EE 706 - Communication Networks

Course offered in:

Spring 2013-2014

Instructor:

Prof. Gaurav Kasbekar

Importance of this course:

A must course for DD CSP students. You get to know how communication networks function, how reliability is ensured, how the congestion in the network is controlled, etc. In short, it answers many questions which we as CSP students would have wanted to do or rather we should know. It is one of the those courses which are important as well as interesting. So, B. Tech and DD micro students can take it up as well.

Course Contents:

  • Overview and Fundamentals: Key networking functions (reliable data transfer, medium access control, routing, congestion control), overview of Internet architecture, commonly used physical media, circuit switching and packet switching, network performance metrics (throughput, delay, packet loss, jitter), layering, message segmentation
  • Reliable Data Transfer: Stop-and-Wait, Go-Back-N and Selective Repeat Protocols
  • Medium Access Control: Random access protocols: ALOHA, Slotted ALOHA, CSMA-CD, CSMA-CA, Ethernet, bridges and switches
  • Routing: Shortest path algorithms (Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford), congestion-based routing and stability issues, optimal routing, minimum spanning tree algorithms (Kruskal, Prim), broadcasting algorithms
  • Congestion Control: End-to-end and network assisted congestion control, rate adjustment algorithms, max-min fairness, analysis of TCP congestion control
  • Wireless and Mobile Networks: cellular networks, wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, 802.11 Wireless LANs (WiFi), mobility management

Prerequisites:

None, EE 225 can come in handy when studying graph theory though sir will go through the basic concepts again.

Grading:

Quizzes (best 2 out of 3): 10 % each

Mid-sem: 35 %

End-sem: 45 %

Grading was decent. Mostly grades were concentrated around BB and BC. Only 1 FR was given out of 103.

Feedback:

Lectures:

The professor taught this course well. At times, he went a bit too quickly through the slides, but since this was the first time he was taking this course, he will surely improve on this the next year. Lecture slides are uploaded on the very same day of the lecture. Attending lectures will save you a lot of time when you will be going through the PPTs before the exam. So, do attend the lectures.

Assignments:

8 Homeworks were uploaded but they were not to be submitted. They were just for practice. There was at least one question (may be slightly tweaked) in every exam from the homeworks.

Exams:

The paper consists of a mix of easy and difficult questions. Pattern was always like a couple of questions from homeworks, some easy questions (simple application of concepts), then some questions which required decent amount of thinking and clarity of concepts. So, all in all a very balanced paper, may look tough if understanding of the concepts is weak.

Textbooks/References:

  1. J. Kurose, K. Ross, “Computer Networking: A Top Down Approach”, Fifth Edition, Pearson Education, 2010
  2. D. Bertsekas, R. Gallager, “Data Networks”, Second Edition, Prentice Hall India, 1992 (Available at:http://web.mit.edu/dimitrib/www/datanets.html)

Other References:

  1. A. Tanenbaum, D. Wetherall, “Computer Networks”, Fifth Edition, Pearson Education, 2012.
  2. L. Peterson, B. Davie, “Computer Networks: A Systems Approach”, Fifth Edition, Morgan Kaufmann, 2012.
  3. A. Kumar, D. Manjunath, J. Kuri, “Communication Networking: An Analytical Approach”, Morgan Kaufmann, 2004.
  4. A. Leon-Garcia, I. Widjaja, “Communication Networks: Fundamental Concepts and Key Architectures”, Second Edition, Tata McGraw Hill, 2004.

Review by Prakhar Khandelwal (khandelwalprakhar77@gmail.com)