Course Description

This course provides an in-depth examination of advanced concepts in computer networks and data communications. General topics include mobile and wireless data communications, multimedia networking, network security, network management, and data communications modelling and simulation. Additional topics in this area may be covered as time permits.

Note: Unless you have either the prerequisites for this course or written special permission from your Dean to enrol in it, you may be removed from this course and it will be deleted from your record. This decision may not be appealed. You will receive no adjustment to your fees in the event that you are dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.

Instructor Information

Course Texts

One book is required for this course, and is available for purchase from the University Bookstore or the Used Book Store on campus. A copy of this book will be made available on 2 hour reserve loan from the Allyn and Betty Taylor Library.

• J. Kurose and K. Ross. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet. Addison-Wesley: 3rd Edition.

It is also strongly recommended that you have a Python programming book to assist you as this powerful, yet incredibly easy to use language will be used in assignment work this term. Fortunately, we have access to several excellent free online texts as options for this purpose:

• D. Ascher and M. Lutz. Learning Python. O'Reilly: 2nd Edition. Available online at Safari (http://safari.oreilly.com) and also in print.
• A. Martelli and D. Ascher. Python Cookbook. O'Reilly: 2nd Edtion. Also available online at Safari and also in print.
• Swaroop C H. A Byte of Python. Available online from its offical home page (http://www.byteofpython.info).

Course Topics

The course will address as many of the following topics as time will allow:

• Mobile and wireless data communications: Satellite communications; cellular wireless networks; mobile IP; wireless LAN technologies (802.11, Bluetooth, and so on); the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP); the Wireless Markup Language; and so on.
• Multimedia networking: Multimedia networking applications; multimedia information representation; streaming stored audio and video; video and audio conferencing; voice over IP; real-time communication protocols; RSVP; differentiated services; and so on.
• Network security: Principles of cryptography; principles of information security; authentication; access control; integrity; attacks and countermeasures; secure network protocols (SSL, IPsec, and so on); practical limitations and case studies; and so on.
• Network management: Layers of network management; infrastructure for network management; the key areas of network management (accounting, security, configuration, performance, and fault tolerance); the Internet management framework and protocols (SNMP, MIBs, and so on); practical limitations and case studies; and so on.

Lecture Notes

Course lecture notes will be made available in PowerPoint and Postscript formats on the course website on a weekly basis, as they are developed. They are provided as a courtesy by the course instructor. Possessing (and even reading) these notes is not a suitable substitute for attending lectures.

Course Website

The CS457/546a website is accessible at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS457a or http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS546a. Lecture notes, assignments, and class information will be posted on this website. You are responsible for reading this information frequently.

TA Consulting Schedule

This will be announced on the course website when this information becomes available.

Computing Facilities

Each student will have access to an account on the Computer Science Department senior undergraduate computing facility, GAUL. In accepting the GAUL account, a student agrees to abide by the department's Rules of Ethical Conduct.

Note: After-hours access to certain Computer Science lab rooms is by student card. If a student card is lost, a replacement card will no longer open these lab rooms, and the student must bring the new card to the I/O counter. Likewise, if a student card ceases to provide access where it should, it should be brought the I/O counter as well. There, the operator will swipe the card, record the complaint and send the information to the Systems Group who will send notice when they have fixed the problem.

E-Mail Contact

We will occasionally need to send e-mail messages to the whole class, or to students individually. E-mail will be sent to your GAUL e-mail address. You must make sure that you read your e-mail on GAUL on a frequent and regular basis, or have it forwarded to an alternative e-mail address if you prefer to read it there.

You should note, however, that e-mail at ITS (your UWO account) and other e-mail providers such as hotmail.com or yahoo.com may have quotas or limits on the amount of space they can use. If you let your e-mail accumulate there, your mailbox may fill up and you may lose important e-mail from your instructors. Losing e-mail that you have forwarded to an alternative e-mail address is not an excuse for not knowing about the information that was sent.

Student Evaluation

Grades will be based on four assignments worth a total of 40%, a midterm exam worth 20%, and a final exam worth 40%.

If for any reason the assignment schedule given below cannot be adhered to, the assignment marks will be prorated. (The four assignments are worth 40% of the overall mark for the course. If an assignment has to be cancelled for any reason, the remaining assignment weights will be prorated to add up to 40%.)

To be eligible to receive a passing grade in the course, your mark on the final exam must be at least 40%, and your weighted average on the assignments must be at least 40%. Otherwise, the maximum overall mark you can receive is 45%. To be eligible to receive a grade of C or higher, your mark on the final exam must be at least 50%, and your weighted average on the assignments must be at least 50%. Otherwise, the maximum overall mark you can receive is 58%.

Assignment and Test Feedback

Every effort will be made to have assignments marked and handed back within 3 weeks of the handin date. Midterm exam marks will be available within 2 weeks of the exam at the latest. If we are unable to comply with our intended return dates, revised dates will be posted on the course website.

Test and Exams (tentative)

There will be no makeup midterm exam, except for students requesting a special midterm exam for religious reasons. These students must have notified the course instructor and filed documentation with their Dean's Office at least 2 weeks prior to the midterm exam. If there are other serious medical or compassionate grounds for missing the midterm exam, please take supporting documentation to the office of the Dean of your faculty, who will contact the instructor. In such cases, the weight of your midterm exam will be shifted to the final exam, which would then be worth 60% of your final overall grade.

As an important note, computer-marked multiple-choice tests and/or exams may be subject to submission for similarity review by software that will check for unusual coincidences in answer patterns that may indicate cheating.

Assignments

Due Dates (tentative)

About the Assignments

• Assignment descriptions will be posted on the course website by the dates listed above.
• Any changes, updates, and clarifications to assignments will also be posted on the website. It is your responsibility to monitor these pages closely.
• Assignments will involve programming in Python (or an alternate language), the use of operating system utilities or shell scripting, and concept questions (non-programming) related to the lecture material.
• To be eligible for full marks, assignments must run on the departmental computing equipment. You may develop assignments on your home computer, but you must allow for the amount of time it will take to get the final product working on Computer Science's machines. Further details will be provided within the assignment descriptions.

Submission of Assignments

• Paper copies of assignments are due in the course assignment lockers by midnight on the day on which they are due.
• All assignments must be type-written for legibility.
• The precise location of the assignment lockers will be announced on the course website.
• All paper copies of assignments must be accompanied by an assignment ticket so that assignments can be returned through the I/O counter. Failure to include a ticket will result in a mark deduction. Details will be given in the assignment descriptions.
• You will also be required to submit each programming assignment electronically. Details will be given in the assignment descriptions. We reserve the right to use similarity detection software to detect possible cheating cases.
• Your assignment solutions are expected to be your own work. On occasion, you may be allowed to make use of code from an outside source, such as your textbook or course notes. Check with your instructor if you are uncertain about the places in which you can use code written by another person. If you use code from an outside source when you are not explicitly allowed to by the assignment description, or use a source other than what is explicitly designated in the assignment description, you may be charged with an academic offence. With each assignment, you are required to hand in an Assignment Submission Form, on which you certify that the material you've handed in is exclusively your own work.

Late Assignment Policy

• Late assignments will be accepted for up to five days after the due date, with weekends counting as a single day; the late penalty is 5% of the available marks per day. Lateness is based on the time the assignment is removed from the locker, not on the time it was printed.
• Late Coupons
  • Each student is given 4 late coupons. These are virtual (as opposed to physical) coupons maintained by the instructors. Late coupons may be applied toward any of Assignments 1 through 4.
  • Each coupon can be thought of as a potential one-day assignment extension. It's entirely up to you to decide when to use your coupons; more than one coupon may be used per assignment. If you wish to use any coupons with an assignment, simply note that fact on your Assignment Submission Form.
  • When an assignment allows you to work in a team, late coupons only work on a per-student basis, and not on a per-team basis. That is, each team member must decide and specify the number of his or her own coupons to use individually; each student in the team need not use the same number of coupons on the assignment.
  • The intent of late coupons is to give you some free days in case of minor illness, work overload, etc. No other extensions will be given in such cases.
  • Coupons are not transferable to another student.
  • Once a coupon has been used, you cannot ``take it back'' to use for another assignment instead.
  • Unused coupons are not redeemable for extra marks.
  • Using a late coupon does not change the final date on which an assignment will be accepted. Whether or not coupons are used, the assignment must be handed in within 5 days of the original due date.

• Extensions will be granted only by your course instructor. If you have serious medical or compassionate grounds for an extension, you must take supporting documentation to the office of the Dean of your faculty, who will contact the instructor.

Assignment Marking

• Assignments are marked by the Teaching Assistants, who follow marking schemes provided by instructors. We will attempt to include some information about the marking criteria in the assignment descriptions.
• When assignment marking has been completed, you will be informed via the course website and/or e-mail.
• You will be able to pick up your graded assignments from the I/O counter on the third floor of Middlesex College. You must present your student card when retrieving assignments.
• A request for adjustment in an assignment mark must be made within 2 weeks of the date on which it was first available for pickup. (Beyond that date, regrading will not be considered, regardless of whether you retrieved your assignment.) Such a request must be submitted in writing, and must include specific reasons why you believe you deserve more marks. The request must be accompanied by all materials that were originally handed in, as well as the original marker's grade summary sheet. Regrading requests will take a minimum of 24 to 48 hours to process; you will be informed when it is complete.
• Assignment marks may be posted periodically throughout the term. It is your responsibility to check that your marks have been recorded correctly.

Assignment Backups

It is your responsibility to keep up-to-date backups of assignment disk files in case of system crashes or inadvertently erased files. Retain disk copies of all material handed in, as well as the actual graded assignment, to guard against the possibility of lost assignments or errors in recording marks. It is not safe to discard these materials until you are satisfied that your final mark for the course has been computed properly.

Tutoring

The role of tutoring is to help students understand course material. Tutors should not write assignments or take-home tests for the students who hire them. Doing so would be considered an academic offence. Having employed the same tutor as another student is not a legitimate defence against an accusation of collusion, should two students hand in assignments judged similar beyond the possibility of coincidence.

Each term, the Department posts a list of students interested in acting as tutors for various courses. Tutors are screened for marks in an effort to determine their suitability. The Department accepts no responsibility for problems that may arise between students and their tutors.

Ethical Conduct

Plagiarism: Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence (see Scholastic Offence Policy in the Western Academic Calendar). Please note, however, that students are not allowed to make use of the work of others unless explicitly instructed to do so in the description of an assignment.

All assignments are to be exclusively your own work. If an assignment explicitly permits you to work in teams, each team is expected to act individually. You may discuss approaches to problems among yourselves; however, the actual details of the work (assignment coding, answers to concept questions, etc.) must be an individual effort. Incidents that are judged to be the result of academic dishonesty will be reported to either the Undergraduate Chair or the Graduate Chair depending on your enrolment. The selection of penalty to be applied is up to the appropriate Chair, with consultation of the instructor. Typically, for the student's first offence, the item in question will be given a mark of zero with an additional penalty equal to the weight of the item also being applied. You are responsible for reading and respecting the Faculty of Graduate Studies Regulations on Scholastic Offences, if you are taking this course as a graduate student, or the Computer Science Department's policy on Scholastic Offences, if you are an undergraduate student. All students must follow the Department's Rules of Ethical Conduct.

The University of Western Ontario uses software for plagiarism checking. Students may be required to submit their written work and programs in electronic form for plagiarism checking.