If you are considering taking 6.1800 this semester, and have a question about whether that's a good idea, please check out our FAQ for interested students. It includes information about prerequisites and lecture recordings.

Course Calendar

6.1800 covers four units of technical content: operating systems, networking, distributed systems, and security. Lectures deliver the fundamental technical concepts; recitations show you how those concepts are applied to real systems. In tutorial, you'll learn communication skills to help you reason about systems, and describe and defend your own.

The calendar below includes lecture and recitation topics, along with due dates for all assignments. We also note when we expect various assignments to become available, and when we expect to deliver feedback (grades or otherwise) for each of assignment. The release dates for assignments and feedback are subject to small changes throughout the semester.

We will release the Spring 2023 assignments as the semester progresses. The contents of this calendar for days more than two weeks in the future may be missing or inaccurate.

MondayTuesday WednesdayThursday Friday
feb 6
LEC 1: Modularity, Abstraction, and the Impact of Systems


First day of classes
feb 7
REC 1: We Did Nothing Wrong
feb 8
LEC 2: Naming
feb 9
REC 2: DNS

Assignment Available: Hands-on DNS
feb 10
TUT 1: Intro to 6.1800 Communication
feb 13
LEC 3: Virtual memory
feb 14
REC 3: UNIX
feb 15
LEC 4: Bounded buffers and locks
feb 16
REC 4: UNIX

Assignment Available: Hands-on UNIX
feb 17
TUT 2: Consensus and Reasoning About Systems

DUE: DP Team Preferences
feb 20
President's day
feb 21
LEC 5: Threads


Monday schedule
feb 22
LEC 6: OS structure, Virtual Machines

DUE: Hands-on DNS
Released: DP Spec
feb 23
REC 5: DP Discussion

Released: DP Team Assignments
Assignment Available: DP Prep Assignment
feb 24
TUT 3: Reading for Systems Concepts
feb 27
LEC 7: OS Performance (Storage)
feb 28
REC 6: Race Detection
mar 1
LEC 8: Intro to networking and layering

Released: Hands-on DNS grades
mar 2
REC 7: Ethernet
mar 3
TUT 4: Collaboration and Collaborative Writing

DUE: DP Prep Assignment
Assignment Available: DP preliminary report (DPPR)
Released: Recitation Participation Check-in #1
mar 6
LEC 9: Network Layer: Routing
mar 7
REC 8: Encapsulation

DUE: Hands-on UNIX
mar 8
LEC 10: BGP

Assignment Available: Hands-on networking
mar 9
REC 9: Overlay Networks
mar 10
TUT 5: Visual Design, Figures, and Diagrams

Released: Technical feedback on DP Prep assignment (see FAQ)

Add Date
mar 13
LEC 11: Transport Layer: TCP
mar 14
REC 10: DCTCP

DUE: Hands-on networking
mar 15
LEC 12: In-network Resource Management

Released: Hands-on UNIX grades
mar 16
REC 11: End-to-end Arguments
mar 17
TUT 6: Assembling the DPPR

Released: WRAP feedback on DP Prep assignment
mar 20
LEC 13: Application Layer
mar 21
REC 12: CDNs
mar 22
LEC 14: Datacenters and Clouds
mar 23
REC 13: Case-study on the Census
mar 24
DUE: DP Preliminary Report (DPPR)
Released: Recitation Participation Check-in #2
Released: Hands-on networking grades
mar 27
Spring break
mar 28
Spring break
mar 29
Spring break
mar 30
Spring break
mar 31
Spring break
apr 3
LEC 15: Reliability
apr 4
REC 14: GFS
apr 5
LEC 16: Transactions
apr 6
REC 15: Canceled

EXAM: Exam 1
apr 7
TUT 7: DP Presentation

Assignment Available: DP Presentation Assignment
apr 10
LEC 17: Logging

Assignment Available: Hands-on logging
apr 11
REC 16: MapReduce

Released: DP update
Released: DPPR grades
Assignment Available: Hands-on MapReduce
apr 12
LEC 18: Isolation
apr 13
REC 17: ZFS

Released: Exam 1 grades
apr 14
TUT 8: Responding to Feedback
apr 17
Patriots day
apr 18
REC 18: Concurrency Control

DP Presentations begin here, and run through 4/25
apr 19
LEC 19: Distributed Transactions

DUE: Hands-on logging
apr 20
REC 19: Two-Phase Commit

Assignment Available: DP Final Report
Assignment Available: Hands-on databases
apr 21
TUT 9: Analysis and Evaluation
apr 24
LEC 20: Replication
apr 25
REC 20: Raft

This is the last day for DP Presentations
DUE: Hands-on MapReduce

Drop Date
apr 26
LEC 21: Intro to Security + Authentication
apr 27
REC 21: Canceled (prep for peer review)

Released: DP Presentation grades
apr 28
TUT 10: Peer Review

Assignment Available: DP Peer Review
Released: Hands-on logging grades
Released: Recitation Participation Check-in #3
may 1
LEC 22: Low-level attacks
may 2
REC 22: Meltdown

DUE: Hands-on databases
may 3
LEC 23: Secure Channels
may 4
REC 23: DNSSEC
may 5
TUT 11: DP Final Report

Released: Hands-on MapReduce grades
may 8
LEC 24: ToR

DUE: DP Final Report
may 9
REC 24: Canceled
may 10
LEC 25: Network Attacks
may 11
REC 25: Keys Under Doormats
may 12
DUE: DP Peer Review
Released: Tutorial Participation grades
Released: Hands-on databases grades
may 15
LEC 26: Wrap-up
may 16
REC 26: Wrap-up


Last day of classes
may 17
Released: Recitation Participation grades
may 18 may 19
EXAM: Exam 2
may 22 may 23 may 24 may 25 may 26
Released: DP Final Report grades
Released: DP Peer Review grades