Course Syllabus: IST 304 Communications & Networking
Term: Spring, 2014
Campus: Claremont
Location: ACB 214
Day(s) & Time: [Tuesdays 4:00 PM – 6:50 PM]
Instructor: Dr. Samir Chatterjee, Professor & Fletcher Jones Chair of Technology & Management
Office hours: Tuesdays 3:00 – 3:45 PM.
Contact Information:
School of Information Systems & Technology
Claremont Graduate University
Room 224, ACB
Samir.chatterjee@cgu.edu; profsamir1@gmail.com
909-607-4651 (office)
909-730-8898 (cell)
Course Overview:
This is graduate level course covering TCP/IP Internet communication protocol design, emerging wireless data networking and networked applications. The Internet has become your business e-infrastructure. The success of the Internet and web-based services is bringing new ways of doing business in a global world and is constantly pushing the frontier with several exciting next generation networking technologies and applications. These calls for increased demand on business managers to better understand the networks they manage and Information System professionals to design, implement and operate these advanced networks to provide efficient and reliable services to their users.
This course is organized into four modules. Module 1 deals with fundamental communications concepts and overview of underlying networks including hardware. The material will include media types, signals, data transmission fundamentals to network hardware types with brief discussion of underlying network technologies including LANs and WANs such as Ethernet and wireless.
The second module deals with the core of the course: Internet and TCP/IP protocols. The design of IP protocol and its function in addressing, routing, error control and basic datagram delivery will be covered. We will also look into why and how IP will change in the near future to IPV6 protocol. We will cover in detail the functionalities of TCP and UDP protocols.
Module 3 will cover Routing and Quality-of-Service issues. Routing forms a fundamental part of the global Internet and we would discuss routing architectures, autonomous system routing using BGP, intranet routing using RIP and OSPF. We will also discuss QoS issues including label switching and flows.
Module 4 will cover a variety of well-known applications. We will study email and web applications as well as VoIP using RTP and RSVP protocols. We will discuss implications of Cloud Computing and the emergence of Internet of Things. Internet security issues including Firewall design will be explored.
All the above materials will be covered using theory lectures, practical labs and projects. Guest speakers and Internet resources will be utilized wherever possible.
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of computing, familiarity with software and/or permission of instructor
Objectives of the course:
At the completion of this course, the student should
- Learn and understand the design, operation and management of TCP/IP based intranet and internets.
- Apply principles of broadband technology towards multimedia networks.
- Be capable of configuring TCP/IP hosts and routers with direct hands-on knowledge.
- Develop and use business applications.
- Students should be able to grasp recent research topics in this area and present that material to any audience.
- With the acquired knowledge and a little bit of real world experience, you should be able to successfully participate in design, deployment and management of various types of IP networks and applications.
Certifications: Cisco, one of the leading Internet companies has developed Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) curriculum and the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) curricula. The material covered in this course parallels CCNA and CCNP material but will also cover additional materials. A student should feel confident in taking the certification.
Text and Readings:
Douglas Comer. Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume One (6th Edition)
(Recommended to buy)
- Hardcover: 754 pages
- Publisher: Addison-Wesley; 6 edition (May 5, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 013608530X
- ISBN-13: 978-013608530
Business Data Communications , by William Stallings. Prentice Hall Inc., ISBN10: 0136067417, ISBN13: 9780136067412 Edition/Copyright: 6TH 2009
[The Stallings book is not required to buy. However there will be a few chapters from this book that will be covered in the course]
Course Requirements
- Regular attendance and active participation in class.
- Preparation of reading and discussion of class assignments.
- Prepare, complete and submit all group projects.
- Take all quizzes and exams.
- Submit all projects on time.
Personal Portfolio
In order to improve its courses, CISAT tries to assess student learning directly. As part of this, and in view of our emphasis on using information technologies, we require that every student in every course must document some aspect of their learning in the course using an e-portfolio. E-portfolio entries should be submitted through your Sakai DropBox.
To satisfy this requirement, an entry in the student’s e-portfolio must be created with the template page for this course, and it must address the learning objectives for the course and program.
The instructor will determine whether the entry suitably reflects course- and program-related learning. She/he may ask the student to revise and resubmit the entry. There are many possible suitable entries. Possible examples include the deliverables for a class project, a paper written as a result of the course, or a series of blog entries. Any entry is acceptable that demonstrates that the student knows more about the course content than she/he did at the beginning of the course. It is important that the entry be non-trivial, but it need not be a major new undertaking either. Entries are intended to be a representation of what was learned.
This is a special assignment. It is not used in calculation of your course grade; it is a requirement to get a grade. No final grade other than “Incomplete” (except “Unsatisfactory”) will be assigned for the course until you have posted a suitable entry to your e-portfolio. Any e-portfolio entry intended to be used to satisfy the requirement for the course must remain in the student’s Sakai DropBox for at least one month following the course, to allow time for archival of pages to occur.
Because entries to an e-portfolio provide you with an opportunity to reflect on your learning, we encourage you to create more than the one required entry, to share your entries with your classmates, and to collect entries across your classes—in effect, creating an online collection of postings about what you have been learning. Such collections have value in expressing to yourself and others what you have learned in your degree program.
Grading components
| Mid-term Exam | 20% |
| Final Exam | 10% |
| Labs & Assignments (groups of 2) | 40% |
| Research Project (individual) | 20% |
| Class Participation | 10% |
| Total | 100% |
Grading scale
97% – 100% A+ 93% – 96.9% A 90% – 92.9% A-
87% – 89.9% B+ 83% – 86.9% B 80% – 82.9% B-
77% – 79.9% C+ 73% – 76.9% C 70% – 72.9% C-
Less than 70% U
Schedule: (This is suggested; deviations may be necessary)
All course materials (PowerPoint slides, papers, labs and assignments) will be available from your Sakai dropbox account. After you log in to Sakai, click on the IST 304 tab.
Week 1 (1/21/14)
Introduction and Overview (introduction.ppt)
Overview of underlying network technologies
Read: Chapter 1 and 2 of Comer’s book.
Reading: Barry M. Leiner , Vinton G. Cerf , David D. Clark , Robert E. Kahn , Leonard Kleinrock , Daniel C. Lynch , Jon Postel , Lawrence G. Roberts , Stephen S. Wolff, The past and future history of the Internet, Communications of the ACM, v.40 n.2, p.102-108, Feb. 1997
Week 2 (1/28/14)
Fundamentals of Communication (comm_fundamentals.ppt)
- Signals, spectrum and bandwidth
- Information encoding
- Shannon’s theorem
- Transmission media types and characteristics
Week 3 (2/4/14)
Fundamentals of Transmissions (transmission_fundamentals.ppt)
- Data encoding
- Modulation techniques and modems
- Signaling schemes
- Synchronization
Week 4 (2/11/14)
Internetworking architecture (architecture.ppt)
Protocol layering
Read: Chapter 3 and 4 of Comer’s book.
Reading: D. D. Clark, “The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols,” ACM SIGCOMM Conference, (August 1988).
Reading: J. H. Saltzer, D. P. Reeed, D. D. Clark, “End-to-End Arguments in System Design,” 2nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Paris, (April 1981), pp. 509-512.
Week 5 (2/18/14)
Internet addressing (addressing.ppt)
ARP and RARP protocol (arp_rarp.ppt)
Read: Chapter 5 and 6 of Comer’s book.
Week 6 (2/25/14)
Internet Protocol – Ipv4 and IPv6 (IP.ppt)
IP datagram forwarding and ICMP
Read: Chapter 7, 8 and 9 of Comer’s book.
Week 7 (3/4/14)
UDP (udp_tcp.ppt)
TCP and flow control
Read: Chapter 10 and 11 of Comer’s book.
TCP tutorial at http://www.ssfnet.org/Exchange/tcp/tcpTutorialNotes.html
Reading: V. Jacobson, M. Karels, “Congestion Avoidance and Control,” ACM SIGCOMM Conference, (August 1988).
Week 8 (3/11/14)
Mid-term examination
Week 9 (3/18/14)
Spring Break Holidays
Week 10 (3/25/14)
Routing Architectures (routing_architecture.ppt)
Routing amongst autonomous systems (BGP)
Read: Chapter 12 and 13 of Comer’s book.
BGP technical notes at http://www.ittc.ku.edu/EECS/EECS_800.ira/bgp_tutorial/
Week 11 (4/1/14)
Routing within autonomous systems (RIP, OSPF) [rip_ospf.ppt]
Read: Chapter 14 of Comer’s book.
H. Balakrishnan. Internet Domain Routing. Copyright 2009.
Week 12 (4/8/14)
NATs, VPNs, Overlays (nats_dhcp.ppt)
Bootstrappinng and DHCP
Read: Chapter 19 and 222 of Comer’s book.
Week 13 (4/15/14)
Applications (dns_smtp_web.ppt)
- Domain Name System
- Email – SMTP
- Web – HTTP
Week 14 (4/22/14)
Voice & Video over IP (real-time.ppt)
Label switching, Flows, MPLS and Quality-of-Service Issues
Read: Chapter 16 and 26 of Comer’s book.
Refer to Cisco MPLS presentations at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6557/prod_presentation_list.html
Week 15 (4/29/14)
Wireless networking and Internet of Things (wireless_IOT.ppt)
A set of readings on IOT can be found at http://iot.ieee.org/articles-publications.html
Week 16 (5/6/14)
Student presentations
Week 17 (5/13/14)
Final Exams
[Guest speakers are subject to availability and their convenience]
Class Participation:
All students are expected to come prepared in class. Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions about a topic that is being discussed. Any assigned reading should be read prior to class. The instructor will keep notes of who is participating. Also, I allow only one absence from class. If you miss more than one class, your participation grade will be significantly affected.
Research Project:
Each student will conduct his/her own independent research. A detailed report has to be turned in. All students will also briefly present their research work in class. Each student will then conduct further research related to emerging networking topics. The objective of the research is to find new advances, and conduct analysis and present your findings to the entire class.
Labs & Assignments:
Students will do several hands-on labs throughout the course. Various open-source and some proprietary tools will be used and shared in class. There will be group assignments given to students. These may entail design problems and finding out recent advancements happening in the particular topic. The labs are designed to reinforce the concepts discussed in class.
All labs and assignments will be available from the Lab and Assignments folder in Sakai. You have always 1 week to complete them. The instructor may ask for the labs anytime for grading. No late submission will be allowed. Completing all labs and assignments is mandatory.
Policy on Plagiarism:
If I find that you have plagiarized your work, and then based on the consultation with the Director of CISAT, I will either assign you an F for the assignment or depending upon severity of the issue, assign you an F for the entire course.
Welcome to the Course!