CSS 432: Network Design - Assignments

Language

We use C/C++ for all programming assignments. This is because we need native-code execution for the purpose of measuring the underlying OS and network performance.

Operating Systems

The operating system used for all assignments is Linux (UW1-320). You will use many Linux system calls to establish and control socket communication.

UW1-320 Laboratory

All your programs must run at UW1-320 for performance-measurement purposes. While you may develop your programs at any of your own Linux, Xcode on Mac OS, Cygwin on Windows, or MinGW on Windows, you must ultimately run all your programs at UW1-320.

Here is a procedure to log on one of the UW1-320 Linux machines and upload your files:

1. To use a console of any UW1-320 machine, enter UW1-320 Linux Laboratory with your student ID card and log into any machine with your UW Net ID and the corresponding password.
2. To remotely log into a UW1-320 machine, use ssh and establish a connection to uw1-320-lab.uwb.edu.
   You will automatically got one of the lab machines and see your home directory immediately.
3. To distinguish 100Mbps and 1Gbps networks at UW1-320, log into a pair of two specific computing nodes:
   1. 100Mbps: log into any two of uw1-320-01.uwb.edu ~ uw1-320-15.uwb.edu machines.
   2. 1Gbps: log into any two of uw1-320-16.uwb.edu ~ uw1-320-23.uwb.edu machines.
4. To transfer files to the UW-320 file server
   1. From an off-campus Linux machine: use the sftp command and establish a connection to uw1-320-lab.uwb.edu.
   2. From a Windows machine: use SSH Tectia Client, downloadable at: http://www.tectia.com/en/en.iw3
   3. From a Mac: use Fugu 1.2, downloadable at http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/

Socket Ports

Programming Environment

1. Eclipse
2. KDevelop

1. Program 1: exercises socket communication and evaluates its performance over 100Mbps and 1Gbps networks. You will use: socket, connect, write, writev, bind, listen, accept, signal, fcntl, read, close, and gettimeofday.
2. Program 2: implements the sliding window algorithm and evaluates its performance improvement over 100Mbps and 1Gbps networks. You will use: the professor's UdpSocket.cpp that includes socket, sendto, and recvfrom.
3. Program 3: analyzes several TCP aspects such as state transition, Nagle's algorithm, additive increment, and slow start, using tcpdump, ttcp, netstat, and strace.
4. Program 4: analyzes the hostent data structure that is related to DNS. You will use: getpeername, gethostbyaddr, ntohs, inet_addr, and inet_ntoa.
5. Final project: builds an ftp client program based on RFC959.

Submissions

• Each assignment sheet specifies what to turn in. Programming assignments 1, 2, 3, and 4 requires only a hard copy to be turned in, while the final project needs both a hard copy and a soft copy.
• Assignments are due at the beginning of lecture. No late programs will be accepted unless you provide me with a proof showing that you have been under an emergency circumstance. No matter the circumstances, it is always best to turn in something.

Grading