Comp 343-002/443-002, Online Computer Networks, Fall 2013

Peter Dordal, Loyola University Chicago Dept of Computer Science.

The text will be An Introduction to Computer Networks, 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 online Comp 343/443 will be taught more-or-less in parallel with the classroom section. Those in the online course will be expected to take the midterm and final exams along with the classroom section, although there will be some flexibility for genuine scheduling conflicts. The midterm will be Tuesday October 29 and the final will be Tuesday December 10.

My theory about online learning is that students learn best by working out hands-on examples; therefore the primary weekly activity will be reading assignments and then exercises based on that. I will make myself available twice a week for synchronous meetings, hopefully using Adobe Connect and video; students should try to participate in one of these. The tentative schedule for these is as follows:
Length will be between 30 minutes to an hour, depending on demand.

While I will try to accept late homework, it is important for everyone to remain more-or-less together; this is not a "self-paced" course!

I've been recording my lectures from the face-to-face class and uploading them in .mp3 and .ogg formats. A few of them (like week_06_first_half) are probably hard to follow without seeing the board, but others should be helpful. The more-focused mini-lectures on selected topics would be another option.

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

I am now keeping a week-by-week schedule here, with assignments.


Here is the start of the midterm study guide. Exercises have been added; solutions will be added later.

Here is the final exam study guide.



java simpletalk examples

TCP: server, client,  threaded server
UDP: server, client

Notes on using ssh at Loyola

Programming Projects

TCP forwarder, due Fri Nov 22

WUMP client, due Tues Dec 10 - graduate students only