McKeown used to teach CS244 before it was watered down into a lit review course (and before CS144 existed). The premise was basically that you will have built the entire internet by the end of the quarter. I took CS244 in early 2008 and it was probably my favorite class at Stanford.
Oh wow, I didn't know what it used to be. I heard a couple people who liked it last year (McKeown was one of 3 teaching it). It sounded like it wasn't all lit review (unlike 240, which had literally nothing but paper discussion). They had several projects using OpenFlow to explore various topics, the last of which was open ended. But sounds pretty different than what they're describing.
