Comp 343-002/443-002, Online Computer Networks, Fall 2017

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. Exams may be taken either online or with the face-to-face section. The midterm will be the week of October 23 and the final will be the week of December 11 (finals week).

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 at least twice a week for synchronous meetings; I will also answer email and post on the Sakai discussion board. Students should try to participate in one of the synchronous sessions. The tentative schedule for these is as follows:

The Thursday slot may have to be rescheduled occasionally. If demand for the Monday/Tuesday sessions is low, it is possible they will be consolidated.

I will use Adobe Connect. It's not ideal, but I'll log in with a backup machine too. Length will be between 15 minutes to an hour, depending on demand. I may at some point try to use a different conferencing application.

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!

Recording full-length lectures from the face-to-face class has in the past not been terribly helpful. Instead, I have a selection of mini-lectures, ten to twenty minutes in length. These are fast-paced, with the understanding that you can pause whenever you need to.

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

Study Guides

These will be on Sakai.


Each week's assignment is generally due the Friday of the following week; eg September 9 for Week 1.

Homework can be submitted in .text, .odt, .doc/.docx, .xls/.xlsx, .rtf, etc. I discourage .pdf because I can't insert comments, but I will accept it. I will also accept image formats such as .jpeg (and for that matter .pdf images), but I recommend that you submit images only for those exercises for which you had to write out a diagram by hand. Some Mac formats I cannot accept simply because I cannot open them.

week read assignment
1
8/28		 Chapter 1: Overview of Networks Homework 1:
Chapter 1, exercises  1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 7.0
due Fri, Sept 8
2
9/4		 2.1   10-Mbps classic Ethernet
2.1.1 Ethernet Packet Format
2.1.2 Multicast
2.1.3 Ethernet Address Structure
2.1.4 LAN layer
2.1.5   Slot Time and Collisions
2.1.6   Exponential Backoff
2.2   100 Mbps (Fast) Ethernet
2.3   Gigabit Ethernet
2.4   Ethernet Switches and the learning algorithm
2.5   Spanning Tree Algorithm.
 Homework 2:
Chapter 2, exercises 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 6.0, 8.0
due Fri, Sept 15
3
9/11		 Chapter 3: (Other LANs):
3.6: Radio / 3.7: Wi-Fi
Chapter 4 (Links): 4.1
Chapter 5 (Packets): 5.1, 5.2, 5.3
 HW3: Chapter 3: Exercises 3.0, 4.0, 5.0(b)
Chapter 4: Exercises 1.0 & 4.0
Chapter 5: Exercises 1.0, 2.0, 5.0, 7.0
due Fri, Sept 22
4
9/18		 Chapter 6 (sliding windows)
 HW4: Chapter 6:  1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 8.0
due Fri, Sept 29
5
9/25		 Chapter 7: 7.1-7.7
(don't worry about numeric details of fragmentation)
Chapter 9: section 1: DV update algorithm
 HW5: Chapter 7: exercises 2.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0
Chapter 9: exercises 1.0, 3.0
due Fri, Oct 6
6
10/2		 Chapter 9:   section   2

 HW6: Chapter 9:   exercises 6.0, 8.0
due Fri, Oct 13
7
10/9		 Chapter 11: sections 1, 2 & 3
Chapter 12: sections 1-3, 6-10
(short week due to fall break)		 HW7: Chapter 11: exercises 4.0, 6.0, 7.0
Chapter 12: exercises 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 6.0
due Fri, Oct 20
8
10/16		 Chapter 3: section 7 (virtual circuits)
Chapter 9: section 5 (link-state)
Chapter 12: sections 11-19
 No homework due Oct 27, due to the midterm
9
10/23		 Midterm exam
Chapter 11: section 3 (TFTP)
WUMP assignment
 HW8: Chapter 3: exercises 9.0, 10.0, 11.0
Chapter 9: exercises 11.0, 12.0
Chapter 12: exercise 7.0, 8.0, 9.0
due Fri, Nov 3
10
10/30		 Midterm exam
Chapter 10: sections 1-4
Chapter 13: sections 1-2
 HW9: Chapter 10, exercises 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0
Chapter 13: exercises 1.0, 2.0
Due Fri, Nov 10
11
11/6		 Chapter 10: sections 5, 6 (BGP)
Chapter 13: sections 1-4 (TCP Reno)
 HW10: Chapter 10: exercises 5.0, 6.0, 7.0
Chapter 13: exercises 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 5.5, 7.0
Due Fri, Nov 17
12
11/13		 Chapter 13: finish
 HW11: Ch 10, exercises 8.0, 9.0, 10.0
Ch 13:  6.0, 9.0, 11.0, 13.0
Due Tues, Nov 21
13
11/20		 Chapter 14: 14.1, 14.2.1-14.2.3, 14.3, 14.5, 14.6, 14.8, 14.9. 14.10
(Week of Thanksgiving)
 HW12: Ch 14: exercises 1.0, 4.0, 6.0, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0
Due Fri, Dec 1
14
11/27		 Chapter 15
  • Highspeed TCP
  • TCP Vegas
  • TCP Westwood
 HW13: Ch 13, exercise 12
Ch 14, exercises 14.0, 18.0
Ch 15, exercises 2.0, 3.0, 13.0

Due Fri, Dec 8


java simpletalk examples

TCP: server, client,  threaded 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

WUMP, due Sat Dec 9 (it may be turned in as late as the end of finals week, but after Dec 9 you will not receive any extra-credit points)