Computer Communication Networks
Instructor
Paul Schmitt
pschmitt [at] hawaii.edu
Details
It is hard to think of a technology that has more changed the way we live than the Internet. From the very way we communicate, access and exchange information, shop, pay, move, entertain, maintain friendship. At the same time, the Internet is inexorably growing, at an always faster pace: from 3 billion of connected hosts in 2015 to an estimated 4 billion in 2019.
At the end of this course, you will be able to:
- understand how the Internet works: from your laptop to Google’s datacenter at the other end of planet;
- build and operate an Internet-like network infrastructure;
- identify the right set of metrics to evaluate the performance or the adequacy of a network and propose ways to improve it (if any).
Textbooks
W will use the textbook Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (8th Edition) by Kurose and Ross in the course. I marked the textbook as optional through the bookstore because textbooks are ridiculously expensive. Feel free to find a used older edition online for the course. We may also periodically use materials from the freely available Computer Networks: A Systems Approach.
Prerequisites
Pre: EE 315 and one of EE 342, or MATH 371 or MATH 471; or consent.
Grading
- Midterm Exam: 25%
- Final Exam: 25%
- Quizzes: 25%
- Homework / Exercises: 20%
- Class Participation: 5%
The scale we’ll be using:
| Letter Grade | Percentage |
|---|---|
| A+ | 97-100% |
| A | 93-96% |
| A− | 90-92% |
| B+ | 87-89% |
| B | 83-86% |
| B− | 80-82% |
| C+ | 77-79% |
| C | 73-76% |
| C− | 70-72% |
| D+ | 67-69% |
| D | 63-66% |
| D− | 60-62% |
| F | 0-59% |
All assigned work is due by 11:59pm on their selected days. If you submit your work late, we will give you credit for it according to this scale:
- 80% for work submitted up to 1 day late;
- 70% for work submitted up to 2 days late;
- 50% for work submitted up to 7 days late;
- 0% for work submitted more than 7 days late.
Policies
I know Chegg exists and ChatGPT is awesome, but please, for the purposes of this course, submit your own work. Talking with each other is perfectly fine, copying/pasting code or answers from the Internet is not. My goal with this course is to teach you the topic, and I need to be able to assess your answers in order to know whether I’m succeeding or not, so I can adjust accordingly.