Sistemas de Elevada Confiabilidade

SECCourse Page
6 ECTSP3Exam: Mandatory
Overall
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7
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4.1
11 ratings
Workload
Very light
0
Light
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Moderate
1
Heavy
5
Very heavy
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Heavy7 ratings

Student Feedback

2025/2026
Workload:Very heavy

6 days ago

Os conteúdos da cadeira são bastante interessante focando principalmente em blockchains. Os professores Paolo e Miguel são bastante empenhados e abertos a discussão. O exame é quase todo à base de perguntas de desenvolvimentos escritas (à exceção de 2 ou 3 exercícios), portanto convém ter uma boa noção de toda a teoria. Em termos de materiais de estudo, os exames de anos anteriores não têm soluções disponíveis. O senão desta cadeira é que o projeto, embora seja interessante, é mesmo muito trabalhoso mesmo que seja bem dividido entre as três pessoas do grupo. É possível ter boa nota no projeto...

Workload:Heavy

last week

Theoretical Classes → Professors Miguel Matos and Paolo Romano presented the lectures, interleaving between both campi. Both are good at teaching and the slides are good enough for you to understand the theory and how we get to the final solution. They are also plenty good for you to study on your own later (maybe one or two more "timeline" examples for some of the consensus algorithms topics (LE, Broadcast, R/W) could be a nice addition, regardless they slides are generally pretty good, no complaints).

I just found the first part of the theoretical classes (regarding consensus - half...

Workload:Heavy

last month

Achei o objetivo da cadeira bem interessante, tipo, entender o Web3 e blockchain e como pode ser útil no futuro. Mas a parte inicial é um pouco chata. Tipo, é importante saber o que é consenso bizantino e como usar, mas a abstração toda até chegar lá é cansativa demais para o resultado final.

Podíamos focar menos na parte inicial. Tem matéria meio redundante, tipo a parte dos registos, que não faz muito sentido para o resto da cadeira. E seria bom explorar mais a fundo a parte final depois da blockchain, como smart cards. No projeto não exploramos nada disso, o que é chato porque é um período...

2024/2025
Workload:Heavy

last year

From all the distribute courses i took , the best one by far, if you like blockchain technology this is one of the few courses that explains that type of concepts.

Workload:Moderate

last year

SEC is all about building secure distributed systems, and it does a great job explaining the core concepts. The course focuses heavily on Byzantine consensus (about 70% of the project) and Blockchain systems (around 30%).

Byzantine consensus can be tedious and a bit difficult to grasp at first, but it’s crucial for the implementation. The Blockchain portion is more engaging—the course covers the most common systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum and gives a good sense of their real-world applications.

The project is quite long, so it’s important to start early. The exam consists of written...

last year

Disclaimer: I’m basing this rating mostly on the problems with how the project and labs were organized.

I actually found the theoretical content and the project itself interesting, but the way things were handled, especially in the labs, felt sloppy at times (Professor Paolo was our lab instructor).

Second project discussion

Only one group member was allowed to bring a computer to the discussion, and unfortunately for me, it was the member who hadn’t really contributed to the project.

Without any prior notice, the...

last year

SEC is really great. The teachers say that is better if you had SIRS and DAD before, since this course uses concepts from both but I haven't had any of those and still had a great time.

Contents

The first part of the class is really about distributed systems (with an int of cyber) and the second part is about blockchain (the best part of the class imo).

Despite it being a great course, you need to invest a lot of your time in the project. Without good and coordinated colleagues, its...

The reviews below this point may be outdated. Course content, teaching methods, and requirements may have changed since then.

2021/2022

4 years ago

I recommend taking DAD and SIRS beforehand. In my opinion, this is one of the best courses in terms of theoretical content.

Professors

Professor Miguel Matos gives really good lectures, and Professor Paolo Romano as well. His only issue is the language barrier.

Exam

The exam is demanding, but if you study and attend classes, it’s totally manageable.

Project

The project is very interesting, but also quite demanding and...

2020/2021Pre-MEPP

5 years ago

Professors

This year, SEC was taught by Professor Miguel Matos. He is a cool guy who's a great lecturer.

Contents

The course content is basically the child of DAD and SIRS, so if you've taken those courses, you've already got about half of the theoretical material covered. It focuses especially on Byzantine faults, which aren't really addressed in DAD.

If you enjoyed DAD and SIRS, you'll probably love SEC. For me, it's by far the most interesting course in the Distributed Systems...