ECE 239AS: Advanced Networking and Security
UCLA, Spring 2026
This graduate course covers foundational work and current topics in computer networks and security. The course consists of reading, discussing and presenting published research papers, as well as completing an original research project.
📌 Course Information
Class meetings
Monday & Wednesday
2:00–3:50 PM
Boelter Hall 5422
Attendance & participation
This course is based on in-person discussion of research. On-time, in-person attendance and participation are required.
Instructor: Liz Izhikevich. Office Hours: By appointment or as posted on EdStem.
Prerequisites: This course is open to all graduate students as well as advanced undergraduate students. While the course has no official prerequisites, it requires a mature understanding of software systems and networks. Completing a prior course in undergraduate networking is highly recommended. It is required that all students who have not completed an official computer networking course watch all lecture videos from Stanford's Introduction to Networking Course (approximately 4.5 hours of content) before the first lecture.
Communication: We use Ed Discussion for announcements and discussion.
Submissions: All course assignments are submitted through Gradescope. Enrollment code: 4DZ5Y2.
🗓️ Tentative Topics and Schedule
The tentative schedule for the class is below. Resources and due windows are listed directly with the corresponding week.
🚩 Course Structure
This course is composed of four parts: in-class participation, programming-based assignments, reading and presenting recent work for one class, and completing a group research project. Grading will be based on:
📚 Participation (20%)
Each class lecture will review at least one formative research paper in networking and security. Students must come prepared to actively discuss assigned papers and make substantive intellectual contributions. This means reading each paper ahead of time and/or actively listening during lecture. Students must contribute meaningfully to class discussion at least once per week for 8 of the 10 weeks. Participation will be tracked by the instructor.
🧑🏫 Topic Presentation (10%)
To explore how subfields have evolved, each student will present one recent paper relevant to the day’s topic. Students will sign up for their preferred topic/date at the start of the quarter.
⚠️ Presentations must be 12–15 minutes long, with 5 minutes for questions. Presentations exceeding 15 minutes will be cut off, impacting grades. Be prepared to answer questions about the paper.
🧑💻 Homework Assignments (30%)
Two to three programming-based homework assignments will be given throughout the quarter, providing hands-on experience in collecting and analyzing data on topics such as routing security and attacker traffic. Each homework assignment will be weighted equivalently.
🔬 Course Project (40%)
Students will complete a quarter-long original research project in groups of 2–4 students. Projects will culminate in a presentation and a 6–10 page report, similar to the papers read during the course.
Projects have four graded components:
- Project Write-Ups (10%). Most weeks there will be a short write-up due that asks groups to submit their weekly progress, along with a specific section (e.g., draft of related works section).
- Mid and Final Class Presentation (15%). Each group will give two presentations: one mid-quarter (5%) and one during the last week of the course (10%).
- Final Paper (15%). Submit a 6–10 page report using the USENIX LaTeX template. The paper will be graded to a very high standard (hence the smaller weight of the assignment).
All written submissions must be in paragraph form, in English, and submitted as PDFs using LaTeX. Refer to Writing Technical Articles for guidance if you are new to academic research writing.
⚙️ Administrivia
Submit all reports via Gradescope the evening before class. Late submissions will be accepted at no penalty by 1:30 PM on the day of each following class. However, 1:30 PM will be a strict cut-off.
The class presentation counts as the final exam.
All submitted work must be original work. Please speak to the instructor before using generative AI tools for assignments or projects (e.g., generating text).