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Lecturer: Dr I.A. Pratt
(ian.pratt@cl.cam.ac.uk)
No. of lectures + examples classes: 12 + 4
Prerequisite course: Digital Communication I
This course is a prerequisite for Security (Part II).
Aims
This course aims to provide a detailed understanding of how computer
networks operate, and to present the issues which are involved in
building such systems. It also hopes to cover a selection of topics
which relate to recent trends in digital communications systems.
Lectures
- Introduction.
Course overview. Abstraction, layering. The OSI reference model.
- The Internet: IP, UDP, RPC.
IP overview/review. Networking in Unix: structures, buffering,
sockets, network interfaces. IP addresses and (simple) routing.
Subnetting. IP checksum. Fragmentation. UDP, RPC, NFS. [2 lectures]
- The Internet: TCP
TCP operation, state transitions. Handling loss: acks and retransmissions.
Estimating RTT. Basic congestion control. Improving things: TCP
vegas, SACKs, ECN.
- The Internet: routing.
ROADS and CIDR. Terminology: AS, IGP, EGP. Routing protocols: distance
vector versus link state. Examples: RIP, OSPF. AS routing:
I-BGP/E-BGP, metrics. The future.
- The Internet: multicast.
Other TCP details. Internet multicast model.
Applications. Basic implementation. Refinements.
- The Internet: IPv6.
Concepts. Internet multicast model. Applications. Basic implementation.
Refinements. Congestion control.
- ATM case study
Multiplexing and virtual circuits. Signalling. ATM Adaption
Layers. Quality of Service CBR, VBR, ABR.
- Wide Area Networks.
Fibre Technology. Long-haul link design. Dense Wave Division
Multiplexing. Sonet/SDH. MPLS. Packet over SONET. Optical switching.
- Access Networks.
Cable Modems. xDSL. Fixed wireless. Satellite. Firewalls and Network
Address Translation.
- Local Area Networks and System Area Networks.
Fast/Gigabit Ethernet. Optimising latency. Host interface
design. User-space protocol processing.
- Congestion Pricing.
Model and motivation. Practical considerations. The future.
Objectives
At the end of the course students should be able to
- enumerate and explain the layers of the OSI reference model
- describe how TCP attempts to handle congestion in the
network
- compare and contrast connectionless and connection-oriented
networks
- explain how IP routing works
- understand the motivation behind and operation of
admission control algorithms
Recommended books
Comer, D. & Stevens, D. (1995). Internetworking with TCP-IP,
vol. 1 and 2. Prentice-Hall (3rd ed.).
Halsall, F. (1992). Data Communications, Computer Networks and Open
Systems. Addison-Wesley (3rd ed.).
Schwartz, M. (1987). Telecommunication Networks: Protocols, Modeling
and Analysis. Addison-Wesley.
Next: Information Theory and Coding
Up: Michaelmas Term 2001: Part
Previous: Denotational Semantics
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Christine Northeast
Tue Sep 4 09:34:31 BST 2001