417-F02-index

CMSC 417-0101

Computer Networks

Fall 2002

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~shankar/417-F02
Last updated Tuesday Dec 24 12:43:51 EST 2002
Please check (reload) this page at least twice a week

Overview - News - Texts/Notes - Exams/Grading - Projects - Grades

Professor	A. Udaya Shankar (email: shankar@cs.umd.edu). Office hours: TuTh 2-3:30 pm or by appointment (AVW 4141)
TA	Tamer (Sharno) Elsharnouby (email: sharno@cs.umd.edu). Office hours: MW 2-3:30 pm or by appointment (AVW 1151)
Classes	CSI 3117. TuTh 12:30-1:45pm
Newsgroup	csd.cmsc417.0101 For discussion and programming projects; read on a regular basis.
Project page	http://www.cs.umd.edu/~sharno/417 For project descriptions, deadlines, clarifications, grades, etc. (read regularly).

News

(Dec 24 12:43:51 EST 2002) HOT Final Grades.
(Dec 19 20:41:04 EST 2002) Pre-E3 SFO Grades.
(Dec 19 2002) As stated in class, the final exam covers everything upto CDMA in chapter 5.
(Dec 19 12:40:50pm) Grades table corrected (added project 2 bonus points). Changes not incorporated in sorted-scores/cutoffs table.
(Dec 18) Project/exam/course scores/grades assuming SFO available. Office hours Thursday Dec 19 2-4pm.
(Dec 10) A "skip final" option will be offered. Basically, I provide "guaranteed" (i.e., upper bounds on) letter-grade cutoffs and you can have the average of your exam 1 and exam 2 scores count as your final exam score. Details later.
(Dec 10) Exam 2 solution and grades.
(Nov 20) Exam 2
- On Tuesday November 26
- Covers Chapters 2 and 4 and related notes, ie, material after exam 1 and until Nov 19.
- Office hours Monday Nov 25, 2-4pm.
(Nov 19) Chapter 2 note, Chapter 4 note.
(Nov 14) Practice exams: fall 1999 exam 2 and solution; fall 2001 exam 1 and solution.
(Nov 9) I want to postpone Exam 2 to Nov 26 (Tuesday). If you want it to be on Nov 14, please email me (shankar@cs.umd.edu).
(Oct 21) Exam 1 solution and grades.
(Oct 9) Practice exams: fall 1999 exam 1 and solution; fall 2001 exam 1 and solution.
(Oct 3) Note 5 has been updated with cosmetic changes and corrections in the following places: (1) event accepting new data from local user; (2) event receiving new ack (skip rtt-related updates if the ack is for retransmitted data); (3) updates to rttDev and rttErr.
(Sept 30) Exam and project schedule finalized. New project 3 due date.
(Sept 23) Note 5 available.
(Sept 21) Corrections to Note 4. Note 4 has been appropriately updated (so either make these corrections to the earlier version or get the current version).
(Sept 18) Revised grading policy
(Sept 15) Notes 1, 2, 3, 4 available.
(Sept 7) Projects 1 and 2 available (at project page).
(Sept 3) Computer account info will be sent in a day or two to your email address in the class roster.

Overview

This class provides an introduction to computer networking. It covers basic networking concepts and algorithms, focussing on the Internet. The objective is an in-depth understanding of the TCP/IP protocol suite, datagram routing, congestion control, intra- and inter-domain routing, quality-of-service support, etc.

The programming project in this class involves a Java-based emulation of the transport layer. It is a major part of the course and is to be done individually. You have to design and implement a protocol that satisfies a transport-layer service specification.

Texts/Notes

(Required text) Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet, 2nd edition by James Kurose and Keith Ross. ISBN 0-201-47711-4.
Java Resources
Note 1: Internet Overview
Note 2: General Network Overview
Note 3: Qos Packet-switched Networks
Note 4: Transport Layer Principles gzipped postscript(61K), (pdf (190K))
Note 5: TCP Congestion Control
Chapter 2 note
Chapter 4 note

Exam Schedule, Course Grading

Midterm 1 --- 15% (Tuesday October 15)
Midterm 2 --- 15% (Thursday November 14)
Final --- 30% (Friday December 20, 1:30-3:30)
Projects --- 40%
- Project 3 due Tuesday October 8
- Project 4 due Saturday October 19
- Project 5 due Thursday November 7
- Project 6 due Thursday December 5

The weightages are approximate and may change by upto 10%.

GRADING: You will get a score and a letter grade for the project and a score and letter grade for your exams. If min(projectGrade, examGrade) is D or less, then that is your course letter grade. If min(projectGrade, examGrade) is C or more, then your course letter grade is based on the sum of your project and exam scores.

Projects

All project info at project page

Additional References

Here are some popular networking texts that provide more detail than the Kurose-Ross text.

Internetworking with TCP/IP, Volume 1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture.
Internetworking with TCP/IP, Volume 2: Design, Implementation, and Internals.
Internetworking with TCP/IP, Volume 3: Client-Server Programming and Applications.
By D. Comer and D.L. Stevens, Prentice Hall.
Excellent treatment of TCP/IP programming and implementation.
TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols.
TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2: The Implementation.
TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 3: TCP for Transactions, HTTP, NNTP and the UNIX Domain Protocols.
By W. Stevens, Prentice Hall.
Excellent and very thorough treatment of TCP/IP programming and implementation.
An Engineering Approach to Computer Networking: ATM Networks, the Internet, and the Telephone Network. By S.Keshav. Addison Wesley, 1997. ISBN 0-201-63442-2.
Initial chapters provide a good introduction to ATM, Internet, and telephony. Later chapters look at research issues in Internet QoS.
Computer Networks 3rd Edition. By A. Tanenbaum, Prentice Hall 1996.
A huge sprawling book. Covers practially all aspects of networking (telephony, Internet, VC packet switching, wired and wireless LANs, etc.). Suffers from too much talk and imprecision.

This page and all problem sets, lecture notes, and exams linked to it are copyrighted. Use of these pages for the class CMSC417 at the University of Maryland is permitted. Any other use requires permission of the author (Udaya Shankar, shankar@cs.umd.edu).