Introduction
Large-scale networks as the Internet are crucial for day-to-day communication and nowadays affect all areas of life. In parallel, near-field communication and personal area networks are becoming increasingly important for connecting the digital with the physical world and in particular an individual's health. Building and harnessing these communication systems requires in-depth understanding and practical experience on the concepts of networking as well as network programming and troubleshooting methods. Starting from the application layer, all important parts and components of networks are explained, down to some of the physical aspects of wired and wireless technology. Most importantly, these considerations are not only done in theory but are accompanied with hands-on labs, to apply the learned concepts in practical scenarios.
The Telecommunications Lab at Saarland University is offering this course to teach networking fundamentals to undergraduates, as these topics are not part of the mandatory curriculum in Computer Science Bachelor program.
Curriculum
The course covers four major areas, giving you practical and theoretical knowledge to create, maintain and advance network environments, which are essential for today's fully-connected world. The following questions (among others) will be answered in this course:
- Foundations of Communication and Networking.
- What are buffers and queues for, why do you need sequence numbers and what is the advantage of push over pull?
- Why are forwarding and routing not the same and what makes a hub different from a switch?
- Top-down Tour through the ISO/OSI Model.
- How do applications, such as HTTP and Email, use the Internet as a communication infrastructure, e.g. using TCP or UDP connections?
- How are packets forwarded across a cable, a sub-network and even across the Internet itself?
- Designing and Troubleshooting Small Networks.
- How to use WireShark for network analysis and GNS3 for network simulation?
- How can I write my own firewall rules and fix misconfigurations in a network?
- Development of Network Applications.
- How to write server and client applications for the next exciting Internet application?
- How to modify data streams to ensure reliable transmission over unreliable networks?
Organization
- Credit Points: 6 (ungraded, except for Systems Engineering students)
- Format: Lab (Praktikum)
- Audience:
- Bachelor Students (typically in 3rd semester or higher, highly motivated 1st semester are also welcome).
- If you are a Master Student you can still participate, but as you might have attended the "Data Networks" core lecture or a similar course at another university, large parts of the theory we cover are not going to be new for you.
- Schedule:
- 2 weeks presence time (26th Feb. – 08th Mar. 2024)
- Time: 8:30 – 15:00 (lunch break roughly 12:00 – 13:00 and shorter breaks as schedule permits)
- Room: E1 3 HS003
- 2 weeks for implementing small networking projects (09th Mar. – 24th Mar. 2024)
- a small exam on March 27th
- Time: 14:30
- Room: E2 2 GHH
- Re-Exam on May 21st
- Time: 13:30
- Room: C6 3 9.05
- All the dates can be found here (as soon as they are fixed).
- 2 weeks presence time (26th Feb. – 08th Mar. 2024)
- Language:
- Lectures, Slides, Task Sheets, etc. in English.
- Some instructors and tutors speak German so no problem if you don't understand something (bei Problemen: Fragen!)
- Requisites:
- Enough motivation and drive for taking part in a short but intensive course with many new concepts.
- No prior networking knowledge required.
- Elementary programming skills required (e.g. Programmierung 2, Programmieren für Ingenieure).
- Rust skills are beneficial, but there will be tutorials on that.
- This is not an open course, admission is needed (see below).
Admission
In order to ensure that you fulfill the requirements for this course and be able to keep with the fast pace, there is an admission test before the course starts. This is to ensure that you are not disappointed when putting a lot of effort (and free time in the semester break) into a course where you cannot keep up. Furthermore, this shows that you are dedicated and take the course seriously, which is needed for a short and intensive course as this one.
- Date: 24th January 2024, 16:30
- Place: E2.2 Günter-Hotz Lecture Hall
- Duration: 30 minutes
- Topics: Boolean Algebra, Bits and Bytes, Programming (a mock test can be found under materials)
Please register for this course if you want to take part in the admission. If you just stop by, there is NO guarantee that we have a booklet for you!