Justin M. LaPre

CSCI 4220, Network Programming

Spring 2018

Dr. Justin M. LaPre
Department of Computer Science
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th Street Troy, New York 12180
Course web site: https://piazza.com/rpi/spring2018/csci4220
Office Hours: Amos Eaton 206, Monday and Thursday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. (and by appointment).
Class Time and Location: DCC 318, Monday and Thursday, 4 p.m. to 5:50 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 half of each class will be classic lecture-style while the second half of class will be closer in nature to a lab. Accompanying documents will be available via either Piazza or Submitty. Students should bring their laptops as they will be required for the lab portion.

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

Undergraduate Mentors

Schedule of Topics

Date Topic
1/18 History / OSI model; Unix commands
1/22 Prof. LaPre unavailable, possible guest lecture TBA
1/25 Prof. LaPre unavailable, possible guest lecture TBA
1/29 High level UDP and TCP/IP; UDP sockets
2/1 Byte ordering, misc. inet functions
2/5 tftp; Sorcerer’s Apprentice; SIGALRM
2/8 TCP sockets (SOCK_STREAM); Client / server model
2/12 select (I/O Multiplexing); Bonjour (Zeroconf) / Service Discovery
2/15 TCP 3 Way Handshake, TCP States, TCP Close
2/20 TCP congestion control, ACK, windows, etc
2/22 Design Patterns
2/26 Network Protocols
3/1 Threads
3/5 IRC
3/8 Broadcasting
3/12-3/16 SPRING BREAK
3/19 rsync
3/22 Bit Torrent / DHT / P2P
3/26 Socket Options; Bufferbloat, ECN
3/29 CORBA
4/2 IPv4/IPv6 addressing, DNS, gethost*(), nslookup
4/5 No class
4/9 HTTP
4/12 SSL
4/16 MPI
4/19 OpenMP
4/23 Alternatives to TCP: QUIC, SCTP
4/26 IPFS
4/30 Overflow Day

Schedule of Assignments 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 Assignments 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. However, additional late days can be earned for every six points (not labs) earned through labs.

Late Labs Policy: Late labs will not be accepted but three bonus labs will be awarded to all students. For example, if you miss 4 of 10 labs, you will only be penalized for missing 1. Your lab score cannot rise above 100%.

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: Your submission must include the following items:

Programming assignments are graded as follows: 25% for proper comments (e.g., each function should indicate what it does) and 75% for a correct working implementation. We typically divide the correctness points over key functions working. For example, reading -- worth 20 points, writing -- worth 20 points, and then doing the calculation correctly -- worth 35 points. Note that programs that either don't compile or generate a core dump typically get no more than 20 points of the 75. Thus, your max score for a "properly commented" program that fails in some fundamental way is only 45 points even if you spent 100 hours of time on it.

Compatibility: All assignments MUST compile with clang++ and run on Ubuntu 14.04. This is the compiler and operating system on Submitty so you will have no problems meeting this requirement. It is worth noting that not all valid C programs are valid C++ programs. All C files must compile cleanly with clang++.

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, 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: