Course info:

• Prerequisites: CSE 245 (Computer Networks) or equivalents
• Schedule: 3:30-4:45pm, MW, ITEB 127
• Instructor: Bing Wang, ITEB 367
• Office hours: by appointment

Overview:

This course covers advanced fundamental principles and special topics of computer networks. Topics include protocol mechanisms, advanced network architecture, network algorithms, network control, network simulation, and performance analysis and measurement, spanning both wired and wireless networks. The goal of this course is to teach networking fundamentals/techniques that will have a long life (that is, whenever today's hot topic is no longer hot, the principles covered in this course will still be relevant and important).

Textbook:

There is no textbook for the course. Reading material will be posted online in Reading List.
Suggested reference books:

• Computer Networking: A top down approach featuring the Internet, by Jim Kurose & Keith Ross, Addison Wesley, 2004.
• Data Networks, 2nd Edition, by Dimitri P. Bertsekas and Robert Gallager
• Wireless Communications Principles and Practice by Ted Rappaport
• Mobile Communications by Jochen Schiller

Grading:

Class participation (10%)
Homework (30%)
Semester-long project (60%)

• Class participation: You are expected to attend all the classes and actively participate in the class (asking/answering questions and contributing to class discussion).  

• Homework: We will have two written assignments and one programming assignment on ns simulation.

• Course project: A major component in this course is a semester-long project. You can work in a group of 2 students (you can work alone or in a group of 3 if there is a justified reason). Once the groups are fixed, I will help you to determine a topic based on your preferences and suggestions. You are expected to write a proposal (5%), a mid-term report (5%), a final report (35%) and do a mid-term and final presentation in class (accounting for 5% and 10% respectively of your grade).  Your grade will be based on the quality of your work and oral presentation. Please follow either ACM SIG proceeding format or IEEE format for your proposal, midterm and final reports.

  • Proposal: should include at least the introduction, related work, project overview, and references. You should describe the problem, why it is interesting, what are the challenges and existing work.

  • Midterm report: should describe your progress, problems/issues that you encountered and solved. The purpose is to check your progress, summarize initial results and collect feedbacks from the instructor.  

  • Final report: should be a complete report of your project, containing most components that you would have included for a conference paper. If simulation and/or implementation are involved in your project, well-documented codes should be submitted electronically in company with the final reports.

  • Class presentation: is a short presentation (within 10 slides) for midterm and longer version (within 20 slides) for final. Students in the team are expected to share the task of presentation. This will provide you an opportunity to give talks and collect comments from your peer students and the instructor.

Schedule:

The following is a tentative schedule subject to changes. The slides (up to class 18) are mostly based on lecture notes by Prof. Jim Kurose and Don Towsley. The Copyrights are reserved by them and may not be used without prior written permission. Part of slides on wireless networks are provided by Prof. Lili Qiu (and adapted from slides in her class) and the authors with copyright reserved.

Comments: bing@engr.uconn.edu