Instructor: Professor Don Towsley
Office: 378 Computer Science Bldg.
Office Hours: TBD and by appointment
Phone: 413-545-0207
FAX: 413-545-1249
e-mail: towsley@cs.umass.edu

Content: This course provides an introduction to performance evaluation There will be 5 - 7 assignments, one midterm and the option of either a project or a final exam.

Prerequisites:

1. A B plus or better in a senior/graduate level probability course suitable for mathematics/engineering/hard core sience majors. If you are unsure whether you have the right background, complete the practice assignment that can be found here. Let me know when you complete it and I will send you the solutions.

Course Materials:

1. Recommended Texts:
   • There is no required textbook for this course. I do have a recommendation, Stochastic Processes by S.W. Ross. This is not a text on performance evaluation per se but does provide the foundation in probability theory needed to do the course.
   • In addition, I have made the following course notes by Philippe Nain available BASIC ELEMENTS OF QUEUEING THEORY: Application to the Modelling of Computer Systems. . These notes were developed while he taught an earlier version of this course.
   • The following textbook, available free on line, also provides a good overview of queueing networks and applications to performance evaluation of computer systems. The treatment is much less formal than mine. Moreover it focusses on computer systems whereas I focus on networks. Computer System Analysis Using Queueing Network Models. E.D. Lazowska, J. Zahorjan, G.S.Graham, K.C. Sevcik
   • Assigned readings from magazines, manuals, and the WWW; this material will be placed on reserve in the Physical Sciences library, and made available to off campus students.
   • Class Notes: Class notes (highly recommended) will be posted on the class WWW site (see "On-line materials" below").
   • On-line materials. A WWW site is maintained for the course.
     Web site: http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/pe2002.
     Everything handed out in class will be posted on this WWW site. As the semester goes along, the site will fill up with lots of other useful information, pointers to other sites, etc. Check out and use this site!

     A broadcast class email address, cs691r@cs.umass.edu, has been created. If you send mail to this address, it will be broadcast to all of thestudents in the class, so please use it wisely and carefully. I will use it to broadcast information of interest to everyone. You might want to use it to broadcast a question, or give a pointer to material that you think will be of general interest. See documentation on how to add/delete yourself from the class broadcast email list.
     

Coursework