Announcements:

May 10: We sent out a grade report email to each student. If you did not receive it, send email to 6.824-staff@pdos.lcs.mit.edu.

May 6: Here are the answers to quiz 2.

Apr 27: Here's the schedule for the demonstration day on May 5th.

Apr 27: There will be an 80-minute in-class exam on Tuesday May 3rd, focusing on material covered between Mar 31 and Apr 28 (inclusive). Here's last year's exam.

Apr 1: The tentative schedule for the second project conferences is here. We're trying to keep the schedule the same as the first conferences.

Apr 1: We have posted the answers to quiz 1.

Mar 28: If you have submitted all the labs, but have not received the grades for all five of them, please send an email to 6.824-staff@pdos.lcs.mit.edu.

Mar 14: There will be an 80-minute quiz during class on Thursday. Please bring copies of the papers and the class notes. Here's last year's quiz.

Mar 12: We've posted some hints for Lab 5.

Mar 6: Lab 5 is now available.

Feb 24: Lab 4 is now available.

Feb 21: We periodically update the lab assignment page with better explanation of the lab. Refresh the assignment page for an up-to-date copy.

Feb 18: There's a third class machine, blood.lcs.mit.edu.

Feb 17: Lab 3 is now available.

Feb 9: There's now a 6.824 Wiki for discussing potential projects and groups, thanks to Sam Davies.

Feb 7: Lab 2 is now available.

Feb 7: The question for tomorrow's NFS toolkit paper is available.

Feb 1: Don't forget to read Thursday's paper (available on the Schedule page), and to answer the paper question (on the Questions page).

Feb 1: If you're taking 6.824, you should sign up for 6.824 labs.

What is 6.824 about?

6.824 is a core 12-unit graduate subject with lectures, programming labs, quizzes, and a final project. It will present abstractions and implementation techniques that allow the design of Internet systems that can deal with real-world workload. Topics include server design, network programming, naming, storage systems, security, and fault tolerance.

Prerequisites: 6.004 and one of 6.033 or 6.828, or equivalent. Substantial programming experience with C/C++ will be helpful for the lab assignments and final project.

If you feel you know enough about systems engineering, an alternative subject to 6.824 is 6.829. 6.829 focuses on the engineering of networks. If you are a graduate student in systems or networking, we recommend you take both classes during your graduate career. You should not take them both in the same term, though, since both have heavy-duty projects.

If you want to learn more about operating systems in particular, you should consider 6.828.