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University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
Digital Communication II
Computer Laboratory > Course material 2005-06 > Digital Communication II

Digital Communication II
2005-06

Principal lecturer: Prof Jon Crowcroft
Taken by: Part II

Syllabus
Past exam questions
A Rough Guide to What Is Examinable Material

The slides below are in powerpoint. I can provide PDF if asked, but printed copies are available in lectures.
Overview of Material
The Telephone Net (well its been around 100 years, so there must be some lessons in it)
The Internet (about 25 years old, and looking decidedly shakey)
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (a failed, but bold attempt to mix Telephone and Internet)
Classic Simplistic Model of Modular Functionality for Communications
Some Systems Design Paradigms, often orthogonal to Layers
Naming and Addressing, i.e. who is where?
A List of common protocols - see if you can spot design patterns?
Some Mapping onto implementation for CS
Guest Lecture by Dr Richard Mortier, MSR
Routing - How many ways can we get from A to B?
Error Control - what do we do when things go wrong?
Flow Control - stemming the flood
Shared Media Networks (Ether/Radio etc) - some special problems
Guest Lecture by Dr Michael Dales, Intel Research Cambridge
Switched Networks - What does a switch do and how?
Integrated Service Packet Networks for IP
APIs to Quality of Service
Scheduling and Queue Management Algorithms for packet forwarding
What about routing with QoS
The Big Picture for manageing traffic
Economics, Policy and a little MPLS
A list of papers that would be good to read on a rainy sunday
A Glossary of Terms from CNP

There will also be number (2-3) of guest lectures by colleagues from Intel, Microsoft and elsewhere, on the practical application of the concepts presented above in real world networks, such as monitoring and management of large scale commercial, fixed and wireless networks, the evolution of software and hardware for switch design (e.g. optical), and the problems with the Interdomain Routing protocol BGP.

last updated 21/10/2005