Pre-requisites: COMP9331/3331 or any other introductory course on networking

Description: 

This course will focus on the routing and switching architectures, algorithms, and protocols for packet switching networks with an emphasis on the Internet. Routing techniques for both traditional wired networks, and the emerging wireless and mobile networks will be examined. The course will teach the fundamental routing concepts using open standards, such as BGP and OSPF. Configuring vendor specific products is outside the scope of this course. 

Learning Objectives:

1. gain good understanding of the role of routing and switching in modern communication networks;

2. master routing architectures, protocols, and algorithms with an emphasis on fundamental concepts and principles;

3. learn how to configure, tune, and analyse the performance of popular routing protocols;

4. develop abilities to innovate routing solutions for new networking requirements.

Teaching Strategies:

There will be a 3-hour lecture per week. In addition to lectures, there will be three 1-hour optional consultation slots each week. During these consulting hours, students having difficulty may seek further help on a strictly first come first serve basis. Students are also required to attend router configuration laboratory sessions of one hour per week for 8 weeks. Additionally, there will be regular self-assessed homeworks to help students assess their individual progress in the course.

Parallel Teaching - Some advanced undergraduate students are allowed to enrol in this course.

Assessment

There will be 4 assessment components each addressing a different subset of the learning objectives. 

• A multiple choice test (closed book) in the middle of the semester to assess learning objectives 1 and 2.
• One open-ended assignment due near the end of the semester to assess learning objective 4. The assignment will require you to critically scrutinise and collect data for a practical networking scenario, and propose extensions to existing routing protocols to address new routing challenges.
• A laboratory test in week 11 assessing learning objective 3. The test will be conducted using the virtual networking environment and the OPNET network simulation tool.
• An open-book (you can bring anything into the examination) final examination will be held at the end of semester assessing learning objectives 1, 2, and 4.

Overall and Final Assessment

Minimum requirements for obtaining a Pass grade or better are: a mark of 20 out of 50 (i.e. 40%) in the Final, and an overall grade of at least 50%. If you cannot clear the bar in the final exam (i.e. you get less than 40% in the final exam), the maximum final mark that will be reported is 40%. 

Under special circumstances, the LIC reserves the right to scale marks up or down.

Academic Honesty and Plagiarism

All submissions are routinely subject to scrutiny for similarities with other student's assignments. If you copy from another person, or get an unreasonable amount of help from a friend (so your assignment begins to look like theirs), or if you work very closely with someone, there is a good chance we will detect it. When we do, you will be penalised. At the very least, you will lose some or all marks for that assignment. In the past, students have been automatically failed for submitting stolen assignments. Further details of the School plagiarism policy can be found here (You acknowledged receipt of these rules when you obtained your CSE computer account, and the link above is for your convenience so that you can review the rules now.)

We are aware that a lot of learning takes place in student conversations, and don't wish to discourage those. However, it is important, for both those helping others and those being helped, not to provide/accept any programming language code in writing, as this is apt to be used exactly as is, and lead to plagiarism penalties for both the supplier and the copier of the codes. Write something on a piece of paper, by all means, but tear it up/take it away when the discussion is over.

If you are new to studying in Australia, be aware that attitudes to plagiarism at UNSW may be different from those in your home country. Make sure you are clear about the rules here at UNSW. In brief, and for the purposes of COMP9332, plagiarism includes copying or obtaining all, or a substantial part, of the material for your assignment, whether programming language code, or written or graphical report material, without written acknowledgement in your assignment from;

1. a location on the internet;
2. a book, article or other written document (whether published or unpublished) whether electronic or on paper or other medium;
3. another student, whether in your class or another class;
4. a non-student (e.g. from someone who writes assignments for money)

Continual Course Improvement

Student feedback on this course, and on the lecturing in this course, will be gathered either via an online questionnaire, which will be e-mailed to all students towards the end of the session or through printed questionnaire distributed in the class. Student feedback is taken seriously, and continual improvements are made to the course based in part on this feedback. The course questionnaire results go to the Head of the School of Computer Science and Engineering, who reads the results and follows up in cases where action is clearly needed.

Text 

TCP/IP Protocol Suite, Behrouz Forouzan, McGraw Hill, 3rd Edition, 2006.

The course may also make use of additional materials such as IETF RFCs and industry white pages.

References

• Adolf Rodriguez et al, TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview, IBM Redbooks
  
• High Performance TCP/IP Networking, Hassan and Jain, Prentice Hall, 2004.
• Internetworking with TCP/IP Principles, Protocols, and Architectures, Fourth Edition, By Douglas Comer, Prentice Hall, 2000

Prof. Mahbub Hassan, Room 607 (Bldg K17) Tel: 9385 6198, email: mahbub at cse.unsw.edu.au