15:38:34 -0400
From: "Henning G. Schulzrinne" schulzrinne@cs.columbia.edu>
Organization: Columbia University
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: kc kc@nlanr.net>
Subject: Re: early prototype of an Internet Engineering Curriculum repository
References: 199609142312.QAA05700@kasina.nlanr.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Status: RO

KC,

Thanks for adding my course so quickly (didn't really have to be
first...). Overall, the site is very useful and nicely presented. If I
may offer a suggestion for the networking section (since it seems to be
the largest): For the courses with slides, it might be interesting to
have a table that lists topics and which course covers them. I know this
is a bit of work, but it makes it a lot easier if you need material on a
particular topic.

Henning

Henning Schulzrinne         email: schulzrinne@cs.columbia.edu
Dept. of Computer Science   phone: +1 212 939-7042
Columbia University         fax:   +1 212 666-0140
New York, NY 10027          URL:   http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs