Writing the 6.033 Design Report Leslie C. Perelman.

Writing the 6.033 Design Report

Leslie C. Perelman

Topics

Elements of the report Process of writing the design

report Clear writing Phase Two Procedures

General Design Strategy

Modularity Autonomous sections Chunking

use of white space Hierarchy

Section levels Use only 3 levels

Use of levels of abstraction Move from overview to specifics

Elements of the Paper

Informative abstract Short introduction explaining the problem

and constraints (design criteria) Overview of solution Description and elaboration of solution Evaluation of design in terms of problem

and design constraints Comparison with alternative solutions Documentation both within text and list of

references. (Use IEEE style)

Abstract

Informative abstract summarizes problem constraints essential elements of design

solution

Do not write a descriptive abstract that just lists the parts of the paper

Abstract template

What is the problem? What are the general and

important design constraints and specifications?

What are the essential elements of the design solution?

What important conclusions can be drawn from the design?

Introduction

Give background and context of problem

State why it is important Use terms your audience can

understand

Overview of SolutionThe conceptual design of RON, shown in Figure 3, is quite simple.

RON nodes, deployed at various locations on the Internet, form an application-layer overlay to cooperatively route packets for each other. Each RON node monitors the quality of the Internet paths between it and other nodes, and uses this information to intelligently select paths for packets. Each Internet path between two nodes is called a virtual link. To discover the topology of the overlay network and obtain information about all virtual links in the topology, every RON node participates in a routing protocol to exchange information about a variety of quality metrics. Most of RON’s design supports routing through multiple intermediate nodes, but our results (Section 6) show that using at most one intermediate RON node is sufficient most of the time. Therefore, parts of our design focus on finding better paths via a single intermediate RON node.

D. Anderson, H. Balakrishnan, F. Kaashoek, and R. Morris, “Resilient Overlay Networks”

Writing the Design Report -- Prewriting

Start early Technical papers are like spaghetti sauce or stew --

they get better when they sit for a while Read the assignment

List what you are supposed to do List design criteria List different solutions and evaluate them in terms

of design criteria Use models

exemplary 6.033 design reports papers by 6.033 faculty

Define audiences and purposes

Define Audiences and Purposes Colleagues who took 6.033 five years

ago informative

Manager persuasive

Implementation team instructional

Writing the Design Report You do not have write the sections

in the same order as they will appear in the final paper.

Always write the abstract and title last

Discuss it in textShow how it works in pictures

Make it clear in diagrams

Number figures consecutively Put figure number and title below

figure Label all elements Refer to figures in text Treat code and pseudo-code as

a figure

Tables

Number tables separately from text Put number and title above table Refer to table in text

Feature Table

  Transparent reduce traffic easily scalable load distribution

grouping of documents

visibility of cache

W3C httpd

DEC relay        

Harvest    

HTFP

Revising the Report

Does the paper address all five specifications?

Does the design support all the listed program and operating features?

Is each section and paragraph focused on a single topic?

Does the abstract summarize the key points in the paper?

Is your design sufficiently illustrated by diagrams

Editing the Paper

Are the sentences clear and easy to read?

Is the language grammatically correct?

Read it aloud Cut out needless words

Text is like code Less is more

Omit Needless Words

The question as to whether . . . Whether . . .

There is no doubt No doubt

In an interactive manner Interactively

This is an element which This element

During which time while

Get rid of the fact that Owing to the fact that

Because The fact that the system had not

succeeded The system failed The system's failure . . .

The fact that the packet arrived The packet's arrival

Editing exerciseSpan's design is very important. Span performs an

election of "coordinators from all nodes in the network in an adaptive manner. Span coordinators are in an awakened state in a continuous manner and perform multi-hop packet routing within the ad hoc network, during which time other nodes remain in power-saving mode and periodically perform checks to determine whether or not they should wake up and become a coordinator.

Original

Span adaptively elects "coordinators" from all nodes in the network. Span coordinators stay awake continuously and perform multi-hop packet routing within the ad hoc network, while other nodes remain in power-saving mode and periodically determine if they should wake up and become a coordinator.

Phase Two of the Writing Requirement

If you are in a section of the Writing Practicum, give a copy of your report to your practicum instructor

If you are not in the Writing Practicum and want your paper evaluated for Phase Two, hand in a second copy to your TA with Phase Two on the cover page

A design report needs to receive a technical grade of B- and a writing grade of B- or better to complete Phase Two

Papers that do not pass can be revised and resubmitted no later than September 16, 2002

Resources

Mayfield Handbook https://web.mit.edu/21.guide/www/home.htm

Writing and Communication Center http://web.mit.edu/writing/

6.033 DP1 Tutorials Materials on 6.033 Practicum Website