Instructor

Yan Chen, Assistant Professor
Room L459, Tech Institute, 491-4946. ychen@northwestern.edu
Office Hours: 2-4pm Thursday or by appointment, Room L459, Tech Institute

Teaching Assistant

Yan Gao
ygao@cs.northwestern.edu
Office Hours: 3:30-5:30 Monday, Rm 2-207, Ford Design Center.

Location and Time

· Lectures: Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-10:50am, MG28, Tech Institute.

· Recitation: Friday 5-6pm, Tech L150.

Course Description

This course provides an introduction to fundamental concepts in the design and implementation of computer communication networks, their protocols, and applications. Topics to be covered include: overview of  network architectures, applications (HTTP, FTP), network programming interfaces (e.g., sockets), transport (TCP, UDP), flow control, congestion control, IP, routing , IPv6, multicast, data link protocols, error-detection/correction, multiple access, LAN, Ethernet, wireless networks, and network security. Examples will be drawn primarily from the Internet (e.g., TCP, UDP, and IP) protocol suite. Over the course of the quarter, students program in C++ on UNIX systems to build web clients and servers, and a fully compatible TCP/IP stack that can run them.

Course Prerequisites

• Required: CS 311 or equivalent data structure course.
• Required: CS 213 or (ECE 205+ECE231) or equivalent computer systems course.
• Highly recommended: CS 343 or equivalent operating systems course.
• Highly recommended: UNIX programming experience (gcc, gdb, make, etc.)

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Course Materials

• Required textbooks:
• Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet, [KR], Third Edition, James Kurose and Keith Ross, Addison Wesley, 2004.
• TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume I: The Protocols, Richard Stevens, Addison Wesley, 1994. Essential for lectures on TCP/IP and projects.
• A set of papers will be made available.
• Recommended books
• Computer Networks - A Systems Approach, Third Edition, Larry L. Peterson and Bruce S. Davie, Morgan Kaufmann, 2003. Good supplementary material to the required textbooks.
• Unix Network Programming (Volume 1, Third Edition, 2003, and Volume 2, Second Edition, 1999) Richard Stevens, Prentice Hall. Describes the details of socket programming and IPC on Unix.
• Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, Richard. Stevens, Addison-Wesley, 1992. A basic book for anyone writing programs that run under Unix.
• The C++ Programming Language, Special Edition, Bjarne Stroustrup, Addison-Wesley, 2000.
• Other references
• UNIX for the Impatient, 2nd Edition, P. W. Abrahams and B. Larsonk, Addison-Wesley, 1996. A nice introductory book to Unix.
• Learning the Unix Operating System (Nutshell Handbook), 5th Edition, J. D. Peek, G. Todino-Gonguet, J. Strang, O'Reilly, 2001. Good for UNIX beginner.
• Programming with GNU Software, M. Loukides and A. Oram, O'Reilly, 1995. Introdution on the tools on UNIX.
• On coding style: Code Complete, by S. McConnell, Microsoft Press, 1995.
• Some other pointers on C/Unix collected by Prof. Fabián E. Bustamante.

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Grading

There will be a midterm and a final exam. Exams will be in-class, closed-book, and will cover materials from lectures, required readings and projects. The final exam will not be cumulative.

• Class attendance and discussion 10%
• Homework 10%
• Projects 40%
• Midterm 20%
• Final 20%

Communication

• Course web site: http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ychen/classes/cs340-w06/. Check it out regularly for schedule changes, clarifications and corrections to assignments, and other course-related announcements.
• Recitation, TA will lecture on complementary materials of the lectures, address questions for homework and projects, and help to prepare the exams. We hope it can help students more efficiently than the one-on-one Q&A in office hours.
• Newsgroup (cs.340) is available for announcement, and posting questions and answers.

Policies

• Late policy:
  Unless otherwise indicated, homework and projects are due by the end of lecture on their due date. If you hand in an assignment late, we will take off 10% for each day (or portion thereof) it is late.
• Cheating:
  It's OK to ask someone about the concepts, algorithms, or approaches needed to do the project assignments, I encourage you to do so; both giving and taking advice will help you to learn. However, what you turn in must be your own, or for projects, your group's own work; copying other people's code, solution sets, or from any other sources is strictly prohibited. We will punish transgressors severely.