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 21 and the final will be the week of December 9 (finals week).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. Here are the current rescheduled meetings:
Each week's assignment is generally due the Friday of the following week; eg September 6 for Week 1.
The schedule below is subject to change!
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 8/26 |
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 6 |
2 9/2 |
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 13 |
3 9/9 |
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(a), 4.0, 5.0 Chapter 4: Exercises 1.0 & 4.0 Chapter 5: Exercises 1.0, 2.0, 5.0, 7.0 due Fri, Sept 20 |
4 9/16 |
Chapter 6 (sliding windows) |
HW4: Chapter 6: 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0,
6.0, 8.0 due Fri, Sept 27 |
5 9/23 |
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 4 |
6 9/29 |
Chapter 9: section 2 |
HW6: Chapter 9: exercises 6.0, 8.0 due Fri, Oct 11 |
7 10/7 |
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 18 |
8 10/14 |
Chapter 3: section 7 (virtual circuits) Chapter 9: section 5 (link-state) Chapter 12: sections 11-19 |
No homework due Oct 25, due to the midterm |
9 10/21 |
Midterm exam Chapter 11: section 3 (TFTP) WUMP assignment |
HW8: Chapter 3: exercises 9.0, 10.0, 11.0(a)(d) Chapter 9: exercises 11.0, 12.0 Chapter 12: exercise 7.0, 8.0, 9.0 due Fri, Nov 1 |
10 10/28 |
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 8 |
11 11/4 |
Chapter 10: sections 5, 6 (BGP) Chapter 13: sections 1-4 (TCP Reno) |
HW10: Chapter 10: exercises 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0 Chapter 13: exercises 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 7.0 Due Fri, Nov 15 |
12 11/11 |
Chapter 13: finish |
HW11: Ch 10, exercises 8.0, 9.0
Ch 13: 6.0, 11.0, 13.0 Due Fri, Nov 22 |
13 11/18 |
Chapter 14: 14.1, 14.2.1-14.2.3, 14.3, 14.5, 14.6, 14.8, 14.9.
14.10 |
HW12: Ch 14: exercises 1.0, 4.0, 6.0, 8.5 Due Tues, Nov 25 |
14 11/25 |
Chapter 15
(Week of Thanksgiving) |
HW13: Ch 13, exercise 12 Ch 14, exercises 9.0, 10.0, 14.0, 18.0 Ch 15, exercises 2.0, 3.0, 13.0 Due Fri, Dec 6 |
TCP: server,
client,
threaded
server
UDP: server,
client
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.