We are rounding out the network topic with a paper on Bit Torrent incentives. Read " Do incentives build robustness in BitTorrent?" by Michael Piatek, Tomas Isdal, Thomas Anderson, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Arun Venkataramani. . Read sections 1, 2, 3.2, 4, 5 and 7. The other sections are optional. The BitTorrent protocol is based on the tit-for-tat strategy for the prisoner's dilemma game. You may wish to read The Triumph of the Golden Rulei for an interesting introduction to both the prisoner's dilemma and tit-for-tat. In your reading report answer the following questions:
Why is BitTorrent "better" than HTTP for content providers and users? Why do network providers not like BitTorrent?
The new topic in CS 146a is fault-tolerant computing systems. Read Chapter 8 Section 1,2, and 3; the chapter defines the terminology we use to discuss fault-tolerance.
Read "A case for redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID)" by Patterson et al. (Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1988).
For your reading report answer the following question:
Explain why RAID level 3 is a better match for supercomputing applications than transaction processing systems.
CS146a, Assignment 7, issued 10/26/2011