CITS3002 Computer Networks

Information resources

This page provides links to a number of articles provided to support the unit's material. Yes, a number are more than 10 years old, but they provide a historical context and are still very relevant. Additional materials may be added here as the unit progresses or, if you'd like to suggest that something is added, please contact Chris McDonald.

Introduction and network summaries:

Wikipedia's list of network protocols
Wireless Wiki.
How the Internet works: Submarine fiber, brains in jars, and coaxial cables, from ArsTechnica.com.

Data Communications:

The Hayes (modem) Code - by Ernie Smith, February 2023.
Two videos explaining Hamming codes (contributed by a '3002 student):
But what are Hamming codes? The origin of error correction, and Part 2: The one-line implementation.
A Painless Guide To CRC Error Detection Algorithms or "Everything you wanted to know about CRC algorithms, but were afraid to ask for fear that errors in your understanding might be detected." - by Ross N. Williams.
The hamming.c source code demonstrated in Lecture-2.
Ethernet Systems on Personal Computers (circa 1995, origin unknown).
Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Network, by Robert M. Metcalfe and David R. Boggs, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 19, No. 5, July 1976 pp. 395 - 404.
"Measured Capacity of an Ethernet: Myths and Reality", by Boggs, Mogul, and Kent, Proceedings of the SIGCOMM'88 Symposium on Communications Architectures and Protocols, ACM SIGCOMM, vol 4, pp222-34, August 1988.

Internetworking:

Internet Histories from the Internet Society.
10 choices that were critical to the Net's success by Dave Farber.
Counting Internet Users (summary of findings) by the Pew Internet & American Life project.
The internet as a human right, by the Brookings Inst., November 2016.
Internet RFC/STD/FYI/BCP Archives
- RFC 1149 - Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers
Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) Overview
Introduction to the Internet Protocols by C.L. Hedrick.
Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?, NetworkWorld, February 2014.
Why the journey to IPv6 is still the road less traveled, NetworkWorld, April 2015.
Home Routers Pose Biggest Consumer Cyberthreat, Dice, February 2014.

Language specific socket programming tutorials:

Minimal tutorials on HTTP - Requests and HTTP - Responses, both from Tutorialspoint.
For C and C++ developers - A Guide to Network Programming using Internet sockets, by Brian "Beej" Hall.
For Python developers - Socket Programming HOWTO, socket - Low-level networking interface, and socketserver - A framework for network servers, all from python.org.
Socket Programming in Python (Guide), by Nathan Jennings.
Python - Network Programming from Tutorialspoint.
For Java developers - All About Sockets, from Oracle,
and Java - Networking, from Tutorialspoint.

Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs):

Implementing remote procedure calls, by Birrell, A.D. & Nelson, B.J, 1984 ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), 2(1), pp39-59, 1984.
RPC is Not Dead: Rise, Fall and the Rise of Remote Procedure Calls, by Muzammil Abdul Rehman and Paul Grosu, 2016.
Microsoft RPC programming guide, by John Shirley and Ward Rosenberry, 1995. Read online, or download for free.
A Critique of the Remote Procedure Call Paradigm, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Robbert van Renesse, 1988.

TCP/IP vulnerabilities and attacks:

Security Problems in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite - by Steve Bellovin (1989, PDF, freely viewable on-campus).
20 Years of DDoS, by Dave Dittrich.
Analyzing Distributed Denial Of Service Tools: The Shaft Case" - by Sven Dietrich, Neil Long, and David Dittrich.
Network Ingress Filtering: Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source Address Spoofing - RFC2267.
The latest in denial of service attacks: "smurfing" description and information to minimize effects - by Craig A. Huegen.

Firewalls and packet-filtering:

The netfilter homepage,
many, easy to read iptables tutorials (near the bottom of the page),
Iptables Tutorial, by Oskar Andreasson (long, but complete).
FAQ: Firewall Forensics (What am I seeing?), (very long but very interesting).

Cryptographic building blocks:

The Australian Crypto FAQ.
WikiProject Cryptography (almost encyclopedic).
4-digit PIN analysis.
Snake Oil Warning Signs: Encryption Software to Avoid.
The Crypto Gardening Guide and Planting Tips, by Peter Gutmann (may be considered too theoretical for some).
The Data Encryption Standard (DES) and its strength against attacks, by D. Coppersmith,
How RSA works and Why RSA works,
How does SSL/TLS work?, from Information Security Stack Exchange.
Chapter 1 of Network Security with OpenSSL (general, gentle introduction pp1-12).
The OpenSSL Command-Line HOWTO, by Paul Heinlien.