The following represents a very informal list of possible term paper topics. You may use this as a basis for an idea. You may also supply your own idea as approved by the instructor. General sources: 1. IETF rfcs/drafts There are at least 4 sites that act as IETF repositories. Let us assume ftp.isi.edu is one such site. drafts are in internet-drafts internet-drafts:/ 1id-index.txt - draft index rfcs are in in-notes in-notes:/ rfc-index.txt - rfc index Although there is no guarantee that any draft/rfc is well-written, the amount of information in them is staggering and they represent a very real information flow about current directions in networking. 2. papers (e.g., USENIX, IEEE journals, special journals like Wireless Networks (in PSU/OGI library)). Papers may be findable on the Internet. The following journals may be of interest: SIGCOMM IEEE Networking (and other IEEE journals) Wireless Networks etc. 3. web crawlers - search your topic area with google/lycos. 4. Look at Citeseer for particular titles/authors. http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs 5. Look at talks students have given in this class in the past. Not all titles will be acceptable ... but some recent talks might be given again. (Run it by the instructor). The talks are on the class web-page (we are not doing talks at this point). A talk may give you an idea for a term paper. Some possible topic ideas for term papers: 1. IPv6. .what about BGP and IPv6? .mobile-ip in IPv6 (and security concerns therein). 2. BGP in more depth. The Halabi/Cisco press book "Internet Routing Architectures" is mostly on BGP. Cisco web pages have information on BGP (www.cisco.com). One could study very large scale BGP scalability problems (confederations or the like). 3. ad hoc routing - ask the instructor. I have several sources for such papers. Wireless Networks is a good place to look. there is an IETF working group in this area (MANET). Looks for drafts with *manet*. DSR, AODV, comparisons of the two, Mobile Mesh 4. wireless "middleware"; .e.,g MIT grid project, BSD ninja project (http://ninja.cs.berkeley.edu/) 5. "spectrumware" How might radio evolve as a link-layer so that higher-bandwidth WAN or LAN radio links might be cheaper and more commonly used than current constrained technologies? http://www.sds.lcs.mit.edu/SpectrumWare Also see: http://www.mot.com/GSS/SSTG/RSO/SPEAKeasy.html (search on speakeasy and radio) 6. 802.11 wireless enhancements in security, 7. Cisco routing protocols including EIGRP - find the J.J.Garcia Lunes paper and use that for a term paper on EIGRP. 8 deflection routing (routing away from the preferred path). See Streenstrup. That is not for the mathematically challenged. 9. Mobile Cellular Radio systems. See Streenstrup. Or 3G Mobile Cellular systems. 10. Geographic routing. Start with RFC 2009. 11. Reliable multicast routing. (start with a web search and go onto journals from the last few years). 12. Go into depth on mbone routing in a different non-PIM area; e.g., just focus on Core-Based Trees (RFC exists). You could choose to investigate recent IETF work in areas along the lines of Perlman's simple multicast. Or Cheriton's EXPRESS or the latest IETF work on source-specific multicast (SSM). 13. voice over IP technology. E.g., one might look at the Session Initiation Protocol, SIP in RFC 2543, or take another approach entirely. H323 for the brave ... 14. choose an obscure (which is not?) telco link-layer protocol ... SMDS, (not ISDN ...), frame-relay, ADSL, and give us a in-depth paper on how it really works. DSL and cable modem technologies are fine too. 15. Diff-serve and/or the older RSVP in depth. 16. Tag Switching. In fact, recently the MPLS IETF area has bloomed. See the instructor for a book on the system (in bibliography). The tag switching book "Switching in IP Networks" has a number of case histories. Present one of those. Or visit IETF drafts and RFCS and look at the numerous documents on MPLS subjects. E.g., the basic architecture would be a good basis for a presentation. 17. multicast key management (hard topic). Start with RFCs 2093/2094. 18. new wireless technologies (what lies beyond 802.11a/g?). 19. recent IEEE drafts on vlans and/or priority-based tagging as a form of QOS. The instructor has a "book" from Cisco on QOS that can easily lead to a paper. 20. Router and/or Cisco IOS architecture. There is a book on the subject. There are many papers on fundamental routing cache theory including hardwire assist. 22. A talk on the current state of BGP and/or research in BGP would be good. RFC 3221 makes a good starting point. The IETF has working groups divided into areas. Two areas of interest to this class are: Operations and Management Routing Visit the IETF home page http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/ and then go on and check out working groups under those areas. Look at the charter page and it will include any drafts/RFCs published to-date. One such document of non-trivial size can easily give you a talk. E.g., some O&M areas of interest might include: .MBONE deployment .Internet Traffic Engineering .Routing policy system Some routing WGs of interest might include: .Border Gateway Multicast Protocol .General Switch Management Protocol .MANET (ad hoc routing) .MPLS (multi protocol label switching) .Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol Take a look ... If you can find some drafts or RFCS in this area, you may be onto something.