Computer Networks - TDC 463 - Spring 2000

CSTC Room 230 Mondays 5:45 - 9:00 p.m.

Course Homepage: http://condor.depaul.edu/~jkristof/2000Spr463/
Online Discussion Forum: http://forums.depaul.edu/HyperNews/get/s00/tdc-463-305.html

Office
Instructor: John Kristoff (jtk@depaul.edu)
243 S. Wabash Avenue, Room 714 (enter via Networks Room 711)
(312) 362-5878 voice
(312) 362-8274 fax
Hours: Thrusdays, 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. and by appointment

Grading

• 30% Homework


Four homework assignments for 30% total. The lowest homework grade will be dropped. Homework must be done individually and not in groups. Homework assignments are used to solidfy concepts and your understanding of "how things work". They will generally take about one to three hours of your time. Assignments will come from the text, lectures and external sources.

TURN IN HOMEWORK BY THE START OF THE FOLLOWING CLASS TO RECEIVE CREDIT. Submission by e-mail is OK. However, be sure formatting is readable and that I receive it by the start of class or you will receive an incomplete. Homework assignments will be assigned at class time and also posted to the HyperNews groups. General questions on homework can be asked in the HyperNews group. Homework answers will be covered in class and posted the course web page.


• 30% Mid-term Exam


One Mid-term exam which makes up for 30% of your total grade will cover all topics we have discussed in class, homework assignments and reading material up to that point in the course. You will have the entire class time to finish the exam, but you will probably not need it. A sample exam will be available a week prior so you have an idea of what to expect. You will not do well on the exam if you either don't come to the lectures, fail to complete the reading assignments or blow off the homework assignments. I will try to make myself readily available the week prior to the exam for questions and discussion. Check the HyperNews group for any common questions, tips and clarifications to covered material which may be relevant to the exam.

Mid-term exam IS CLOSED BOOK AND NOTES.


• 30% Final Project


See the Final Project section of this web page for more information about the details on what is required by the last day of class. During the class, you must provide a project topic, project outline and a rough draft (see schedule below). Failure to do so will lower your Final Project grade by 10% or more. I will be looking for your progress during the quarter. Projects done entirely the "night before" will be obvious and will receive a lower grade. Projects done in groups will be graded as a group. It is up to the group members that everyone pull their weight appropriately. In addition, you should make every attempt to ensure anything that you write or present is of appropriate professional quality. Basic spelling/grammatical errors or low quality diagrams will not help your grade. Be sure to cite your references completely!


• 10% Attendance/Participation


Although I don't expect everyone to be able to sit at the front of the class and constantly ask questions and provide feedback at every lecture, everyone should always attend class (except in the case of family/work emergencies), participate when called upon to do so and be attentive in the classroom. I encourage class discussion and questions either in the classroom or online. If you fail to come to class, sleep in class or generally avoid interaction you will lose 10% off your final grade.

Textbook(s)

Required
Computer Networks by Andrew Tanenbaum
ISBN: 0-13-349945-6
Author homepage: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/

Recommended
Internetworking with TCP/IP: Volume 1 Principles, Protocols and Architecture by Douglas E. Comer
ISBN: 0-13-216987-8
Author homepage: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/people/comer

Computer Networks and Internets by Douglas E. Comer
ISBN: 0-13-083617-6
Author homepage: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/people/comer

Computer Networks by Larry L. Peterson and Bruce S. Davie
ISBN: 1-55860-368-9
Authors homepages: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~llp/ and http://www.mkp.com/books_catalog/cn/bd/home.htm

Data and Computer Communications by William Stallings
ISBN: 0-13-084370-9
Author homepage: http://www.shore.net/~ws/

Interconnections, Second Edition: Bridges, Routers, Switches and Internetworking Protocols by Radia Perlman
ISBN: 0-201-63448-1
Authors homepage: http://cseng.aw.com/bookdetail.qry?ISBN=0-201-63448-1&ptype=0

An Engineering Approach to Computer Networking by S. Keshav
ISBN: 0-201-63442-2
Author's homepage: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/skeshav/

Routing in the Internet by Christian Huitema
ISBN: 0130226475
Author's homepage: http://www.huitema.net/

Schedule

Class Notes/Slides

• March 27, 2000 - Course Overview [ppt]


• March 27, 2000 - Introduction to Computer Networks [ppt]


• March 27, 2000 - Physical Layer [ppt]


• April 3, 2000 - Data Link Layer [ppt]


• April 10, 2000 - Bridges and Switches [ppt]


• April 17, 2000 - Network Layer [ppt] - John Ourada's lecture in my abscence


• April 24, 2000 - Transport Layer [ppt]


• May 1, 2000 - Congestion Control [ppt]


• May 8, 2000 - Applications Layer [ppt]


• May 8, 2000 - Network Management [ppt]


• May 15, 2000 - B. Carpenter's Quality of Service Presentation [pdf]


• May 15, 2000 - Security [ppt]


• May 22, 2000 - Wide Area Networks [ppt]


• May 22, 2000 - IP version 6 [ppt]


• May 22, 2000 - Mobile IP [ppt]


• May 22, 2000 - IP Multicast [ppt]

Homework

• Homework Set #1 - Assigned March 27, 2000, due April 3, 2000



1. What is the decimal value of the binary number 10011010? Show the math or no credit. (2 points)


2. Based on the following diagram: DePaul Network. Which campus does DePaul's Internet connection connect to? (1 point)


3. Answer Tanenbaum book question number 10 at the end of Chapter 1. (1 point)


4. Visit the IETF's homepage. What does RFC stand for? (1 point)


5. What is the undesirable effect that occurs due to increasing transmission distance of a singal? (1 point)


6. What is one advantage and one disadvantage of connection-oriented communications? (2 points)


7. In order to increase your sensitivity to new networking developments and their possible signficant impact, read/scan current articles for significant new computer network technology news. Prepare a one to two paragraph discusion of the article's impact and why it is the most significant article for the week. Sources may include various magazines and Internet sites such as CNN, Tasty Bits from the Technology Front, PC Week, Slashdot, QuickLinks, Wired and so on. Attach the referenced article with your write-up or include a link if you send in your homework via email. (2 points)




• Homework Set #2 - Assigned April 10, 2000, due April 17, 2000



1. If a 10 Mb/s Ethernet station has encountered 2 consectutive collisions, what is the maximum amount of time the station will attempt a retransmission on its third attempt? Give your answer in seconds and show the math. (2 points)


2. Name and provide web links for three manufacturers of Ethernet network adapters for PCs. (1 point)


3. Explain why late collisions in Ethernet are so bad. (2 points)


4. One useful property of MAC addresses are that they are unique. Without uniqueness, it would be impossible to distinguish between nodes. What are other useful properties that addresses might have? (1 point)


5. A MAC address consists of a vendor code (OUI) of 24 bits and a vendor assigned number of 24 bits. Visit the IEEE OUI assignments list. What are three OUI numbers for 3Com Corporation (in hexadecimal)? (1 point)


6. How might you implement cut-through forwarding on a layer 2 switch where there are ports of differing speeds? What are the issues when forwarding from slow to fast links and vice versa? (1 point)


7. Why does using a smaller frame size degrade throughput on a long file transfer? (1 point)


8. In a token ring, source route bridging environment, what sorts of problems might occur if two or more bridges do not agree on the LAN (ring) numbers? For example, some bridges on a particular LAN think the LAN number is X, whereas others think it is Y. (1 point)




• Homework Set #3 - Assigned April 24, 2000, due May 8, 2000



1. Answer Tannenbaum book question number 28 at the end of chapter 5. (1 point)


2. Why would you not want the TCP window size to be of infinite size? (1 point)


3. Why would you choose to use a unreliable transport layer protocol such as UDP? Give an example of an application which would be better off using UDP rather than TCP. (2 points)


4. Visit IANA's IPv4 address assignment list. Who would own the Internet address 17.58.21.242? (1 point)


5. What is the subnet mask (in dotted decimal notation) for IP address 191.36.5.22/20? (1 point)


6. Why does the TCP header have a header length field while the UDP header does not? (1 point)


7. Assume two IP routers are misconfigured so that they each point to each other for a particular route (causing a routing loop). Why won't IP packets destined for that route go around the loop forever? (1 point)


8. In order to increase your sensitivity to new networking developments and their possible signficant impact, read/scan current articles for significant new computer network technology news. Prepare a one to two paragraph discusion of the article's impact and why it is the most significant article for the week. Sources may include various magazines and Internet sites such as CNN, Tasty Bits from the Technology Front, PC Week, Slashdot, QuickLinks, Wired and so on. Attach the referenced article with your write-up or include a link if you send in your homework via email. (2 points)




• Homework Set #4 - Assigned May 15, 2000, due May 22, 2000



1. What are three specific TCP/IP packets you might want to block at an organizations Internet border? Explain why for each answer. (1 point)


2. What are the three primary blocks of addresses reserved by RFC 1918 for private internets? (1 point)


3. RFC 854 (the TELNET protocol specification) contains exactly 854 lines of text. What is the cosmic significance of this? (1 point)


4. A server can be shutdown abruptly or it can crash. What is the advantage of say, an email server, shutting down gracefully? (1 point)


5. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of network address translation (NAT). (2 points)


6. Do you think the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is really Simple? Why or why not? (1 point)


7. Who is the administrative contact for depaul.edu? Hint, use the whois utility. (1 point)


8. In detail, describe the most useful thing you've learned in this class up to this point. (2 points)

Midterm

• Midterm Study Guide - Topic outline and sample questions


• Midterm exam [doc]

Project

A Final Project on a topic of your choice will be either in a report, a presentation or a combination of the two. The topic must be on something we have covered in class or related to computer networks with instructor approval. Projects can be done in groups of three or less people. You must receive approval for your topic by the 5th class.

You will be graded primarily on your ability to coordinate material, presenting a thorough investigation of your topic. A good approach is often to compare and contrast particular technologies or services. Try to choose topics which stress networking technology we have covered in class. Expect to write about 10 pages per person or to present for about 20-30 minutes per project. Some topics may include: Mbone, Router Configurations, Networking History, VPNs, directory services, DNS, Using TCPDUMP, Network Programming, Voice over IP, Wireless Networks and so on.

You should find and read magazines, books, web sites and interview people related to your topic. Here are some resources you may find valuable.


• Network Magazine http://www.networkmagazine.com
• IEEE Spectrum http://www.institute.ieee.org/
• IEEE Communications Magazine http://www.comsoc.org/pubs/commag/
• IEEE Network Magazine http://www.comsoc.org/socstr/techcom/ntwrk/
• IETF RFCs, Internet-Drafts and mailing lists http://www.ietf.org
• Computer Communication Review http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/
• Communications of the ACM http://www.acm.org/cacm/
• Business Week http://www.businessweek.com
• Cisco IP Protocol Journal http://www.cisco.com/ipj/
• Computer Emergency Response Team http://www.cert.org
• North American Network Operators Group http://www.nanog.org
• Charles Spurgeon's Ethernet Web Site http://wwwhost.ots.utexas.edu/ethernet/
• USENIX http://www.usenix.org

Project List

Name/Team	Topic	Paper	Presentation
Lorenza Alonso	Distributed Component Object Model
Rick Chrabaszewski	Network Attacks and Threats
Stanley Clay	Wireless LANs
Eric Flemming	Wideband CDMA in Cellular Networks
John Kim	Voice over IP
Martin Lifanda	Wide Area Networks
Shaoling Ou	Domain Name System
Shailendra Patel	Voice over IP
Carl Reed	Java Remote Method Invocation
Beumhyeung Rhee	Digital Subscriber Line
Vlado Savcic	Network Attacks and Threats
Pedram Shafaee	Virtual Private Networks
Arti Singh	tcpdump
Yongning Tang	Multicast Traffic Management and Monitoring
Michael Williams	Transaction Processing on the Internet

Goto John Kristoff's Home Page

Last updated: June 12, 2000