On this page you can find copies of the slides, whiteboard
drawings from the class, and links to additional resources posted as
soon as possible after each class. They are intended as a supplementary
material, not the official notes of the course. You are expected to take
notes taken during the class. There are many points that get discussed
in class but are not reflected in the class notes.
Reading assignments refer to the sixth edition of the textbook.
Week 1:
Week 2:
Week 3:
Week 4:
Week 5:
- Tuesday, 2/18 -
Routing loops, CIDR, private IP addresses. Basics of bridging and L2 switching, resilience and scaling of bridged networks: spanning tree protocols, VLANs.
Resources: textbook sections 4.4.2 and 5.4,
RFC 4632,
RFC 1918,
Wikipedia: Spanning Tree Protocol,
IEEE Std 802.1D - IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks: Media Access Control (MAC) Bridges
- Thursday, 2/20 -
Application Layer: basics, client and server, ports, well-known and ephemeral ports. Domain Name Service.
Resources: textbook sections 2.1, 2.5;
RFC 1034,
DNS Terminology
Week 6:
Week 7:
- Tuesday, 3/4 -
Exam review. Tool demo: nc. Email, SMTP.
Resources: textbook section 2.4
- Thursday, 3/6 -
Email, SMTP, IMAP, POP-3, webmail. MIME. Histrory of the web.
Resources: textbook section 2.4, 1.7, and 2.2
RFC 5321,
RFC 5322,
RFC 1939,
RFC 3501,
RFC 2045,
RFC 2046,
RFC 2047,
RFC 2048, and
RFC 2049
Week 8:
- Tuesday, 3/18 -
HTTP. Intro to network security.
Resources: textbook section 2.2,
RFC 2616,
HTTP Made Really Easy - A Practical Guide to Writing Clients and Servers, textbook section 8
- Thursday, 3/19 -
Encryption, goals, categories of encryption methods, public/private key cryptography, man-in-the-middle attack.
Resources: textbook section 8, History of cryptography from Wikipedia
Week 9:
- Tuesday, 3/25 -
Encryption methods, authentication, message integrity, cryptographic hash functions.
Resources: textbook chapter 8
- Thursday, 3/27 -
Public key certificates, certificate authority. Network Management, SMTP.
Resources: textbook section 8.4, chapter 9,
list of SNMP RFCs,
Net-SNMP project (open source SNMP tools and libraries)
Week :10
Week 11:
Week 12:
Week 13:
- Tuesday, 4/22 -
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), IPv6.
Resources: textbook section 4.4.3 and 4.4.4,
RFC 792,
RFC 2460,
IPv6 at the
Internet Society,
IPv6 Consortium at the UNH-IOL
- Thursday, 4/24 -
Operations of link state and distance vector routing protocols,
scaling routing protocols, Autonomous System, RIP, OSPS, BGP4; QoS in IP networks, Differentiated Services. Virtual circuit switching, MPLS.
Resources: textbook section 4.2, 4.5, 4.6, 5.5, 7.5,
RFC 2453,
RFC 2328,
RFC 4271,
RFC 2475, and
RFC 3031
Week 14:
- Tuesday, 4/29 -
Link Layer: basic concept, Data Link Control (DLC) and Media Access Control (MAC). Deterministic and stochastic (random) access methods, CSMA/CD.
Resources: textbook sections 5.1-3,
- Thursday, 5/1 -
Ethernet/IEEE 802.3, frame format, nomenclature, historical evolution. Wireless networks, IEEE 802.11 - basic concepts. Hidden terminal problem, CSMA/CA.
Resources: textbook sections 6.1-3