Comp 343-001/443-001, Computer Networks, Fall 2022

Peter Dordal, Loyola University Chicago Dept of Computer Science.

Tuesdays 4:15-6:45 in Cuneo Hall, Room 002

The text will be An Introduction to Computer Networks, second edition, written by myself and available for free online. Note that the book is updated regularly.

My general course groundrules are here. Exams will count for between 60% to 70% of your grade, with homework and programs making up the rest.

The midterm will be the week of October 18, and will be on Sakai Wed Oct 19 to Thurs Oct 20. The final will be during the normal finals week.

Most of the course materials and assignments will be on Sakai.


Study guides and materials


Course calendar

Week 1: Aug 30 (hwk 1 assignment) Week 2: Sep 6
Week 3: Sep 13
Week 4: Sep 20 (hwk 2 assignment) Week 5: Sep 27
Week 6: Oct 4
Oct 11: Fall break
Week 7: Oct 18 (midterm)         Week 8: Oct 25                    
Week 9: Nov 1
Week 10: Nov 8
Week 11: Nov 15
Week 12: Nov 22
Week 13 Nov 29
Week 14: Dec 6




Java simpletalk examples

TCP: server, clientthreaded server
UDP: server, client


Demos

A viewer for the Internet: http://as2914.net. A galaxy-visualization tool is used to display all ISPs (as stars) and links between them.


Programming Projects

You are to do one of the following:

Option 1: HUMP client. Instructions are in hump.html. This is the programming option.

Option 2: Mininet. Instructions are in mininet_projects.html. This uses python as a configuration language. There's no implementation of algorithms.



Summary of coverage, from An Introduction to Computer Networks

An Overview of Networks
Ethernet
Other LANs: Wi-Fi in particular
Links: briefly
Packets: briefly
Abstract Sliding Windows
IP version 4
IP version 6 (selections)
Routing Update Algorithms
Large-scale IP Routing
UDP
TCP
TCP Reno and Congestion Management
TCP Dynamics
Miscellaneous topics

Learning outcomes

Students will understand how the Internet is constructed, how LANs are built and managed, how data is routed to its destination, how connections are managed and implemented, how congestion is handled, and how security can be addressed.