Term paper topics
Open to non-CS majors only!
You may also pick (and are in fact encouraged to pick) your own topic,
but you must get the topic approved by me.
- Current allocation strategies for IP addresses. Say something about the market for IP-address blocks.
- History and current status of Internet governance.
Discuss the IETF, ICANN, domain registries, top-level domains, and
the UN. What are the consequences for other countries of US "control"
of the Internet? What, exactly, does the US control?
-
Business issues facing Internet Service Providers.
Discuss "peering" agreements that both large (ie backbone) and
medium-sized ISPs would have to negotiate, and the traffic-carriage
arrangements that non-backbone providers would need to negotiate.
- Technical issues for high-performance Internet Service Providers.
What would an ISP have to do to be able to offer better service? What
ISPs use BGP MED entries to route traffic more quickly into their own
networks? What else can an ISP do to improve service?
- Technical issues for high-performance web providers.
What is involved in a high-performance server? What large-scale network
issues are related to high-performance web services? What is
distributed hosting? Look at what akamai and related companies are
doing.
- Technical and policy problems surrounding VOIP. How do real-time voice-traffic requirements get achieved? What are some of the non-technical issues?
- Threats to net neutrality.
What are the big ISPs up to here? What sorts of routing favoritism are
likely? Is this just a plan to legalize kickbacks, or are there
legitimate business interests at stake here?
- Optical switching. Where is this technology? What about optical routers?
Either policy-related or technical topics are fine.