General

Instructor:	Chen-Nee Chuah
	3125 Kemper Hall
Lectures:	Tueday/Thursday, 12:10-1:30pm, ART 217
Discussion:	Thursday 3:10-4:00pm, ART 217
Office Hours:	Friday 10:00-11:00am or by appointment, 3125 Kemper Hall
Teaching Assistants:	Ferhat Dikbiyik and Ke Wen
TA Office Hours:	Ferhat: Monday 10:30am-noon (3089 Kemper)
	Ke: Wednesday 4:30-6:00pm (3089 Kemper)

Prerequisite

ECS60 or EEC73;
Math 135A or Stat 131A or Stat 120 or Stat 32 or EEC161

Overview

Introduces fundamental architecture concepts of modern telecommunication systems (telephone, Internet, and wireless networks), including IS0 seven-layer model, physical aspects of data transmission, data-link layer protocols, network architectures, routing, TCP/IP protocol suite, local area networks, medium access protocols, and network performance analysis.

This course is cross-listed with ECS152A. Please refer to the extended course description for more details.

Goals

This undergraduate course provides students with a basic knowledge of the fundamental principles in communication networks. It intends to illustrate the design, management, and operational principles of telecommunication networks (including telephone, Internet, wireless), network monitoring, and simulations. Students have weekly lab assignments to reinforce the concepts and provide hands-on experience.
By the end of the quarter, the students will be able to understand the architecture and underlying protocols along with the scalability, complexity, and robustness issues of large-scale networking systems. They will also be prepared to undertake an in-depth study of local area networks and wide area networks dealing with their access mechanisms, routing algorithms, performance evaluation methodologies, and related issues. Students will gain experience in the design and analysis of network protocols through experiments on an Ethernet LAN, network measurements, or through simulation models.

Textbooks

J. Kurose and K. Ross, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach, Addison Wesley, 5th edition. ISBN-10: 0136079679, ISBN-13: 978-0136079675. (To reduce textbook cost, you can also use the 4th edition.)

Grading

Exams: Both midterm and final exams are closed book. However, students will be allowed to use one sheet of notes (letter size) written on both sides. No calculator, no computer.

Homework/Project:Unless specified otherwise, students work individually on homework and lab projects. The projects will complement and extend the lecture material and may include network design, measurement experiment, simulation, or performance analysis. See the project page for more details.

Important Dates:

• Midterm: Tuesday Oct 25, 2011 (in class)
• Final: Tuesday, December 6, 2011, 1:00-3:00pm