Spring 2026
CS343

This course is about the fundamental concepts and algorithms underlying existing distributed systems.

We'll cover many topics, including:

Fault Tolerance
Distributed Algorithms
Distributed file systems
Peer-to-peer systems
Mobile and Ubiquotous systems

Instructor:

Christine Bassem

Office:SCI W420

Office hours:
Tuesday 2:30 to 3:30pm
Wednesday 9:30am to 10:30 am Or by appointment

Tutors:

Isabella Zhu

Support hours: Friday 7-8pm

Nessa Tong

Support hours: Thursday 7-8 pm

CS 343 Schedule

Please note that this page will be updated frequently, and it will contain all course content and resources

You can find office hours and drop-in schedule on the course calendar.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Jan 19	20 Introduction (slides) Reading: Course Syllabus	21 No class on first week	22	23 Synchronization (slides) Reading: Intro to concurrency
26	27 Go Lang Demo Tutorial for GoLang Blog post used in demo	28 Set up and practice in class	29	30 Go demo of RPCs (slides - code) RPC package in Go Assignment 1 - Multithreaded WordCount due Saturday at 11:59pm (description - starter code)
Feb 2	3 MapReduce - Complete pre-lecture form (slides - highlight) MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters	4 Get started with A2	5	7 MapReduce (2) (paper summary) Complete paper quiz on Gradescope before Sunday at 11:59pm
9	10 Distributed File Systems (DFS) - Complete pre-lecture form Reading: The Google File System	11 No class	12	13 DFS (2) [Optional] Reading: The Hadoop Distributed File System Assignment 2 - RPC WordCount due Saturday at 11:59pm
	17 No class - Monday schedule Complete DFS quiz on Gradescope before 11:59pm	18 Review session	19	20 Test 1 in-class Covers material till end of DFS
	24 Leader Election - Complete pre-lecture form Readings: * Chang and Roberts algorithm * Bully algorithm	25 Get started with A3	26	27 Leader Election (2) Complete Leader Election quiz on Gradescope before Sunday at 11:59pm
Mar 2	3 Fault Tolerance - Complete pre-lecture form Reading: The Design of a Practical System for Fault-Tolerant Virtual Machines	4 Debugging session	5	6 No class Use this time to complete Fault Tolerance paper quiz on Gradescope before Friday at 11:59pm Assignment 3 - Leader Election due Saturday at 11:59pm
9	10 Raft - Complete pre-lecture form Reading: Raft paper	11 Get started on A4	12	13 More on consensus and Raft A very cool visualization on how Raft works Complete Raft quiz on Gradescope before Sunday at 11:59pm

23	24 Finalize Raft	25 Review	26	27 Test 2 in-class Covers material till the end of Raft Assignment 4 - Raft leader election due Saturday at 11:59pm
30	31 Chord - Complete pre-lecture form Reading: Chord: A scalable peer-to-peer lookup service for internet applications	Apr 1 Start A5	2	3 Spark - Complete pre-lecture form Reading: Resilient Distributed Datasets Complete Chord and Spark quiz on Gradescope before Sunday at 11:59pm
6	7 Cloud Computing	8 Debugging session	9	10 Containers and Docker Assignment 5 - Finalize Raft due Saturday at 11:59pm
13	14 Routing in ad-hoc networks - Complete pre-lecture form Dynamic Source Routing in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks		16	17 Fault-tolerance in ad-hoc routing - Complete pre-lecture form Reading: On-demand Multipath Distance Vector Routing in Ad Hoc Networks Complete Ad-hoc Network Routing quiz on Gradescope before Sunday at 11:59pm
	21 TBD	22 Review	23	24 Test 3 in-class Covers material till end of ad-hoc networks
27	28 Final presentations	29 No class - Have a great break!	30

Administrative details of CS 343

Course Overview

The syllabus can be found here.

Prerequisites

The prerequisite for CS 343 is CS 230:Data structures, with CS 231 and CS 242 highly recommended. Registration is by permission of instructor only.

Course Communication

Make sure that you are added to the Course's Piazza group. This group has several purposes, one of which is class announcements.
I encourage you to use it for class discussions, and questions. Be respectful to your classmates and course staff when using this platform.
If you know the answer to a classmate's question, feel free to post a reply yourself. Please do not post any code in your messages on the group.

Course Support

Support is offered in the form of office hours (offered by Christine) and tutoring hours (offered by tutors). Support hours are posted on the top of this page and on the course calendar. Of course, if you ever need to meet with Christine at times out of these hours, feel free to contact her via email.

Spring 2026 CS343