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ECT425 Textbook Readings

Textbook Information

Required text (CDK): Courlouris, George; Dollimore, Jean; and Kindberg, Tim (2005), "Distributed Systems, Concepts and Designs, Fourth Edition," Edinburgh Gate, Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited / Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-321-26354-5. www.pearson-books.com

Strongly Recommended text: Harold, Elliotte Rusty (2005) "Java Network Programming, Third Edition," Sepastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media Inc. ISBN 0-596-00721-3, 978-0-596-00721-8. www.oreilly.com

Recommended background text: Kurose, James F., and Ross, Keith W. (2005) "Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet, 2nd Edition," Boston: Addison Wesley.

Required reading

The official required reading for this course will be primarily from CDK. Please note that there WILL be exam material from the book that is not covered in the lectures. I reserve the right to add and drop some readings as the course progresses. We may also have additional papers, and readings from handouts, or from the Web.

Reading schedule: Unless otherwise notified we will follow the order of chapters in the book. Seven chapters. Two three-hour exams. Review time before exams. So: at least one chapter a week, before the lecture.

CDK Chapters:

Exam readings

Both exams are likely to be open book with respect to the posted textbook readings, the lecture slides, printed reading logs, and class newsgroup postings. However, I reserve the right to change the readings, and to give closed-book exams if I feel it is important to do so. Three-pass reading (see below) is recommended for this class. The midterm exam may include required first-pass readings.

Midterm exam readings:

    TBA

Final exam readings:

Third-pass level for all readings. Comprehensive, but focuses on that material not covered in the first exam.

Read Three Times

It is most strongly recommended that you read this text book three times, as follows:
  1. First reading: read all the required chapters in the whole book, and anything else that is of interest to you. Keep going. There is much of the material that you will not understand, but read it anyway. Read more deelply than merely scanning, but read rapidly, and do not worry about the parts that do not make sense. Your job here is to simply present the ideas to your brain.

    • Quick scan.
    • Some material is easily understood. Read it and understand it.
    • Some material can be worked out with some hard study. Get the idea. Get to know what you will have to know, and move on.
    • Learn the terms.
    • Some material is just plain difficult, read it even without understanding, and leave it for later.

  2. Second reading: in depth. Re-read the specified sections for study purposes. Cross-reference relevant parts of the book that you noticed during the first reading.

    • Give a very quick review to the easy material that you read before
    • Study the parts, often in parallel, that you felt you could get before, but which needed study.
    • Spend time working out examples.
    • Read the very hard parts again to see if they have become a little clearer (they always are!).
    • Refer to other parts of the book that are becoming more familiar, and help explain your current reading.
    • Take notes that refer to online, and other, background material.
    • For this class, put these notes in your research logs when appropriate.

  3. Third reading: Scan the book. Review portions of the book that you have studied. Try one last time on portions of the book that did not make full sense to you before. Synthesize your own examples of the material.

    • Re-read portions of the text that you need for quizzes, before lectures, and before exams, or simply to set the material in long-term memory.
    • Review the examples for the challenging material, to make sure they still make sense.
    • Re-visit the difficult material sometimes it takes two or three readings before something makes sense.

Reasoning: this material is challenging. Unless you are either very familiar with this material already, or brilliant, there are likely to be portions of the book that you will just not be able to "see" the first time through. You will save time, and greatly increase your comprehension and retention, if you read the book multiple times. Your brain will continue to synthesize the material that you seemed to completely miss the first time through. You also will benefit from recognizing that themes appear more than once in the book, from different angles, with different descriptions.

The first reading when you "don't get it" is critical. Just keep reading. Your brain is building symbols, creating bridges, doing its visual processing.

Note: Much of the material will not be covered in the lectures because of the limited classroom time. But, it may still appear on the exams.

This book has three different authors. Keep this in mind. You may find, as I do, that portions of the book are easier to understand than others, probably linked to the three different writing styles.