CSS 432: Network Design
Fall 2011
TTh 545-745pm at UW2-240
Prof. Munehiro Fukuda

Professor:

Munehiro Fukuda <mfukuda@u.washington.edu>, room UW1-331, phone 352-3459
office hours: Tuesday 340-340pm and Thursday 440-540pm

Lab Administrator:

Josh Larios <JLarios@uwb.edu>, room UW1-360

Course Description:

This course examines methods for designing and managing LANs and WANs theoretically and practically. The topics covered include the OSI architecture, data link networks, packet switching, routing, TCP/UDP, flow control, congestion control, network security, and application protocols such as DNS, SMTP, FTP, and HTTP. The course is largely oriented to network programming and experiments. You are given five programming assignments, some followed by performance evaluation: sockets (socket, connect, write, writev, bind, listen, accept, signal, fcntl, and read ), the sliding window algorithm, TCP tools (ttcp, tcpdump, and netstat), and DNS access (gethostbyname and hostent). In addition, you will work on the final project that implements an ftp client program.

Prerequisites:

The formal prerequisites include CSS301 and CSS422.

Work Load and Grading:

Course Work Percentage Achievements Approximately Corresponding Numeric Grade
Assignment 1 9% 90s 3.5 - 4.0
Assignment 2 9% 80s 2.5 - 3.4
Assignment 3 9% 70s 1.5 - 2.4
Assignment 4 9% 60s 0.7 - 1.4
Final Project 15%
Class Discussion 9%
Midterm Exam 20%
Final Exam 20%

Textbooks:

    Computer Networks, 5th Edition, Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie, Morgan Kaufmann, 2011.

References:

Some Programming Textbooks:

The following books are useful for system and network programming.

Policies:

All programs are to be done independently. Any collaboration of work will result in severe penalty. You may discuss the problem statement and any clarification with each other, but any actual work (including programs, results, and written reports) to be turned in, must be done without collaboration.

Any homework is due at the beginning of class on the due date. The submission may be postponed only in emergencies such as accidents, sickness, sudden business trips, and family emergencies, in which case you may turn in yor homework late with a written proof. No make-up exams will be given except under exceptional circumstances. Barring emergencies, I must be informed before the exam.

To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disability Resources for Students (DRS) in UW1-175 , (email: drs@uwb.edu, TDD: 425-352-5303, and FAX: 425-352-3581). If you have a documented disability on file with the DRS office, please have your DRS counselor contact me and we can discuss accommodations.

Course Goals:

The overall goal of CSS 432, "Network Design" includes: To strengthen your understanding of fundamental concepts, you are strongly recommended to solve the problems that are given on the final page of each lecture slide. Note that you are supposed to present your solution to one of these exercises in the class. You need to work in the Linux laboratory, (UW1-320) for testing and evaluating the performance of your assignment programs. Your report must include a large amount of discussions and considerations about results you obtained. Therefore, as with most technical courses, besides ability and motivation, it takes time to learn and master the subject. Expect to spend an additional 10 to 15 hours a week outside of class time on the average.

Assignments:

The following five programming assignments are givne:
  1. Program 1: exercises socket communication and evaluates its performance over 100Mbps and 1Gbps networks.
  2. Program 2: implements the sliding window algorithm and evaluates its performance improvement over 100Mbps and 1Gbps networks.
  3. Program 3: analyzes several TCP aspects such as state transition, Nagle'salgorithm, additive increment, and slow start, using tcpdump, ttcp, netstat, and strace.
  4. Program 4: analyzes the hostent data structure that maintains DNS information.
  5. Final project: builds ftp client program.
Please read assignment.html to understand the environment you use for programming assignments and the submission/grading procedures.

Class Discussions:

Each chapter has its own lecture slides in a ppt file that includes suggested textbook questions on its last page. The class is divided into groups of 2 or 3 students, each discussing about a different question for the last 10 minutes of class hours, preparing their solution at home, and presenting the answer at the beginning in the following class. We are planning to have nine class discussions through the quarter. Your active participation in each problem-solving discussion counts 1% of your entire grade, which ends up with 9% in total.

A discussion group will be dynamically formed in the class. For instance, students sitting closer or on the same desk can form a group. I will give each group a piece of discussion summary sheet. You should summarize your discussions, write down the names of all group members, and turn it in to me. Each group should elect a group representative who will give a short presentation in the class. A representative will be rewarded with 0.1 extra credits for his/her presentation.

Topics covered and tentative 432 schedule:

Note that this is an approximate ordering of topics. Chapters will take about the allotted time and not all sections in all chapters are covered.

Week Date (TTh) Topics Chapters Reading Textbook Exercises (Class Discussions) Assignment
0 Sep 29 Foundation 1.1 - 1.3 pp1-23   Program 1 assigned
1 Oct 4   1.4 - 1.5 pp36-60 Ex 3
Ex 10,29
Ex 16
Ex 30
  
  Oct 6 Point-to-Point Networks 2.1 - 2.3 pp71-90    
2 Oct 11   2.4 - 2.5 pp91-118 Ex 2,5
Ex 16
Ex 18
Ex 24
  
  Oct 13 Shared Access Networks 2.6 - 2.7 pp119-152 Ex 42
Ex 46
Ex 53
Ex 54
 Program 1 due
Program 2 assigned
3 Oct 18 Switching and Bridging 3.1 pp169-202    
  Oct 20   3.4 pp266-281 Ex 1
Ex 4
Ex 13
Ex 26,32
  
4 Oct 25 End-to-End Protocols 5.1 - 5.2.3 pp391-406  
 
  Oct 27   5.2.4 - 5.2.10 pp407-430 Ex 5,14
Ex 9
Ex 20
Ex 22,39
 Program 2 due
Program 3 assigned
5 Nov 1 Congestion Control 6.1 - 6.2 pp479-498    
  Nov 3   6.3 - 6.4 pp499-529 Ex 2,6
Ex 25
Ex 27
Ex 34
  
6 Nov 8 Midterm exam in class
1, 2, 3, and 5 pp1-281, 391-430, and 479-529    
  Nov 10 Applications 9.3.1 pp744-755   Program 3 due
Program 4 assigned
7 Nov 15   9.1 pp697-726   Program 3 due (New)
  Nov 17 Basic Internetworking 3.2.1 - 3.2.4 pp203-219    
8 Nov 22   3.2.6 - 3.2.9 pp228-239 Ex 36
Ex 44
Ex 45
Q 1,2
 Program 4 due
Final project assigned
  Nov 24 No School (Thanksgiving Day)        
9 Nov 29 Routing 3.3 pp240-266 Ex 46
Ex 52
Ex 62
Ex 64
  
  Dec 1 Subnetting and CIDR 3.2.5 pp220-227    
10 Dec 6 Global Internet 4.1 pp307-337 Ex 55 (Ch 3)
Ex 68 (Ch 3)
Ex 72 (Ch 3)
Ex 74 (Ch 3)
  
  Dec 8 Network Security 8 pp633-689    
11 Dec 13 Final exam in class 3.2-3.3, 4.1, 6, 8, and 9 pp203-266, 307-337, 633-726, and 744-755   Final Project due (5:45pm)