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 6-7 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
Feb
2
Assignment 1 - Multithreaded WordCount
due Sunday at 11:59pm
(description - starter code)
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)
9
Due Sunday at 11:59pm:
(1) Complete MapReduce quiz on Gradescope
(2) Submit Assignment 2 checkpoint
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
16
Due Sunday at 11:59pm:
(1) Complete DFS quiz on Gradescope (2) Submit Assignment 2 - RPC WordCount
17
No class - Monday schedule
18
Review session
19
20
Test 1 in-class
Covers material till end of DFS
23
24
Leader Election -
Complete pre-lecture form
(slides)
Readings:
* Chang and Roberts algorithm
* Bully algorithm
25
Get started with A3
26
27
Leader Election (2)
(summary)
Mar
2
Due Sunday at 11:59pm:
(1) Complete Leader Election quiz on Gradescope
(2) Submit Assignment 3 - checkpoint
Code for Ring leader election
3
Fault Tolerance -
Complete pre-lecture form
(slides - highlight - summary)
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
9
10
Raft -
Complete pre-lecture form
(slides)
Reading: Raft paper
11
Finalize A3
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
**New deadline** Assignment 3 - Leader Election
due Sunday at 11:59pm
16
Spring break
17
Spring break
18
Spring break
19
Spring break
20
Spring break
23
24
Finalize Raft
25
Review
26
27
Test 2 in-class
Covers material till the end of Raft
30
Assignment 4 - checkpoint - Raft leader election
due Sunday at 11:59pm
( starter code)
31
Cloud Computing
(slides)
Apr
1
Finalize A4
2
3
Containers and Docker
(slides - tutorial)
6
Assignment 4 - Raft leader election
due Sunday at 11:59pm
( starter code)
7
Chord -
Complete pre-lecture form
(slides)
Reading: Chord: A scalable peer-to-peer lookup service for internet applications
8
Work on A5
9
10
Spark -
Complete pre-lecture form
Reading: Resilient Distributed Datasets
13
Complete Chord and Spark quiz on Gradescope before Sunday at 11:59pm
14
Routing in ad-hoc networks -
Complete pre-lecture form
Dynamic Source Routing in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks
15
No class - Ruhlman
16
17
Fault-tolerance in ad-hoc routing -
Complete pre-lecture form
Reading: On-demand Multipath Distance Vector Routing in Ad Hoc Networks
20
Complete Ad-hoc Network Routing quiz on Gradescope before Sunday at 11:59pm
Assignment 5 - Finalize Raft
due 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
May
1
Reading period starts

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.