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The Professor 

Dave Roberts
8833 Harness Trail
Potomac, Maryland 20854

home: 301 983-0452

cell:  240 305-8514

email: dave@webmarketingadvantage.com or robertsd@gwu.edu

Email is answered daily.  Use either email address; they both go to the same folder.  Please don’t send email to both addresses.

Course Goals 

Why would a computer science major want to take a course on internet protocols?  What does someone working in computer science care about networks?

Today, very few applications of interest use information that’s resident on only one computer.  Applications everywhere communicate with each other, between different machines, and different operating systems.

If you have a basic understanding of how the internet works, then you’ll be able to make intelligent choices of protocols to use for this communication, and you’ll be able to help solve problems when things aren’t working right between computers.  In fact, in this course you’ll learn to use WireShark, an open source network sniffer that lets you see and understand the communication that’s happening that involves your own computer.

The remarkable set of protocols that make up the Internet form the heart of the Internet, possibly the most important technical development in the computer field since the microprocessor.  Anyone who seeks a technical career, in hardware or software, can benefit from a solid understanding of Internet protocols.

The goal of the course is to give you just that understanding of the Internet protocols that are so important today. But even more important for the long haul of your career, we will cover the reasons behind the important decisions that have been made in designing these protocols, so that you’ll be well equipped to understand future developments, not just what’s there today.

At the end of the course, you’ll be able to have a conversation with networking people. They will know more about types of hardware and connectors and such things than you will know, but you will be able to tell them about how all the protocols work together.  You will be able to help them solve problems and they will thank you for your help.

You will also be well-equipped to handle questions that come up in job interviews about Internet protocols, which are a common interview topic.

We will take a high-level view of Internet protocols, that will allow us to take a rather thorough tour of Internet protocols, giving us a good technical view of all of the most important protocols.

Along our journey, we can have a little fun, too.

Course Mechanics

The course will require study every week and homework every week. There will typically be fewer than ten homework problems, and although they will have short answers, they will generally be challenging and will take some time to complete.  Programming will not be required.

There will be a reading assignment.  You are responsible for reviewing it and making sure that you are familiar with it.

Our focus throughout will always be on “How does it work?” and “Why does it work that way?”   The idea is to understand how each protocol works and why it was designed that way–what was the choice of tradeoffs that was made.  The Internet provides an example of great design decisions throughout.  Understanding how those basic decisions were made will put you in good shape to understand how the Internet evolves.

You will also get to choose a project topic in Internet protocols that interests you, and  give a short talk on it at the end of the course. The course goes fast and covers a lot of material, so there are many topics of interest that we don’t have time to talk about in detail. These two classes, when the project presentations are given, can be the most interesting of the whole term, because of the interest each student brings to the topic.

Assingments

Homework will be assigned weekly on Blackboard, where answers are to be submitted. Limit each answer to fifty words. For ease of grading and for security, please do not include attachments to your homework.  Homework is due at the start of class.

Remote Instruction

The course will be taught remotely.  All the lectures are on videos, that you can watch at your convenience.  Each week, you’ll watch the videos of the lectures, read relevant chapters in the  book, and complete the assignment.  Our Zoom class meetings won’t be lectures, they’ll be conversations, where we go over the important points covered in the week’s materials.  You’ll be graded for the knowledge that you demonstrate at each class; this will serve as our exams, so there will not be a conventional midterm or final.

In place of a conventional final exam, you’ll choose some new internet development to discuss, and you’ll present it to the class.