CMSC 417 - Computer Networks

Fall 2017

Section 0201

General Course Information

 
Room and Time: 3120 Computer Science Instruction Center
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30pm - 4:45pm
Instructor: Bobby Bhattacharjee
4147  A. V. Williams Building
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 5:00 p.m. -- 6:00 p.m. 
E-mail is the easiest and fastest way to contact me.
Please put the string "CMSC 417: " somewhere in the subject line of your message
Teaching Assistants: Stephen Herwig, Zhihao Li, & Connor Wenck
Office Hours: Stephen: Wednesdays 2:00p.m. -- 3:00p.m., in 4103  A. V. Williams Building
Zhihao: Fridays 2:00p.m. -- 3:00p.m., in 4103  A. V. Williams Building
Connor: Mondays 1:00p.m. -- 2:00p.m., in 4103  A. V. Williams Building
Forum: 417 Forum on Piazza

Course Description

This course will cover the basic principles of networking with a focus on protocols, implementations, and issues specific to the Internet. We will study how routing, transport, and internetworking protocols work using the Internet family of protocols as examples. A significant part of the course will focus on higher layer protocols and the application layer. We will selectively implement new protocols and network services; as such, this course will have rather a substantial programming component.

For further information, please read the course syllabus

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Minimum grade of C- in CMSC351 and CMSC330
Experience with some flavor of Unix and programming in C or C++.

Reading

Reading The textbook for the course is:

Computer Networks: A Systems Approach
    by Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie
    Morgan Kaufmann, 5th Edition, 2011. ISBN 978-0123850591

TCP/IP Sockets in C: A Practical Guide for Programmers
    by Michael J. Donahoo, Kenneth L. Calvert
    Morgan Kaufmann, 2nd edition, 2009. ISBN 978-0123745408


Recommended books for reference:

Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet.
   by Jim Kurose and Keith Ross.
   Addison-Wesley, 5th edition, 2009. ISBN: 978-0136079675

TCP/IP Illustrated volume 1
   by  W. Richard Stevens. 
   Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 0-201-63346-9.


Grading

Final 20%
In-term exams 30%
Final project 20%
Assignments 25%
Class participation 5%

The grading criteria is subject to change during the semester.
 

Handouts and Assignments

Syllabus
Virtual Machine
Section Navigator (from Fall 2012, Peterson and Davie, 5th Ed)
Old Exams

Assignment 0
Assignment 1
Assignment 2
Assignment 3
Assignment 4
Assignment 5
Final Project


Forum

Please keep up with and participate in the class forum. I will use the forum for broadcast announcements and to answer questions that may be interesting to more than one of you.  Further, the forum is the best medium for asking questions about homework, for debugging your programming environment, and for posting the latest Internet rumor.  Thus, unless it is private, post to the forum before writing e-mail.

Attendance, Group Interactions, and Class Participation

This is a senior-level course; I will not mandate you to come to class (you are still responsible for all the material covered in class).  The class project is a major part of this course, and please be aware that you will be working in groups of four. Lastly, note that 5% of your grade is based upon class participation.   This is to encourage you to voice your ideas in class and to post them to the forum.  Minimally, I must know your name by the end of the term in order for you to get any points for class participation.
 

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