Course Calendar
6.1800 covers four units of technical content: operating systems, networking, distributed systems, and security. Lectures deliver the fundamental technical concepts and show you how those concepts are applied to real systems; recitations enforce the concepts from lectures (and occasionally the labs and communication assignments). 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 2026 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 2 LEC 1: Modularity, Abstraction, and the Impact of Systems This Week's Reading: We Did Nothing Wrong First day of classes |
feb 3 | feb 4 LEC 2: Naming |
feb 5 REC 1: Lab setup + DNS Assignment Available: Lab 1 |
feb 6 TUT 1: Intro to 6.1800 Communication |
| feb 9 LEC 3: Virtual Memory This Week's Reading: UNIX |
feb 10 | feb 11 LEC 4: Bounded Buffers and Locks |
feb 12 REC 2: Assignment Available: Press Release |
feb 13 TUT 2: Consensus and Reasoning About Systems |
| feb 16 President's day |
feb 17 LEC 5: Threads This Week's Reading: The Tail at Scale Monday schedule |
feb 18 LEC 6: OS structure, Virtual Machines DUE: Lab 1 |
feb 19 REC 3: |
feb 20 TUT 3: System Reasoning and the Public |
| feb 23 LEC 7: OS Performance (Storage) This Week's Reading: Ethernet |
feb 24 | feb 25 LEC 8: Intro to networking and layering Assignment Available: Lab 2 Released: Lab 1 Grades |
feb 26 REC 4: |
feb 27 TUT 4: DUE: Press Release |
| mar 2 LEC 9: Network Layer: Routing This Week's Reading: RON |
mar 3 | mar 4 LEC 10: BGP |
mar 5 REC 5: Released: Participation check-in #1 Assignment Available: System Critique |
mar 6 TUT 5: Add Date |
| mar 9 LEC 11: Transport Layer: TCP This Week's Reading: DCTCP |
mar 10 | mar 11 LEC 12: In-network Resource Management |
mar 12 REC 6: |
mar 13 TUT 6: Released: Press Release grades |
| mar 16 LEC 13: Application Layer This Week's Reading: End-to-end Arguments |
mar 17 DUE: Lab 2 |
mar 18 LEC 14: Datacenters and Clouds |
mar 19 REC 7: Assignment Available: Project Part 1: System Enhancement |
mar 20 DUE: System Critique DUE: Project Team Preferences |
| mar 23 Spring break |
mar 24 Spring break |
mar 25 Spring break |
mar 26 Spring break |
mar 27 Spring break |
| mar 30 LEC 15: Reliability Assignment Available: Lab 3 Released: Lab 2 grades This Week's Reading: GFS |
mar 31 | apr 1 LEC 16: Transactions |
apr 2 REC 8: EXAM: Exam 1 Released: Project teams released |
apr 3 TUT 7: Released: System Critique grades |
| apr 6 LEC 17: Logging This Week's Reading: MapReduce |
apr 7 | apr 8 LEC 18: Isolation |
apr 9 REC 9: Released: Participation check-in #2 |
apr 10 TUT 8: Released: Exam 1 grades |
| apr 13 LEC 19: Distributed Transactions This Week's Reading: Consistency Rationing |
apr 14 | apr 15 LEC 20: Replication DUE: Project Part 1: System Enhancement |
apr 16 REC 10: No recitation this day so that staff can work on project feedback Assignment Available: Project Part 2: Presentation |
apr 17 TUT 9: |
| apr 20 Patriots day |
apr 21 This Week's Reading: Keys Under Doormats Drop Date |
apr 22 LEC 21: Intro to Security + Authentication DUE: Lab 3 Assignment Available: Lab 4 Released: Technical feedback for Project Part 1: System Enhancement |
apr 23 REC 11: |
apr 24 TUT 10: |
| apr 27 LEC 22: Low-level attacks This Week's Reading: Meltdown |
apr 28 | apr 29 LEC 23: Secure Channels Released: Lab 3 grades Released: Project Part 1: System Enhancements grades |
apr 30 REC 12: |
may 1 TUT 11: |
| may 4 LEC 24: ToR DUE: Lab 4 This Week's Reading: Bitcoin |
may 5 | may 6 LEC 25: Network Attacks Project presentations begin here, run through the end of this week |
may 7 REC 13: No recitation this day due to presentations |
may 8 Last day for project presentations |
| may 11 LEC 26: Wrap-up Released: Lab 4 grades |
may 12 Last day of classes |
may 13 Released: Project Part 2: Presentation grades Released: Participation grades |
may 14 | may 15 |
| may 18 | may 19 | may 20 Last day of finals |
may 21 | may 22 Released: Exam 2 grades Released: Final class grades |