CITS3002 Computer Networks  
 

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Look after yourself!

Schedule of topics in 2024

The presentation of each of these topics will commence during each week's Wednesday's 90-minute lecture. Each week's schedule will be accompanied by a link to HTML pages of each lecture. This schedule is almost guaranteed to change. Please refer to this webpage (not a printed copy) when revising material.

The materials presented here do not define the whole unit. Attending lectures and reviewing their material comprises about of the effort required for this unit. The remainder of your time should be spent reading the recommended reading, and undertaking the laboratory tasks and the project.

References to relevant sections in Tanenbaum's 5/e and Kurose & Ross's 7/e will appear, here, below each lecture's topics.

Week Lecture recordings available on Wednesdays Tutorials and Laboratories
Data Communications
Week 1
Mon 26th Feb
Introduction to Computer Networks (single page)
Administrivia, introduction to computer networks, basic definitions, The need for network protocols, layered models, the 7-layer OSI reference model.
[TAN §1.1-1.4;  KR §1.1,1.2,1.5]
No tutorials this week
No laboratories this week
Week 2
Mon 4th Mar

Monday 4th is a public holiday
The Physical Layer, Error detection and correction (single page)
The Physical Layer, signal encoding and synchronisation, the nature of transmission errors, error detection and correction techniques, cyclic redundancy checks and polynomial codes.
[TAN §2.1-2.2, 3.1-3.2;  KR §6.1-6.2]
No tutorials this week
Labsheet 1
and some sample solutions.
Week 3
Mon 11th Mar
Data Link Layer protocols (single page)
Data Link Layer responsibilities. The use of simulation in network protocol design. Introduction to the cnet network simulator. Unidirectional protocols. The stop-and-wait protocol. Bidirectional protocols, protocol pipelining and piggybacking, sliding-window protocols.
[TAN §3.1-3.4]
Tutorial 1
Labsheet 2
and some sample solutions.
Week 4
Mon 18th Mar

Wednesday 20th is PROSH
No tutorial on Wednesday
Local Area Networks (LANs and WLANs) (single page)
Multiaccess communication, time- and frequency-multiplexing, channel allocation. Local Area Networks (LANs), carrier sense networks, encoding of digital signals, collision detection and collision avoidance. The IEEE802.3 (Ethernet) system, addressing mechanisms, binary-exponential backoff, repeaters, hubs, and switches.
Wireless networking, the hidden and exposed node problems, collision avoidance algorithms, IEEE802.11a/b/g/n standards, access-points and distribution systems.
[TAN §4.1-4.3.4, 4.4, 4.8;  KR §5.1-5.3.2, 5.4, 6.1-6.3.5]
Tutorial 2
Labsheet 3
and some sample solutions.
Week 5
Mon 25th Mar

Friday 29th is a public holiday
The Network Layer (single page)
Connection-based .vs. connectionless services, virtual circuits and datagram exchange, network layer routing algorithms. Congestion and flow-control, end-to-end flow control, load shedding, traffic shaping.
[TAN §5.1-5.4.2;  KR §4.1-4.3]
Tutorial 3
Labsheet 4
and some sample solutions.
Mon 1st Apr - mid-semester non-teaching week
Week 6
Mon 8th Apr
Mid-semester test - Wednesday 10th
In two venues - Physics Ross Theatre (ground floor), and Clews Theatre (2nd floor).
No labs or tutorials this week
Internetworking
Week 7
Mon 15th Apr
The TCP/IP protocol suite (single page)
The motivation for internetworking, the TCP/IP protocol suite, the relationship to the OSI model, the Internet Protocol (IP) and addressing, IP datagrams, the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP).
[TAN §1.4,1.5.1,5.6.1-2;  KR §1.1,1.7,4.4.1-3]
No labs or tutorials this week
Week 8
Mon 22nd Apr

Thursday 25th is a public holiday
Transport Layer protocols and APIs (single page)
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Berkeley sockets. TCP/IP support in high-level programming languages.
[TAN §6.4-5;  KR §3.3-5]
Tutorial 4
Week 9
Mon 29th Apr
Client/server design (single page)
Connection-based and connectionless processing, different classes of server, internetworking support libraries. Designing client-server applications, partitioning client-server responsibilities, iterative and concurrent servers.
[KR §2.1-2]
Tutorial 5
Week 10
Mon 6th May
Architecture independent applications (single page)
Automated development of distributed applications; Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs); architecture-independent data representation (XDR); parameter passing mechanisms.
Tutorial 6
(final tutorial)
Unfortunately, the lectures of weeks 11 and 12 will not be presented in-person. The recordings from 2023 are linked below:
Week 11
Mon 13th May
Security of TCP/IP (single page)
lecture-recording (from 2023)
IP protocol based attacks, packet sniffing, port scanning, address spoofing, DOS and DDOS attacks. Security at the network boundary, router/firewall packet filtering, network address translation (NAT).
[TAN §8.6.2;  KR §8.9.1]
Project due
Fri 17th May
Week 12
Mon 20th May
Crypotgraphy's role in networking (single page)
lecture-recording (from 2023)
Basic terminology, hash-functions, message digests, symmetric and asymmetric algorithms, the DES algorithm, ECB and CBC modes, public key cryptography, the MIT/RSA algorithm, digital signatures, digitial certificates, and certificate revocation. End-to-end communication using the secure sockets layer (SSL). Virtual private networks (VPNs).
[TAN §8.1.1-8.1.3,8.2.1,8.3.1,8.4,8.9.3;  KR §8.1-8.3,8.6]
Project demonstrations this week


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