Seminar - Internet Measurements (2026)

The Internet served and continues to serve as the backbone of many innovations in the last few decades. Such innovations are possible, because the Internet, across its layers, evolved with increased performance, scalability, reliability but also security in mind. As a result, the Internet is one of the most complex systems that the human race was and is building.

This continuously increasing complexity means that understanding and reliably predicting the Internet's behavior today and in the future will remain a challenge. High complexity also means high opacity for any individual engineer or even organization, which makes identifying improvements to the Internet as a system intangible.

Internet measurements is a research field that aims to identify systemic properties of the Internet to improve it for future generations. Measurements are used today to not only isolate network failures but also to ascertain network performance and study the natural evolution of this running system. Measurements are actively used by standardization bodies to inform protocol engineering and design, by network operators and content providers to help improve the quality of experience of their customers, and by regulators to shape future broadband policies.

In this seminar, we will explore recent seminal papers in the field of Internet measurements. These papers will help teach us techniques and tools that are used to reveal interesting properties of the Internet today. A non-exhaustive list of potential topic areas includes: Internet connectivity (Internet for all), Internet architecture, Internet protocols, Web and multimedia applications, security consdierations and more.

Registering for this seminar follows the usual process of the Matching System of the Department of Computer Science.

Pre-course meeting

There will be no pre-course meeting. The structure and procedure of the seminar are outlined in these informational slides. If you have questions or concerns, reach out via email.

Course requirements (recommended)

The participants should be already prepared by an undergraduate-level course on computer networks. Familiarity with networking tools used for performance evaluation may be beneficial.

Moodle page

To stay up to date with the latest course information during the semester, please refer to the course's Moodle page.

Time and location

Remote participation via BigBlueButton (BBB), see link on Moodle page.

Dates and times: see Moodle

First introduction session (tentative): April 22, 2026, 16:00

Room: 01.07.023

In the introduction session we are going to explain how the seminar works in detail and announce the dates and times of sessions in the semester.

Learning outcomes (study goals)

The participants will learn how to critically read and discuss research papers. This will be achieved by reviewing papers in written form. Students will also have the opportunity to advance their soft skills through presentation in a conference-style setting. Presentations will involve learning to not only stay within time limits but also to discuss the content of paper(s) and publication(s) in the Q/A session at the end of the talk. 

Teaching and learning methods

Each participant covers a topic area by presenting relevant papers during the seminar. Refer to our Seminar on Internet Measurements from 2017 or 2018 for some examples of student presentations and topics. To ensure everybody has read the papers, the participants are required to hand in a review of the presented papers via HOTCRP following the provided review template. The answers to the review forms should be brief and concise. Refer to the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) that made reviews for accepted papers public for the 2012 and 2013 programmes.

Paper allocations will be done on a best-effort basis, based on preferences (favorite 7 papers) solicited over email during the semester. A paper will be randomly assigned if no preference is sent. The first seminar course slot will be used to set the agenda for the seminar.

Relevant Conferences and Journals

• ACM SIGCOMM
• IEEE INFOCOM
• Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
• Passive and Active Measurement Conference (PAM)
• Traffic Monitoring and Analysis Workshop (TMA)
• ACM CoNEXT
• PETS
• ACM SIGMETRICS
• TheWebConference

Further Reading

• S. Keshav. "How to read a paper"
• William G. Griswold, "How to Read an Engineering Research Paper"
• Graham Cormode. 2009. "How NOT to review a paper: the tools and techniques of the adversarial reviewer."
• J Smith. "The Task of the Referee"
• Philip W. L. Fong. 2004. "How to Read a CS Research Paper?"
• Shriram Krishnamurthi. 2009. "How to Write Technical Paper Reviews"
• Timothy Roscoe. 2007. "Writing reviews for systems conferences"

Contact

• Justus Fries <fries[at]in.tum.de>
• Rohan Bose <rohan.bose[at]tum.de>