Course website http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~xyuan/cen5515

Meeting time Tuesday, Thursday, 12:30-1:45pm

Meeting location 103 Lov Building

Instructor Dr. Xin Yuan, Lov 168, 644-9133, xyuan@cs.fsu.edu

Office hours Tuesday, Thursday 2:00-3:00pm or by appointment.

Textbook

• Computer Networking: A Top Down Approach Featuring the Internet, 3rd edition, by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross
• Computer Networks, 4th edition, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum

You will be expected to read most of the books, which are supplemented by the Internet Drafts/RFCs that are available at the IETF Home page.

This course introduces basic elements of modern computer and telecommunication networks. In particular, a hybrid five-layer reference model resembling the popular TCP/IP model and the OSI seven-layer model will be discussed. Throughout this course, we will investigate not only what decisions are made in the design of the Internet, but also why such decisions are made.

After this course, you should be able to:

• Describe the overall Internet architecture.
• Describe the design issues in each layer in the architecture.
• Describe, analyze, apply, and code the key techniques and protocols in each layer.
  • Implement distributed applications that are compatible to application level protocol specifications.
  • Implement reliable communication protocols with flow control and congestion control.
  • Implement various routing protocols.
  • Implement network simulators and design experiments to investigate network performance.

Prereq.

Official: CDA 3101 Computer Organization and COP4610 Operating Systems.

Unofficial note: A student can pass this course without much background knowledge if (s)he is motivated enough. Some basic knowledge of computer architectures, operating systems and probability theory (e.g. exponential distribution) will be useful. However, to be successful in this class, a student should be proficient in C/C++ and ready to code.

Assignments/Projects & exams

Homework will be assigned occasionally from the textbook or via handouts, quizzes will be given randomly with or without prior notification. There will be one midterm, one final, three/four programming assignments using C/C++, and a research oriented term project.

Documents (Homework assignments and project reports) must be submitted in both hardcopies and electronic copies. Late homework and programming assignments will be accepted with 20% penalty per day for 2 days.

There will be one midterm and one final exam. Make-up midterm will not be given without prior consent of the instructor. Students will present their term (group) projects at the end of the semester. Make-up presentations and final will NOT be granted.

Students are expected to uphold the academic honor code published in "The Florida State University Bulletin" and the "Student Handbook". Please read the provisions of the Academic Honor Code: http://www.fsu.edu/Books/Student-Handbook/codes/honor.html. First violation of the honor code will result in a grade of 0 for the particular exam/project/quiz and the lowering of the final course grade by one letter (A->B, B->C). Repeat violations will result in a grade of F.

Plagiarism and anti-plagiarism: Plagiarism is "representing another's work or any part thereof, be it published or unpublished, as ones own. For example, plagiarism includes failure to use quotation marks or other conventional markings around material quoted from any source" (Florida State University General Bulletin 1998-1999, p. 69). Failure to document material properly, that is, to indicate that the material came from another source, is also considered a form of plagiarism. Copying someone else's program, and turning it in as if it were your own work, is also considered plagiarism. All documents handled in will be processed by plagiarism detection tools (e.g. the Berkeley Moss, a system for detecting software plagiarism).

The final grade will be computed as follows

H = (H₁ + ... + H_m-1 + H_m + Q₁ + Q₂ + ... + Q_k) / (m+k) Homework/Quiz average

P = (P₁ + ... + P_n) / (n) Program average

T = Term project grade

E = MT*40% + FINAL * 60% Exam average

 

if (E < threshold(tentatively 60)) then

G = min{P, E, T}

else

G =P*20%+E*60%+T*15%+H*5% Final grade

Final letter grade will be assigned based on the relative performance. A student ranked in top 10% in the class will guarantee an A. A student ranked median (50%) will most likely get a B+.

Attendance

Attendance at all class meetings is required. Although it will not be recorded, attendance and participation will have a strong indirect effect on your grade for the course. You are responsible for all information explained in class, some of which may not be available in written form. I will not feel obligated to repeat announcements of homework, future quizzes, exams, assignments, schedule changes, or hints on programming assignments. If you are forced to miss a class, it is also your responsibility to get good class notes from a friend and check with me for handouts. Information distributed in the classroom may NOT be available in the class webpage or email messages. The information in the classroom should always be considered as the final official information, and overwrites the information presented in handout/webpage/email when there are conflicts.

• Week 1: Class outline, Introduction
• Week 2: Introduction
• Week 3: Application layer, Project 1
• Week 4: Application layer
• Week 5: Physical layer
• Week 6: Data link layer, Project 2
• Week 7: Data link layer
• Week 8: MAC layer, Midterm
• Week 9: MAC layer, Project 3
• Week 10: MAC layer
• Week 11: Network layer
• Week 12: Network layer
• Week 13: Transport layer, Project 4
• Week 14: Transport layer
• Week 14: TBD
• Week 15: Term project Presentation, term project due
• Week 16: Final Exam Week.