B20.3362 Special Topics: Advanced Technologies

Spring 2001 

Professor Alex Tuzhilin

Course Description

This course will provide a thorough examination of several key technologies enabling major advances in e-business and other high-tech industries, and will explore new business opportunities that these technologies create. The technologies to be covered in the class include:

1. Internet Infrastructure Technologies.
2. Wireless Technologies.
3. Personalization Technologies.
4. Bio-Technologies.
5. Emerging "Bleeding Edge" Technologies.

For each of these technologies, the course will provide an overview of the "space" corresponding to this class of technologies, examine who the major players are and which technologies they use. After that, we will study the underlying technologies, examine the business problems they help to solve, and discuss how they are solved. The students will also study key companies in the "spaces" created by these technologies: what these companies do, which technologies they use, how these technologies support their critical applications, and how these companies compete and collaborate among themselves. Moreover, we will discuss possible future directions and trends for the technologies being studied, novel applications that they enable and how high-tech companies can leverage these technical trends and applications by deploying these technologies.

The students will learn the material through the combination of class lectures, discussions, student presentations, case studies, and demos. Periodically, experts from the industry will be invited to share their experiences pertaining to the technologies being studied and discuss current trends and future directions for these technologies and corresponding industries.
 

Audience and Prerequisites

This course is intended for the students who have already acquired basic knowledge of technical concepts and who want to advance their knowledge of technologies beyond the basics and further develop understanding of the dynamics of the "spaces" associated with these technologies.

Prerequisite: B20.2317 (Information and Internet Technologies) or the working knowledge of the material covered in that course, including basic understanding of

1. how computers work;
2. communication networks and how Internet works;
3. WWW basics.

The students who have not taken B20.2317 can assess their technical skills by examining the syllabus of that course at B20.2317. In addition, such students are strongly encouraged to examine the following books

and familiarize themselves with the material covered in these books. Finally, if you are still not sure if your background is appropriate for this course, you should contact the instructor.
 

Reading Materials

The following book and the accompanied reading packet are required for the course:

1. PriceWaterhouseCoopers Technology Forecast: 2000.

2. The Reading Packet.

These reading materials can be purchased at the NYU Bookstore. Additional handout material will also be provided in class.

Also, the following textbooks will provide background information and sources of additional reference. They can be borrowed from the reserve section of the Bobst Library:

1. Daniel Minoli and Andrew Schmidt. Internet Architectures. John Wiley & Sons, 1999.

2. David Messerschmitt, Networked Applications: A Guide to the New Computing Infrastructure. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1999.

3. L. Harte, S. Kellogg, R. Dreher, T. Schaffnit. The Comprehensive Guide to Wireless Technologies. APDG Publishing, 2000.
 

 

Requirements and Grading

The students will be grouped into small teams (about 3 – 4 students per team) and asked to analyze three companies or three specific technologies from three different modules. The deliverables of this analysis are (1) an in-class presentation and (2) a written report. These reports and presentations will constitute the bulk of the student's grade. Also, there will be several short quizzes administered in-class to test the knowledge of the material. A student's grade in the course will be calculated based on the following distribution:

1. In-class presentations (3)        30%
2. Written reports (3)                  54%
3. Class participation                    8%

4. Quizzes                                     8%
 

Contact Information

Office:    KMEC 9-78
Phone:    998-0832
e-mail:    atuzhili@stern.nyu.edu
URL:      www.stern.nyu.edu/~atuzhili/B203362.html
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 11:45 am – 12:45 pm and by appointment.
 

Discussion Board (Blackboard)

A discussion board, called Blackboard, was created for this course. It will be used for various discussions, posting announcements, and for other types of communications between the instructor and the students and also among the students themselves. The students are requested to familiarize themselves with the Blackboard and also to visit the site at least once a week to see new announcements and participate in class discussions.
 

Course Outline

Module 1: Internet Infrastructure Technologies

1. Overview of the Telecommunications industry: different types of Telcos including ILECs, CLECs, IXCs, Next-Gen Telcos, ISPs; the “one-stop-shopping” strategy of the telecom industry – providing customers with comprehensive integrated set of services; telecommunications and network equipment vendors: circuit-switching vs. packet-switching equipment, markets for routers and switches (including optical switches) and major “players” in these markets.

2. Discussion of evolving time sensitive applications, including Voice-over-IP (VoIP), videoconferencing, high-quality streaming audio and video, and priority-based real-time applications. The need for Quality of Service (QoS) to provide a reliable support for these and other applications.

3. The bandwidth bottleneck problem: patterns of growth in the Internet traffic, demand for bandwidth and discussion of various ways to meet this demand.

4. Overview of Internet infrastructure technologies: structure of the Internet; overview of different communication protocols, including Frame relay, ATM, SONET, RTP and RSVP protocols; discussion of relationships between these protocols, including “x over y” paradigms; overview of various internetworking devices including bridges, routers and switches; overview of routing protocols and of the three generations of routers. Quality of Service (QoS) and overview of different applications requiring various levels of QoS; two approaches to QoS (resource reservation and prioritization) and implementation of these approaches by Intserv and DiffServ methods; next generation of networks: intelligent, policy-based and active. The “last mile” problem and different local loop broadband technologies for solving this problem. All-optical networks: electronic bottleneck problem and how all-optical networks can solve it; WDM, DWDM and optical signal amplification technologies.

5. The bandwidth bottleneck problem revisited: can all these technologies, surveyed in Part 4, supply enough bandwidth to meet the growing bandwidth demand?

6. Value-added Internet services and applications: studies of innovative applications and services and discussions of which Internet technologies can support them and how.

7. Overview of the major Internet infrastructure companies: what they do, which technologies they use, and how these technologies support their critical applications and business models.

8. Future directions and trends.

READING MATERIALS:

1. PWC Tech. Review: pages 323 - 383, 437 - 486, 503 - 504, 521 - 558;

2. Reading Packet: articles for Module 1 from the packet.

 

Module 2: Wireless Technologies

1. Motivating examples and discussions of "hot" wireless applications; overview of the market for wireless technologies.

2. Foundations of wireless technologies: radio spectrum, types of modulation of radio waves, a concept of a channel and how radio communications work, channel multiplexing, voice and data compression, encryption and error detection; analog vs. digital communications; cellular systems; system access technologies (FDMA, TDMA, and CDMA) – how they work and how they differ from each other.

3. Generations of wireless technologies (1G, 2G, 2.5G and 3G) and wireless devices supporting these technologies.

4. Wireless Internet and other wireless networks: WAP, IEEE 802.11 standard, HomeRF and Bluetooth technologies; wireless local loop technologies

5. Satellite systems and technologies.

6. Studies of wireless applications and services for data, voice and video: vertical vs. horizontal applications; traditional applications go wireless (e.g., banking/e-banking/m-banking) vs. innovative wireless applications (e.g., location-based services, remote status monitoring); overview of different types of mobile services.

7. Studies of the wireless industry and mobile commerce (m-commerce): who the major "players" are, what they do, how they compete and cooperate with each other, and how they use the wireless technologies covered in this module.

8. Future directions in wireless, including discussions of innovative applications and emerging technologies supporting these applications.

READING MATERIALS:

1. PWC Tech. Review: pages 385 - 436; 263 – 320.
2. Reading Packet: articles for Module 2 from the packet.
 

Module 3: Personalization Technologies

1. Overview of basic types of personalization: from trivial (shallow) to smart (deep) personalization; overview of the personalization process: from collecting customer data to providing personalized services and delivering personalized information.

2. Collecting customer data – how Web sites collect data on site visitors and build integrated “views” of their customers by combining this data with other information sources; building rich customer profiles; discussions of what information can be collected and how.

3. Underlying personalization technologies: real-time data gathering, profiling, collaborative and content-based filtering, rule management, dynamic content presentation, data mining, and how they are deployed in some of the personalization systems; capabilities of these technologies and applications that they enable.

4. Classification of personalization companies; how they position and differentiate themselves in the personalization space.

5. Privacy: overview of major principles of privacy; opt-in vs. opt-out policies, ownership of raw and processed customer information; conflicting views on privacy as expressed by the industry and some of the privacy advocates; discussions of how to satisfy privacy concerns and the needs for personalized services.

7. Discussion of future directions in personalization and on-line privacy.

READING MATERIALS:

Articles for Module 3 from the Reading Packet  and handouts. 

 

Module 4: Bio-Technologies

1. Introduction: the dawn of the bio-tech revolution – what it is, what is at stake here.

2. The genomics primer: from genes to proteins, and how proteins regulate various processes in the cells.

3. Biological causes of diseases and various genomics-based methods to control these causes; the process of drug discovery and design; population genomics and pharmacogenomics.

4. Enabling technologies and the role of IT in this bio-tech revolution.

5. An overview of bio-tech industry: types of bio-technology companies and their business strategies; how “big-pharma,” some of the chemical companies (e.g., Monsanto, DuPont and Dow Chemicals) and agribusiness companies prepare themselves for the bio-tech revolution; the convergence process among agricultural, chemical, biotech, pharmaceutical, energy and environmental businesses and exploration of the causes of this convergence.

6. The HBS case study on Celera Genomics "Gene Research, the Mapping of Life and the Global Economy".

7. Ethical and social issues pertaining to the bio-tech revolution: from Frankenstein foods to the creation of new forms of life; the dark side of the revolution: from the science of eugenics to the creation of the next generation of biological weapons; discussion of how to maximize positive impacts of the bio-tech revolution and minimize potential problems through government regulation and other means.

8. Discussions of future directions and trends in the bio-tech industry.

READING MATERIALS:

Articles for Module 4 from the Reading Packet  and handouts. 
 

Module 5: Emerging "Bleeding Edge" Technologies

In this module we will examine some of the cutting edge technologies that have high potential for enabling killer applications of the future. Among possible topics to examine are DNA and quantum computing; nanotechnologies; pervasive, wearable and ubiquitous computing and the chip implant technologies. The specific agenda will be formed during the class discussions.
 

Course Schedule

Please note that, if necessary, the following schedule may be altered depending on the progress made during the course. If this is the case, the instructor will provide a modified schedule in advance.
 

Lecture

Date

Topic

1

Jan 17

Introduction; overview of the basic Internet concepts

2

Jan 22

Module 1 (Internet Infrastructure): Overview of the telecommunications and Internet infrastructure industries; bandwidth bottleneck problem

3

Jan 24

Internet infrastructure technologies: Structure of the Internet and communication protocols

4

Jan 29

Internet infrastructure technologies: Internetworking devices and Quality of Service (QoS)

5

Jan 31

Internet infrastructure technologies: Local loop technologies and all-optical networks

6

Feb 5

Value-added applications and services

7

Feb 7

Presentations of student reports on various infrastructure companies and/or technologies

8

Feb 12

Guest speaker; future directions and trends

9

Feb 14

Module 2 (Wireless): Overview of the market for wireless technologies and applications

10 

Feb 21

Foundations of wireless technologies: Part 1

11

Feb 26

Foundations of wireless technologies: Part 2

12

Feb 28

Wireless Internet and other networks

13

Mar 5

Studies of the wireless industry

14

Mar 7

Presentations of student reports on various wireless companies and/or technologies

15

Mar 19

Guest speaker; discussion of future directions and trends in the wireless industry

16

Mar 21

Module 3 (Personalization): Overview of the basic concepts of personalization

17

Mar 26

Collecting customer data and user tracking on the Web

18

Mar 28

Overview of personalization technologies; on-line privacy and its relation to personalization

19

Apr 2

Studies of various personalization companies

20

Apr 4

Presentations of student reports on personalization companies and/or technologies

21

Apr 9

Guest speaker; discussion of future directions and trends in personalization

22

Apr 11

Module 5 (Bio-Tech): An introduction to bio-tech; a primer on genomics

23

Apr 16

A primer on genomics (continued); an overview of enabling technologies

24

Apr 18

An overview of bio-tech industry 

25

Apr 23

The HBS case of Celera Genomics

26

Apr 25

Presentations of student reports on bio-tech companies and/or technologies

27

Apr 30

Guest speaker; future directions in bio-tech

28

May 2

Module 6: "Bleeding Edge" technologies