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Computer Networks (CITS3230) - unit schedule
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Unit schedule:

All materials required for laboratory sessions may be found in the local directory /cslinux/examples/CITS3230/.
Additional materials will be added as the unit progresses.

The links below point to the materials presented during our 2-hour lecture slots. These materials do not define the whole unit. Attending lectures and reviewing their material comprises about ⅓ of the effort required for this unit. The remainder of your time should be spent reading the textbook, attending tutorials, and attempting the laboratory tasks.

Part I - Data Communications
Week 1 Lecture-1, Monday 3rd March (handout PDF)
Administrivia,introduction to computer networks, some fundamental problems, motivation and terminology, the OSI reference model.
The network physical layer, the nature of transmission errors, Data link layer responsibilities, encoding of digital signals, error detection and correction techniques, Hamming distance and Hamming codes, cyclic redundancy checks and polynomial codes. 		No lab this week
Week 2 Lecture-2, Monday 10th March (handout PDF)
Data link protocols, unidirectional protocols, unrestricted simplex. 		No lab this week
Week 3 Lecture-3, Monday 17th March (handout PDF)
The use of simulation is network protocol design, introduction to the cnet simulation environment.
The stop-and-wait protocol, positive acknowledgement. 		Labsheet-1
Tutorial-1
Week 4 Monday 21st March
No lecture this week due to the Easter Monday holiday. 		Labsheet-2
Week 5 Lecture-4, Monday 31st March (handout PDF)
Bidirectional data link protocols, protocol piggybacking, sliding windows, bandwidth pipelining, non-sequential reception and the selective repeat protocol.
The network layer, connection-based .vs. connectionless services, virtual circuits and datagram exchange, network layer routing algorithms, isolated and centralized routing, broadcast routing, adaptive routing. 		Labsheet-3
Tutorial-2
Week 6 Lecture-5, Monday 7th April (handout PDF)
Congestion and flow-control, end-to-end flow control, load shedding, traffic shaping.
Multiaccess communication, polling and multiplexing, Aloha channel allocation, persistent and non-persisent protocols, Local Area Networks (LANs), carrier sense networks, collision detection and collision avoidance. 		Labsheet-4
Week 7 Lecture-6, Monday 14th April (handout PDF)
The IEEE802.3 (Ethernet) system, addressing mechanisms, binary-exponential backoff, 802.3 repeaters, hubs, and switches.
Wireless networking, the hidden and exposed node problems, collision avoidance algorithms, IEEE802.11a/b/g standards, access-points and distribution systems. 		Tutorial-3
Non-teaching week
Part II - Internetworking
Week 8 Lecture-7, Monday 28th April (handout PDF)
Mid-semester test
In the following 1-hour lecture - The motivation for internetworking, the Internet Protocol (IP), the relationship to the OSI model, Internet addressing, IP datagrams, the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), the Boot Protocol (BOOTP), and the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). 		Project handed out, contributing 40%, due 12noon Thursday 5th June. 
Week 9 Lecture-8, Monday 5th May (handout PDF)
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).
Network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Berkeley sockets, client and server responsibilities, naming and contacting endpoints, client-server communication. 		Tutorial-4
Week 10 Lecture-9, Monday 12th May (handout PDF)
Connection-based and connectionless processing, different classes of server, internetworking support libraries. Designing client-server applications, partitioning client-server responsibilities, iterative and concurrent servers. Examples drawn from the C and Java programming languages. 		 
Week 11 Lecture-10, Monday 19th May (handout PDF)
Automated development of distributed applications, remote procedure calls (RPCs), parameter passing mechanisms, naming and interface binding, Java's Remote Method Invocation (RMI), the need for transparent semantics. Architecture-independent data representation, the External Data Representation (XDR). 		 
Week 12 Lecture-11, Monday 26th May (handout PDF)
The network file system (NFS), NFS server and client relationships, NSF's remote procedure calls statelessness, file locking support. The file transfer protocol (FTP), FTP commands and replies, error codes, using FTP to provide a file-structure. the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), delivering dynamic web content. 		Tutorial-5
Week 13 Lecture-12, Monday 2nd June
Review lecture.
Project due 12noon Thursday 5th June, contributing 40%.
Week 14 2pm, Wednesday 11th June in Rm 1.24
Final tutorial covering questions on the sample exam papers. 		 

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