EE 6345

Fall 2007

Course Syllabus, Logistics, Policies & Procedures

Howdy!

Welcome to Broadband Packet Networks (EE 6345). This course deals with the hierarchical design and analysis of broadband packet networks, especially those which employ the Internet Protocol (IP) at the network layer and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) at the transport layer. Issues related to implementation are discussed in detail.

EE 6345 is an alternate core course in the Digital Systems Master's concentration. For this reason, the course is oriented towards the following course objectives:

Topics covered include:

  1. the media layer, including a review of digital communications and media properties that affect design at higher layers
  2. the datalink layer, local area networks, switching and bridging, and self-similar traffic
  3. the network layer, addressing and routing
  4. sockets, reliable, connection-oriented and unreliable, connectionless transport protocols; quality of service
  5. applications such as the World Wide Web, mobile IP, IP telephony, real-time services, and security

Last revised 07/10/2007 at 16:55.

Objectives

Upon completion of EE 6345, students are expected to be familiar with current approaches to the design and implementation of broadband packet networks. Using the knowledge that they build during the course, they should be capable of designing a local area network, including the choice of protocols, cabling, hubs, switches and routers; they should understand how to decide which services to implement on each connected computer, and understand the concepts involved in troubleshooting a local area network; they should be able to write simple socket programs for the most common transport protocols. Also, students who complete this course should understand basic design issues in interworking networks of different types, and should have a functional understanding of major Internet applications, including HTTP, HTML, RSVP, RTSP, mobile IP, and Internet security.

Course Topics

The course material is divided into seven modules. Short descriptions of the individual modules, and the expected time duration of each module, follow:

  1. Overview of packet networks (1/2 week)

    Topics covered include the design goal of host-to-host transparency, what protocols are and why they are necessary, a hierarchical approach to designing peer-to-peer links, why packets are necessary, encapsulation of data from higher layers, internetworking, and the end-to-end principle

  2. Media layer: An overview of the physical basis of digital communications (1/2 week)

    This module surveys properties of communications media that are important for broadband networks, including attenuation, dispersion, crosstalk and bandwidth, and concludes with a discussion of bit-serial versus bit-parallel transmission as a function of the transmission distance

  3. Physical layer: A review of digital communications (1/2 week)

    A summary of important concepts of digital communications, including baseband and broadband digital transmission, Shannon's coding theorem, bit signaling and bit-group signaling methods, bit error rate and bit-group error rate, and time-division and frequency-division multiplexing

  4. The public switched telephone network (PSTN) (1/2 week)

    A summary of the major architectural features of the PSTN, including digital encoding of speech, the North American Digital Hierarchy, SONET, and the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy

  5. Datalink layer (2 weeks)

    This module surveys design choices at the datalink layer and surveys common framing techniques. Implementations discussed include Ethernet/IEEE 802.3, HFC, FDDI, SLIP, HDLC, PPP, ARP, bridging, and ATM as a datalink layer

  6. Network layer (2 weeks)

    This module introduces the network layer, at which internetworked local-area and wide-area networks appear to be a single network. Topics covered include the Internet Protocol (IP), naming, addressing, routing, and label switching.

  7. Transport layer (2 weeks)

    This module covers the layer that interfaces with applications through socket calls. After a review of design condsiderations and a survey of circuit-switched network and transport protocols, sockets and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) will be discussed and illustrated.

  8. Application layer (2 weeks)

    This module describes the development of network applications, and illustrates the concepts with some of the most important current applications such as the World Wide Web, mobile IP, IP telephony, and the delivery of real-time services.

Syllabus

  1. Media layer: An overview of the physical basis of digital communications
  2. Overview of packet networks
  3. Physical layer: A review of digital communications
  4. The public switched telephone network (PSTN)
  5. Datalink layer
  6. Network layer
  7. Transport layer
  8. Application layer

Your Instructor

The course will be taught by Dr. Cyrus D. Cantrell, who received his baccalaureate degree from Harvard University and his Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Science degrees from Princeton University. His primary research fields are computational nonlinear optics as applied to the design of communications systems, statistical properties of local-area and wide-area network traffic, and computational electromagnetics as applied to the design of very-high-speed, deep-submicron VLSI circuits. His primary teaching fields are Computer Organization and Design, Broadband Packet Networks, Electromagnetic Engineering, Nonlinear Optics, Computational Electromagnetics and Computational Methods in Engineering. In recognition of his research accomplishments, Dr. Cantrell has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Optical Society of America, and the American Physical Society, and has been awarded the IEEE Third Millennium Medal. He has published over 100 technical papers, and is the author of a textbook, Modern Mathematical Methods for Physicists and Engineers, which was published by the Cambridge University Press in 2000.
 

Textbooks

Required Textbook:

Recommended Textbooks:

How to Acquire Textbooks:

Technical Requirements

In order to optimize your experience in this course, we recommend some basic hardware and software.

Hardware:

Software:

 

Course Logistics

Format:

Prerequisites

In the Graduate Catalog issued in 2006, the prerequisite for EE 6345 is EE 3350, Communications Systems, or the equivalent.

Assignments, exams and grades

Grades

Relative weights used in determining grades:

Letter grades will be assigned according to rules such as the following, based on the overall score:

The grading algorithm is subject to change at the Professor's discretion.

Assignments and Exams

University Policies

NOTICE OF POLICY ON CHEATING:

Students are expected to be above reproach in all scholastic activities. Students who engage in scholastic dishonesty are subject to disciplinary penalties, including the possibility of failure in the course and dismissal from the University. "Scholastic dishonesty includes but is not limited to cheating, plagiarism, collusion, the submission for credit of any work or materials that are attributable in whole or in part to another person, taking an examination for another person, any act designed to give unfair advantage to a student or the attempt to commit such acts." Regents' Rules and Regulations, Part One, Chapter VI, Section 3, Subsection 3.2, Subdivision 3.22.

Since scholastic dishonesty harms the individual, all students, and the integrity of the University, policies on scholastic dishonesty will be strictly enforced.

WITHDRAWING FROM COURSE & REFUNDS

UTD is guided by a state-mandated refund policy. The amount refunded depends on whether or not you remain enrolled in other courses. If you drop a class and later withdraw, your refund will reflect the combination of dropped classes and the remaining hours at the time of withdrawal.

The last date to withdraw from a Fall 2006 course with a grade of "W" is Monday, October 30. For other important dates, please refer to the Fall 2006 calendar.