Review: CS6675 Advanced Internet Systems and Applications

Objective

I wanted to gain a breadth of understanding of how various modern internet application systems worked at a high level. I also wanted to gain some practical experience in writing and designing modern internet application systems.

Learning Outcome

The course goes over different internet application systems such as blockchain/cryptocurrency, web servers, and content distribution. The course content combined with the readings provides a great introduction to these various topics, such that we can return to them later to learn more.

I enjoyed designing and writing up systems to solve problems for the assignments. The questions were focused but were open-ended enough to allow us to create a system that solves a problem area we are most interested.

No coding was required for the course's summer version, although if time permitted, students could choose to implement one of the designed internet systems.

Difficulty

I spent approximately 8 - 15 hours each week on the course. Given that it is a summer course, the project section and the final topics were optional.