• Course Focus
• Prerequisites
• Instructor
• Text Books
• Course Resources
• Homework Assignments
• Optional Course Project
• Syllabus
• Lecture Outlines
• Academic Honesty
• Exam information

Course Focus:

The main topic of our course is an introductory look at computer communication. We focus on the principles of computer communication, rather than on the specific technologies being used in computer networks and the Internet today. The main questions we will be trying to answer over and over are:

• Why is it that we can be (relatively) sure that a protocol works ``correctly''?
  
• How do we go about designing new protocols?
  
• What is a good protocol and what are good examples of such protocols?
  
• To a lesser extent: How good is the performance of the protocol?
  

We will discuss very little about the ``physical layer'' of networks, and focus on the protocols used on top of the hardware layer. In a way, you can think of this class as designing and analyzing distributed algorithms aimed at communication through computers.

You should be warned that the course is introductory in the depth of its treatment of both theory and practice. Our hope is that you will develop an understanding of how to think about designing and analyzing communication protocols. Beyond this, you will need a lot of reading on your own to grasp the details of current practice in computer networks, as well as to be able to tackle complex design and analysis problems. Other courses in the networks track (CMPE 151, CMPE 152, CMPE 154, and CMPE 155) build on the basic concepts introduced in this course to address the physical layer of data communication, the performance analysis of communication protocols, and a hands-on treatment of network administration.

Because of the short duration of our course, we can only discuss a few of the very many protocols used or proposed to date. We believe that what we will cover will be a good way to to get you started in this increasingly important area of computer science and engineering. We will emphasize protocols for the IP Internet, simply because it is the wave of the present and future in internetworking.

Course Prerequisites:

Instructor Information

• Monday  5:00 -- 6:45 PM  and Thursday 10:00 -- 11:45AM
• At the Baskin Engineering "White Boards" area

Text Book:

The textbook is an introductory book that you will find very useful, because it is very recent and focuses on the Internet, which is the focus of our course. The book covers more topics than we can cover in one quarter, and does not spend as much time in analyzing the principles of the protocols it covers. The lectures will complement the book in the analysis area.

The book follows a top-down approach to the subject, including the protocol layers discussed. By contrast, we cover the topics top down as well, but address the lower-layer protocols first and work our way to the application layer. Lower-layer protocols are simpler than protocols at the network layer and make fewer assumptions; in addition, they render themselves to simple analytical modeling.

Other books that may be of interest to you are:

• A. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, 3th edition, Prentice-Hall, 1996.
• Douglas Comer, Internetworking with TCP/IP, 3th edition, Prentice-Hall. Multiple volumes.
• W. Richard Stevens, TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1 and 2, Addison Wesley, 1994. 
• You will probably want to read this or Comer's Vol. 1 and 2

You should review concepts of discrete probability from the textbook you used in CE16. The book Discrete Mathematics and its Applications by Kenneth Rosen, McGraw-Hill, is a good source.

You may want to take a look at the textbook for CMPE107.
One of many books on the subject is
Probability and Stochastic Processes by R. Yates and D. Goodman, Wiley, 1999.
It is a very good book! It is easy to follow. I think :)

Advanced material for those interested in new research can be found in conferences and journals. The best conferences in computer communication are IEEE INFOCOM, ACM SIGCOMM, IEEE/ACM Mobicom, IEEE ICNP, ACM Multimedia, ACM MobiHoc. Other good conferences include IEEE ICC, IEEE Globecom, IEEE IC3N, and IEEE WCNC.

Some of the best journals on computer communication are: IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication, ACM Wireless Networks Journal, ACM Mobile Networks and Applications, and ACM Multimedia Systems Journal.

Course Resources

• This is the Computer Communication Research Group page. You can find out a summary of what we are up to here at UCSC in computer networking. In addition, it has a list of our publications: http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/research/ccrg/
• This is the page for Richard Steven's book, Vol. 1, on-line: http://sure.org.ru/docs/networks/tcp/ This is a great reference for those interested in a closer look at the Internet protocols.
• This is the page of the Internet Engineering Task Force, and from there you can surf to get Internet Drafts, RFCs and other important on-line documentation on the IP Internet: http://www.ietf.org
• This is on-line documentation from Cisco, the largest manufacturer of internetwork equipment. Those interested in knowing more about the technology of internetworks will find this to be an interesting page: http://cio-sys.cisco.com/univercd/home/home.htm
• For those interested in getting to know about the latest research, this page has a list of ``Call for Papers'' to conferences and journals on computer communication: http://www.comsoc.org/~tccc
• This is the home page of the ACM special interest group on data communications. It has pointers to ACM conferences on computer communication: http://www.acm.org/sigcomm
• This is the home page of the ACM special interest group on mobile computing and networking. It has pointers to ACM and IEEE conferences on mobile computing and networking: http://www.acm.org/sigmobile
• This is the page for the delay-tolerant networking research group of the IRTF: http://www.dtnrg.org/

Homework Assignments

Assignments are due no later than the beginning of the class on the due date.  Homework may be turned in early to the TA during section.  These assignments are from the "Problems" section at the back of each chapter.

• Chapter 1 -- Due by April 8
•     Problems: 3, 4, 10, 16, 18.
• Chapter 5 -- Due by May 1
•     Problems: 1, 2, 4, 12, 22.
• Chapter 4 -- Due by May 22
•     Problems: 1, 2, 3, 14, 26.
• Chapter 3 -- Due by May 29
•     Problems: 2, 10, 18, 19, 26.
• Chapter 2 -- Due by June 5
•     Problems: 4, 13, 15, 17, 18. 

Solutions to the homework will be made available one week after the original due date

Late Homework: 

• Homework received after the posted due date will be penalized as follows:
• 10% penalty for the first day
• 5% penalty for each additional day late
• Homework will not be accepted after one week from the original due date.

Optional Course Project

This is a personal programming project. It is to be built using the 'C' programming language and must run on the CATS UNIX environment. Complete details are available here.

The project is due on or before 18:00, June 4, 2003.

Completion of this project is optional (ie, not required for the class).  However, completion of the project may be substituted for the taking of the class final.

Lecture Outlines

• Lecture 1 -- Intro and Background
• Lecture 2 -- Background, continued
• Lecture 3 -- MAC protocols -- I
• Lecture 4 -- MAC protocols -- II
• Lecture 5 -- MAC protocols -- III
• Lecture 6 -- MAC protocols -- IV
• Lecture 7 -- Logical Link Control
• Lecture 8 -- Hubs & Bridges
• Lecture 9 -- Routing I -- DBF
• Lecture 10 -- Routing II -- LSA
  • Dual Paper
• Lecture 11 -- IP Internetworking
• Lecture 12 -- IP Routing
• Lecture 13 -- IP Multicasting
• Lecture 14 -- IP Mobility
• Lecture 15 -- Transport Layer Protocols - I
• Lecture 16 -- Transport Layer Protocols - II
• Lecture 17 -- Application Layer - I
• Lecture 18 -- Application Layer - II
• Review -- Review for Final Exam

Exam Information

Answer Key to Final Exam

Academic Honesty and Academic Integrity:

What is cheating? In short, it is presenting someone else's work as your own. Examples would include copying another student's written or electronic homework assignment, or allowing your own work to be copied. Although you may discuss problems with fellow students, your collaboration must be at the level of ideas only. Legitimate collaboration ends when you "lend", "borrow", or "trade" written or electronic solutions to problems, or in any way share in the act of writing or electronically sharing your answers. If you do collaborate (legitimately) or receive help from anyone, you must credit them by placing their name(s) at the top of your paper. 

What is Academic Integrity? This question is better answered with how we violate academic integrity. One prime example is fabrication. From the pages of the registrar: (http://www.ucsc.edu/academics/academic_integrity/resources.html) Fabrication:

• In any academic exercise, submitting falsified data including bibliographic resources and experimental data, or altering graded coursework/exams and resubmitting to the instructor for a higher score.

• One form of this is answering questions on someone else's exam or doing someone else's homework for them.
• Another form is helping another student take a test (allowing them to cheat from you).