Week 1 (January 4-)

Topics

• Syllabus Overview Video
• CS291A Welcome Video
• Course Introduction (video, slides)
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) (video, slides)

Tasks

• Complete the introduction survey
• Join the class on Piazza
• Enroll in AWS Educate
• Complete Project 0
• Begin Project 1
• Read chapters 1, 2, 9, 10, and 11 of High Performance Browser Networking

Week 2 (January 11-)

Topics

• HTTP Servers (video, slides)
• Application Servers (slides)
• Scaling Web Applications (slides)

Tasks

• Complete Project 1
• Begin Project 2
• Read Dynamic Load Balancing on Web-server Systems by Cardellini, Colajanni, and Yu.

Week 3 (January 18-)

Topics

• Architecting for High Availability
• Frontend Deep Dive: React

Tasks

• Complete Project 2
• Begin Project 3

Week 4 (January 25-)

Topics

• Agile Software Development
• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Continuous Integration (CI)
• Pair Programming / Mobbing
• Client-side Caching
• Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

Tasks

• Make progress on Project 3

Week 5 (February 1-)

Topics

• Server Side Caching
• Deep Dive: Ruby on Rails

Tasks

• Complete Project 3
• Begin Primary Project
  • form a team – merge with two project 3 teams (max 6 people)
  • develop initial features
  • deploy to elastic beanstalk
  • schedule team meeting time with instructor

Week 6 (February 8-)

Topics

• Deep Dive: Load Testing with Tsung
• Relational Database

Week 7 (February 15-)

Topics

• RDBMS Scaling
• Service Oriented Architectures

Week 8 (February 22-)

Topics

• Non-Relational Data Stores
• Web Security

Tasks

• Read CAP 12 years later by Eric Brewer
• Read Eventually Consistent by Werner Vogels
• Read chapter 4 of High Performance Browser Networking

Week 9 (March 1-)

Topics

• HTTP/2
• QUIC (HTTP/3)

Tasks

• Read chapter 12 of High Performance Browser Networking

Week 10 (March 8-)

Tasks

• Complete the project report

Finals Week (March 15-)

Tasks

• Complete the project presentation video