The course covers measurement methodologies for understanding complex Internet phenomena and behaviors including the spread of vulnerabilities, remote network topologies, attack patterns, content popularity, Internet censorship, service quality, adoption of security systems, tools for efficient measurements, large-scale data analysis, stats, reproducibility of results, and ethical considerations.
Reading Responses. The 20% on reading responses will be distributed across all the papers we discuss in class. The reading response is not a summary of the paper, rather a critical review. This review includes the paper's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the student's own opinion about the paper's motivation, methodology, evaluation, and findings. The deadline for emailing the reading response is five minutes before the beginning of each class (i.e., Monday at 11:30am), for all eight student-led classes (i.e., Weeks 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12; see outline below).
In-class Participation. The 15% of in-class participation will likewise be distributed across the entire course, 1.88% each class for all eight student-lead classes. You need to be actively involved in the discussions, e.g., asking questions, and commenting on the explanations made by the discussion leader. All students are required to read and understand the papers being discussed in class, as illustrated by the above requirement of reading responses.
Paper Discussion Lead. The 25% paper discussion lead is merited based on the students' qualities of presenting papers. Your presentation needs to be as detailed as possible. The presenter/leader must understand the paper quite well, and prepare a slide deck to present a 30-45 minutes presentation explaining the paper. Make sure to cover clearly the paper's objectives, the aspects it is trying to measure, the evaluations used (if any), precautions the authors have taken to (1) ensure the reproducibility of their findings and/or (2) address ethical considerations. Review this guide to a good presentation (by Professor Püschel, ETH Zürich). Each student is required to sign-up for two papers to present throughout the term. Each presentation is worth 12.5%, which will be commensurate with: the depth of your technical understanding (6%), the quality and professionalism of the presentation (4%), and question handling (2.5%). Selected papers do not have to be on the same day; they could be, but it might be a lot of work for a student to present two papers on one day. The deadline for signing-up to leading two paper discussions is Monday, September 21. Papers (in the outline below) under "Additional Readings" are optional, but if you like to choose any of these to discuss as a mainstream paper of a class, let me know.
Term Project. Finally, the 40% of the project is distributed as follows: 6% planning (including in-class pitch and project proposal), 5% presentation, and 29% on the final report. Every student is required to think about project ideas and discuss them with me. Upon receiving a verbal agreement, students will be required to submit a written 1-page project proposal detailing the project objectives, methodology, and citing relevant literature. The deadline for establishing your project idea, and emailing me the written project proposal is October 12. Note that in order to meet this deadline, students will be required to discuss ideas with me early on before they write a proposal. Start thinking about projects early in the course. Don't leave it to the last minute. To decide on a project topic, you may build-upon security research published in previous IMC venues: 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022. You can also lookup papers in the last 2-3 years from IEEE S&P (2026, 2025, 2024), USENIX Security Symposium (2026, 2025, 2024), NDSS (2026, 2025, 2024), and ACM CCS (2026, 2025, 2024). Other venues including: Springer Passive and Active Measurements (PAM), Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis (TMA), and ACM Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNext). There are also several occasional measurements workshops like NDSS MADWeb, FOCI, WPEZ. Everyone must then present an 8-minute project pitch in class, ideally using a single slide, on October 19. Finally, the deadline to email the final project report is December 20, at 11:59pm EST (Ottawa time). You are highly encouraged to use LaTeX to prepare your final report. However, feel free to use any document-generation tool, so long as you email me a PDF of your report. The report should not exceed 15 pages in the standard IEEE double-column conference format.
Summary of deliverables: In summary, over the course of the term, each student will deliver:
The Graduate Advisors for the School of Computer Science are available in Room 5302 HP; or by email. The graduate advisors can assist with understanding your academic audit and the remaining courses required to meet graduation requirements.
Students taking a COMP course can access the SCS computer labs. The lab schedule and location can be found here. All SCS computer lab and technical support information can be found here. Technical support staff may be contacted in-person or virtually, see this page for details.
The Carleton Wellness Website is a wonderful resource link to include in the course outline for students
Academic Accommodations. Carleton is committed to providing academic accessibility for all individuals. You may need special arrangements to meet your academic obligations during the term. The accommodation request processes are outlined on the Academic Accommodations website.
Chat GPT/Generative AI Usage. As our understanding of the uses of AI and its relationship to student work and academic Integrity continue to evolve, students are generally required to discuss their use of AI in any circumstance not described here with the course instructor to ensure it supports the learning goals for the course. However, note the following:
Academic Integrity. Students are expected to uphold the values of academic Integrity, which include fairness, honesty, trust, and responsibility. Examples of actions that compromise these values include but are not limited to plagiarism, accessing unauthorized sites for assignments or tests, unauthorized collaboration on assignments or exams, and using artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT when your assessment instructions say it is not permitted.
Misconduct in scholarly activity will not be tolerated and will result in consequences as outlined in Carleton University's Academic Integrity Policy. A list of standard sanctions in the Faculty of Science can be found here.
Additional details about this process can be found on the Faculty of Science Academic Integrity website.
Students are expected to familiarize themselves with and abide by Carleton University's Academic Integrity Policy. Claiming ignorance of or confusion about the academic integrity standards as described in the Policy does not excuse a student from responsibility for violations of those standards.
Student Rights & Responsibilities. Students are expected to act responsibly and engage respectfully with other students and members of the Carleton and the broader community. See the 7 Rights and Responsibilities Policy for details regarding the expectations of non-academic behaviour of students. Those who participate with another student in the commission of an infraction of this Policy will also be held liable for their actions.