For this week, you'll be reading most of Resilient Overlay Networks. This paper explains how to build an overlay network on top of the existing Internet that has better properties or other features. Many Internet applications, such as peer-to-peer applications are built as overlay networks.

• Section 1 introduces the main goals of RON and summarizes the main results. Section 2 gives support for the context and motivation of RON. Section 3 lays out each of RON's design goals.
• As you read Section 4, don't get too stuck on 4.2.2. It's important that you understand that RON uses measurement to evaluate and select paths, less important that you closely scrutinize its equations.
• Skip Section 5.
• Skim Section 6. The main results of the paper are summarized at the end of the intro. You should understand how the authors evaluated RON to determine those results.
• Section 7 addresses some criticisms of RON. Section 8 concludes the paper.

As you read, think about:

• Why is RON able to overcome failures that BGP can't? Be specific; your answer should describe an example where RON overcomes a failure that BGP does not.
• Why does RON collect different application metrics? Why isn't it enough to collect a single metric?
• How far does RON scale, and what limits that scale?
• Routing is normally done at the network layer, but RON (and BGP) operate at the application layer. What are the benefits and drawbacks of this change?

Submit your answers to these questions on Canvas by 12:00pm on Friday 3/6. You should be writing a few sentences in response to each question (so we don't need you to write an essay for each one, but we're also expecting more than one-word answers). Your responses should be in your own words, not direct quotations from the paper.