Computer Networking - Fall 2016

Instructor: Antonio Carzaniga
Assistants: Enrique Fynn, Luis Mastrangelo
Type of course: lecture
Lecture hours and rooms: Monday 10:30-12:30 in SI-003; Thursday 10:30-12:30 in SI-003
Instructor's Office Hours: by appointment
Assistants' Office Hours: by appointment

Objectives

The goal of this course is twofold: first we want to understand how common distributed applications, such as the world-wide web, use a computer network such as the Internet. Second, we want to understand how the network provides its services to applications. The knowledge acquired through this course should serve as a basis for the design of distributed applications and for advanced studies in computer networking.

Contents

The focus of the course is on the architecture of the network, its fundamental protocols, and the design principles behind them. The course will follow a top-down approach. Therefore, the first topics covered will be common network-based applications, with a particular focus on the HTTP protocol. We will then look at the two most important transport protocols of the Internet, namely TCP and UDP. In studying TCP we will discuss its provisions for reliability and congestion control. We will then look more closely at the network layer in IP networks. In this section we will study IPv4 as well as IPv6 and its most common extensions. This section of the course will cover the architecture of today's Internet, the basics of interdomain and intradomain routing, and other concepts related to the network layer, such as fragmentation. The course will also review some basic concepts in network and communication security.

Textbook

• Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach, by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross, published by Addison-Wesley.

Links

Additional information is available on the following pages.

• Policies - including evaulation criteria and communications.
• Program - detailed course program.
• Schedule - including class schedule, topics, reading assignments, and links to additional course material.
• Announcements - all communications will be posted on this page.
• Exercises - a collection of exam questions and exercises.