Justin M. LaPre

CSCI 4220, Network Programming

Spring 2017

Dr. Justin M. LaPre
Dr. Herbert O. Holzbauer
Department of Computer Science
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th Street Troy, New York 12180
Course web site: https://piazza.com/rpi/spring2017/csci4220
Dr. LaPre Office Hours: Amos Eaton 206, Tuesday and Friday, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. (and by appointment).
Dr. Holzbauer Office Hours: MRC 304, Thursday, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm.
Class Time and Location: Amos Eaton 214, Mondays and Thursdays, 6 p.m. to 7:50 p.m.

Like the Constitution, this syllabus should be considered a "living document" in that it is subject to change. You will be notified of any changes made.

Course Description

Programming with an overview of the principles of computer networks, including an overview of the OSI reference model and various popular network protocol suites. Concentration on Unix interprocess communication (IPC), network programming using TCP and UDP, as well as client-side and mobile programming. Programming projects in C are required.

The first 20-30 minutes of lecture will be covered by Dr. Holzbauer. Mondays will typically be guided RFC study (or something similar) while Thursdays will quiz you on the topics from the previous lecture. Additionally, students SHOULD bring their laptops on Thursdays as they will be required for the online quiz. Afterwards, Dr. LaPre will continue with the remainder of lecture.

Prerequisite CSCI 4210 (Operating Systems).

Required Textbooks

Unix Network Programming, Volume 1: The Sockets Networking API, 3rd Edition (2003), by W. Richard Stevens et al. Amazon link.

Graduate Teaching Assistants

We have two Graduate TAs assigned to our class.

Schedule of Topics

1/19 History / OSI model
1/23 C background
1/26 Unix commands
1/30 High level UDP and TCP/IP
2/2 Byte ordering, socket creation, misc. inet functions
2/6 Client / server model
2/9 Client / server model
2/13 UDP sockets
2/16 Bonjour (Zeroconf) / Service Discovery
2/21 TCP 3 Way Handshake, TCP States, TCP Close
2/23 TCP congestion control, ACK, windows, etc
2/27 Broadcasting
3/2 Bit Torrent / DHT / P2P
3/6 TCP sockets (SOCK_STREAM)
3/9 Overflow Days
SPRING BREAK
3/20 select (I/O Multiplexing)
3/23 Socket Options
3/27 IPv4/IPv6 addressing, DNS, gethost*(), nslookup
3/30 IPv4/IPv6 addressing, DNS, gethost*(), nslookup
4/3 HTTP
4/6 Overflow Days
4/10 SSL
4/13 RPI Sec A (SSL-related?)
4/17 MPI
4/20 RPI Sec B
4/24
4/27
5/1 Overflow Days

Schedule of Projects and altered class days

Grading and Other Class Policies

We will also be using Submitty (AKA the homework server). Details will follow on Piazza.

Attendance Policy: Attendance at lectures is not required, but be aware that I may include material not necessarily covered in the text or on the web page. You are responsible for all announcements made in lecture (e.g., any change in due dates).

Late Projects Policy: Three late days are permitted for assignments. They will be consumed in whole day increments. In other words, if you are one hour late, that will count as one day. 25 hours late will count as two days, etc. Once these are exhausted, late assignments will not be graded.

Grade Disputes: Grade disputes must be made within 10 days. After 10 days has elapsed, the grade on record will stand.

Grade Modifiers Policy: Grade modifiers will be used in this class. See the course catalog for more details. There is no A+ nor is a D- allowed under the RPI Grade Modifier Policy.

Assignment Grading Criteria: Programming assignments are graded as follows: 15% for proper comments (e.g., each function should indicate what it does) and 85% for a correct working implementation. We typically divide the correctness points over key functions working. For example, reading -- worth 10 points, writing -- worth 10 points as file correctly, and then doing the calculation correctly -- worth 65 points. Note that programs that either don't compile or generate a core dump typically get no more than 20 points of the 85. Thus, your max score for a "properly commented" program that fails in some fundamental way is only 35 points even if you spent 100 hours of time on it.

Compatibility: All assignments MUST compile and run on Ubuntu 14.04.

Students With Special Needs

Federal law requires all colleges and universities to provide specified types of assistance to students with disabilities. If you require such assistance, please obtain an authorizing memo from Disability Services for Students by contacting the Student Health Center. Information about a student's special needs will be treated as confidential. Please submit a copy of your authorizing memo to your professor well in advance of any affected exam or assignment. Failure to do so may result in a lack of special accommodations.

Academic Integrity

While I strongly encourage you to form study groups and work together in learning this material, the course project, homeworks and programming assignments are to be done individually unless otherwise noted by the assignment/project specification. What this means is that you should do whatever is necessary to ensure your work remains your work. If during in the grading process, it is determined that students shared or duplicated work, those students will automatically score a zero for the offense. For a second offense, the student or students involved will fail this course and a report will be sent to the Dean of Students office which could result in additional disciplinary action. Additionally, undergraduates offenders cannot mentor in the future. In the event a graduate student is caught cheating, that student will fail.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

Justin M. LaPre — Computer Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute