COE

COE-540 Computer Networks

Semester 081

Course Syllabus:

Click here for course syllabus.

Exam Dates:

Exam dates are:

~~Midterm: Week of Dec 20th~~
~~Final exam: To be scheduled by the Registrar~~

Lecture Notes

Students are responsible for the material in the textbook(s) and that in the handouts, if any. The class notes and slides are just "notes"; they may not cover all required material. The book is the reference for the required material. Please also note that the notes are NOT finalized. They remain in a state of evolution.

Week/Date	Topic	Textbook Section⁺
1	Introduction and Layered Network Architecture – Lecture Notes	Chapter 1 (Gallager)
2	Physical Layer (channels and Modems), Error Detection – Lecture Notes - You should be taking notes from the board for this topic.	Sections 2.1, 2.2 & 2.3 (Gallager)
3	ARQ Strategies, Framing, Standard DLCs - Lecture Notes Sections 2.8, 2.9 and 2.10 are designated as Reading Assignment	Sections 2.4, 2.5, & 2.6 (Gallager)
4	Review of Probability, Statistics and Basics of Markov Processes - Lecture Notes - PQRS tool for computing probabilities, quantiles and drawing random samples for several probability distributions.	Chapter 3 (Garcia) – preferably 4 and 5 too.
5	Review of Probability, Statistics and Basics of Markov Processes Introduction to Delay Models (Little’s Formula, M/M/1 Model) - Refer to Examples of Little's Formula Application	Chapter 3 & 9 (Garcia) – preferably 4 and 5 too.
6	Introduction to Delay Models (M/M/c and derivative Models, basic M/G/1 formulas, Burke’s Theorem, Jackson’s Theorem)	Chapter 3 (Gallager) & Chapter 9 (Garcia)
7	Multiaccess Communication (Aloha, Tree Algorithms, CSMA, Reservation, FDMA/TDMA, CDMA, etc.)	Sections 4.1, 4.2 & 4.3 (Gallager) + notes
8	Multiaccess Communication (Aloha, Tree Algorithms, CSMA, Reservation, FDMA/TDMA, CDMA, etc.)	Sections 4.1, 4.2 & 4.3 (Gallager) + notes
9	(Introduction - covered in previous packages) Application Layer (Principles, Web/HTTP, FTP, Email, DNS)	Sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 (Kurose)
Midterm Exam (Week of December 20th or 27th)
10	Transport Layer (Multixplexing, Demultiplexing, Connectionless (UDP)/ Connection-Oriented (TCP) protocols)	Sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.5 (Kurose)
11	Transport Layer (Congestion Control, TCP Congestion Control)	Sections 3.6, 3.7, & 3.8 (Kurose)
12	Network Layer (Routing Principles, Hierarchical Routings, Internet Protocol)	Sections 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5 & 4.6 (Kurose)
13	Network Layer (Routing in the Internet, Router Operation, IPv6, etc.)	Sections 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, … (Kurose)
14	Presentation of Projects
15	Presentation of Projects
*Final Exam (Comprehensive – Scheduled by Registrar)*

Assignments:

Assignment 1: Due date Nov 30th - class time. Solution Key.
Assignment 2: Due date Jan 27th - class time. Solution Key.

Quizzes and Major Exams:

Quiz01: Sunday November 2nd, 2008 - solution key.
Quiz02: Tuesday November 18th, 2008 - solution key. Subject - project paper.
Quiz03: Sunday December 21st, 2008 - refer to class notes.
Major Exam: Thursday Jan 1st, 2009. .
Quiz04: Sunday Jan 25th, 2009 - solution key.

Check Your Status:

For marks click here
Projects Evaluation - here.

Course Projects:

Project 1: You will be requested to read, understand, and reproduce the results in the following paper:

C. Mohanram and S. Bhashyam, “Joint subcarrier and power allocation in channel-aware queue-aware scheduling for multiser OFDM,” IEEE transactions on wireless communications, vol. 6, no. 9, pp. 3208-3213, September 2007.

A detailed description of the project requirements will follow. However, you must start by reading and understanding the paper thoroughly. You will be required to do coding (Matlab, C, java, etc.) to execute the algorithms and provide results. Students are advised to start NOW.
There will be one session explaining the needed background in the area of OFDMA, and sub-channel and power allocation.
Matlab code and resources for Project 1:
- Matlab Code to generate channel gain to noise power matrix. This code is originally by Zuhang Shen.
- Matlab Code to find optimal bit loading and power allocation for OFDMA - This code is based on:
Brian S. Krongold, Kannan Ramchandran, and Douglas L. Jones, "Computationally Efficient Optimal Power Allocation Algorithms for Multicarrier Communication Systems," IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 48, NO. 1, pp. 23-27, 2000.
- Matlab Code to find optimal bit loading and power allocation for OFDMA using exhaustive method and verification of previous code.
Project 2: You will requested to build a baseline simulation model using OPNET or Qualnet to model and evaluate the performance of BGP protocol. At this stage, only baseline performance and understanding of the protocol and issues affecting its performance are required. OPNET provide many examples in this area. A simple search on google.com for "BGP simulation using OPNET" reveals many resources and example studies. Some of the selected ones are:

Resource 1: An example of DETAILED simulation setup and experimentation with BGP when a physical link fail.

Resource 2: A book chapter in Springer utilizing OPNET for BGP related simulations.

Resource 3: A lab manual describing a simple simulation setup specifically for BGP on OPNET with detailed steps.

Resource 4: A paper describing implementation of BGP on NS-2.

Some local presentations about OPNET: Routing in OPNET, and WiFi modeling in OPNET.

For project 2 - BGP is well explained in the second (Kurose's) textbook for the course and also in OPNET documentations/conferences.
IT Guru is available from OPNET from here. You need to register and then download the package (~ 50MB).
- Some lab manuals and experiments for IT Guru can be found here.
- Some textbooks teaching in OPNET can be found here.
- Textbook: Emad Aboelela, Network Simulation Experiments Manual : Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, - The lab experiments with IT Guru are found here.
- Textbook: Brown, K. and Christianson, L., Data and Computer Communications (7th ed.), Pearson Prentice Hall (2005).The lab experiments with IT Guru are found here.

Powerpoint Presentation by Al-Refai and Al-Takrouri: Sample network running BGP - using IT Guru.

Matlab Tutorial Material:

Basic information:

University of Utah site - Matlab
Indiana University - Getting Started with Matlab

More detailed material at:

University of Florida - Matlab Summary and Tutorial
Michigan Technological University - A practical Introduction to Matlab

The MathWorks website - The makers of Matlab

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