Master Seminar: Future Internet Protocols

Master Seminar - Future Internet Protocols and Security Perspectives (WS 2025/26)

There is a constant demand for the Internet to function better, not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of being more secure, scalable and highly reliable. Towards this end, new protocol designs are proposed by researchers and industry in papers and Internet standards under the umbrella of standards developing organizations (SDOs). These designs allow the Internet to evolve to sustain these growing needs. Additionally, since the Snowden incidents in 2013, the IETF and other SDOs developed new standards with privacy in mind that are widely deployed on the Internet today (e.g., MLS, TLS 1.3, QUIC and more). Yet, new attacks on deciphering encrypted network traffic have been developed and continue to be found by researchers.

In this seminar we will explore seminal papers in the field of Internet protocol design with security and privacy in mind. These papers will help us understand the trade-offs involved when developing protocols for providing end-to-end encryption and privacy-awareness. The communication mechanisms and patterns include point-to-point and point-to-multipoint scenarios and will cover multiple layers of the Internet protocol stack, but focus on the network and transport layers.

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 on these Introductory Slides .

Time and location

Moodle page

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

Dates and times (strictly mandatory):

Session 1: TBD
Session 2: TBD
Session 3: TBD

Room: probably 01.07.023

Course requirements (recommended)

The participants should already be prepared by undergraduate-level courses on computer networks and networking protocols, and IT-security. Familiarity with advanced security protocols and distributed systems is beneficial.

Learning outcomes (study goals)

The topics covered in this seminar revolve around novel privacy-aware network protocols and architectures. The papers will give students the technical knowledge and understanding on the latest advancements in the field of emerging networking and security solutions.

The participants will also learn how to critically read and discuss research papers. This will be achieved by reviewing papers individually and actively participating in group discussions during the seminar presentations. Students will also have the opportunity to advance their soft skills through presentations. Presentations will involve learning to not only stay within time limits but also to appreciate the Q/A session at the end of the presentation.

Specifically, after the seminar, the student should be able to:

- Understand the need for new Internet architectures and protocols with security and privacy in mind.
- Explain the technical details of the discussed protocols, mechanisms, frameworks and architectures.
- Critically and constructively discuss pros and cons of the design principles and the performance of the presented solutions.
- Understand the importance of (independent) peer reviews.
- Present research concisely and within the allotted time (conference-style settings).

Details in the introductory slides!

Each participant covers a topic area by presenting one relevant paper during the seminar. To ensure everybody has read the papers, the participants must 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 did reviews for accepted papers public for the 2012 and 2013 programs.

Paper allocations will be done on a best-effort basis, based on preferences (favorite seven 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.