Course content
The three chapters start with what the Internet is made of, then follow a packet down the protocol stack from the application layer to the transport layer.
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Chapter 1
Computer Networks and the Internet
What is the Internet made of, and where does the time go?
Hosts, links, packet switching, the four delays, and layering.
Learning outcomes
- Describe what the Internet is made of, and what it does for the programs running on it.
- Identify hosts, access networks, and the physical media that connect them.
- Explain packet switching, store-and-forward, and how a queue forms.
- Explain why the Internet is a hierarchy of separately owned, interconnected networks.
- Compute the four delays, traffic intensity, and end-to-end throughput.
- Explain layering and encapsulation as the way a huge system stays manageable.
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Chapter 2
The Application Layer
How does your program talk to a program on another machine?
The Web, naming, mail, sockets, and getting content to millions of people.
Learning outcomes
- Explain how a network application is built from processes, sockets, and a transport service.
- Read a real HTTP request and response, and say what every line of it does.
- Trace a name through the Domain Name System hierarchy to an address.
- Compare the push protocol that sends mail with the pull protocols that fetch it.
- Compute response times, link utilization, and how long a file takes to reach many people.
- Write a client and a server over both transport protocols, and serve a web page from your own code.
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Chapter 3
The Transport Layer
How do bytes arrive intact over a network that loses them?
Multiplexing, reliable transfer, connection setup, and congestion control.
Learning outcomes
- Explain what a transport protocol adds to a network that only carries packets between hosts.
- Trace an arriving segment to the one socket it belongs to, under both transport protocols.
- Explain why an application chooses UDP, and compute the checksum that detects a damaged segment.
- Build a protocol that is correct over a channel that corrupts and loses packets, one repair at a time.
- Compute what stop-and-wait wastes, and trace how Go-Back-N and Selective Repeat recover a loss.
- Interpret the TCP segment: sequence numbers that count bytes, and a timeout from measured round trips.
- Dissect a connection: how it recovers a lost segment, spares a slow receiver, and opens and closes.
- Judge whether congestion control shares a bottleneck fairly, and what happens when it does not.