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.
Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | 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 Released: Technical feedback on DPPR |
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 |