This assignment is a creative exercise in: 
• Synthesizing a picture of an area, its relevance, structure and core ideas; and identifying what problems they are trying to solve and issues that need further exploration. 
• Integrating the concepts learnt in class, with an in-depth focus of the selected area. 
• Understanding the research and engineering issues in the selected area and a crisp, precise, and unambiguous articulation of state-of-the-art and research/engineering directions being investigated. Fluff or waffle will not get any marks. Suggested length is less than 10 pages. 
• Reading key technical research papers, IETF RFCs and drafts. 
• Making a creative attempt at any open research problems to suggest a solution or directions/approaches. Well articulated solution approaches/breakthroughs can get you higher marks. 
Guidelines: 
• The study proposal should have: 
o List of sub-topics to be covered 
o List of papers, IETF working groups, RFCs you plan to read. This should include a -core set- of papers. Some initial papers are listed for each of the possible topic. 
• The final case study write-up (of about 8-10 pages) should clearly specify: 
o The scope of the problem you are studying - detail all the fundamental design issues/sub-problems involved. 
o Solution approaches to each of these issues (in isolation). 
o Solutions adopted in practice, if any. 
o Conclusions stating the open issues involved, and possible solution directions.