CMSC 711 - Computer Networks
Spring 2004
General Course Information
Course Description
This course will cover the principles of wide-area networking with a
focus on protocols, implementations, and issues specific to the
Internet. We will begin with a retrospective on packet switching,
study the basis for traditional Internet protocols (such as IP and
TCP) and investigate a set of selected advanced topics in networking.
A major emphasis in this course will be on distributed protocols that
scale to Internet-wide deployment. We will consider how the current
protocols should be changed to adapt the infrastructure for new
services such as mobile, secure, and ad-hoc access and how to support
wide-area (interactive) multi-party applications. A new emphasis for
this semester will be on network security and distributed trust
computation protocols.
As a part of the course, you will selectively implement new protocols
and network services; as such, this course will have rather a
substantial programming component.
Prerequisites
CMSC 417 or at least one other introductory course in networking.
Experience with some flavor of Unix and programming in C or C++.
Reading
The following books are recommended for reference:
Computer Networks: A Systems Approach
by Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie, Second Edition,Morgan Kaufman,
1999.
ISBN 1-55860-514-2.
TCP/IP Illustrated volume 1
by W. Richard Stevens. Addison-Wesley.
ISBN: 0-201-63346-9
The majority of the course will be taught using RFCs
and papers in the reading
list. You will also be responsible for material covered in class that
is not part of a paper or a RFC.
Grading
| Project |
35% |
| In-class Exams |
45% |
| Assignments |
15% |
| Class Participation |
5% |
The grading criteria is subject to change during the semester.
Handouts
Syllabus
Newsgroup
Please keep up with and participate in the class
newsgroup (csd.cmsc711). I will use the newsgroup for
broadcast announcements and to answer questions that may be
interesting to more than one of you. Further, the newsgroup is
the best medium for asking questions about homeworks, for debugging
your programming environment, and for posting the latest Internet
rumor. Thus, unless it is private, post to the newsgroup before
writing e-mail.
Attendance and Class Participation
This is a graduate course; I will not mandate you to come to class (you
are still responsible for all the material covered in class). Further,
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 newsgroup. Minimally, I must know your name by the end of
the term in order for you to get any points for class participation.