COSC364-21S1 (C) Semester One 2021

Internet Technology and Engineering

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 22 February 2021
End Date: Sunday, 27 June 2021
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 7 March 2021
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 14 May 2021

Description

This course covers theory and practice of Internet routing and the application of mathematical optimization to network and capacity planning problems.

The Internet became a very important part of our daily lives. It is constantly evolving to accommodate new online services or to support existing services with better quality. At the core of the Internet are so-called routers and switches, their main function being to identify efficient routes for data packets and to actually forward packets in large volumes along these routes. In this course we will study Internet routing and Internet routers / switches in some detail, including the recent developments around “Software-Defined Networking” (SDN). Besides looking at technological and protocol aspects, we will also study IP traffic engineering, where techniques from mathematical optimization / mathematical programming are used to allow network operators to optimize network traffic flow to meet customer and provider objectives.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course, students will be able to:
- LO1: Explain the internet routing architecture and describe how it has grown out of scaling considerations.
- LO2: Explain and critique the OSPF routing protocol used in the internet.
- LO3: Explain router architectures and major internal algorithms (e.g. IP address lookup, packet classification).
- LO4: Explain the fundamentals and main algorithms for linear optimization, as well as their position in the broader context of mathematical optimization / programming.
- LO5: Explain and critique the formulation of traffic engineering and network flow problems as optimization problems.
- LO6: Analyze a network topology, set up and configure OSPF routing for the given topology.
- LO7: Thoroughly understand a given specification of a routing protocol and implement relevant parts of it.
- LO8: Formulate traffic engineering and network flow problems as optimization problems, solve them numerically using appropriate software packages and present the results.

Prerequisites

Course Coordinator

Andreas Willig

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Assignment 1 27 Apr 2021 30%
Assignment 2 02 Jun 2021 15%
Mid-Term Test 03 May 2021 35%
Take Home Test 28 May 2021 Pass/Fail. Students cannot pass the course if they fail this test.
Final Exam 20%

Textbooks / Resources

Students will be provided with two booklets for the main part of the course.

Additional Course Outline Information

Grade moderation

The Computer Science department's grading policy states that in order to pass a course you must meet two requirements:
1. You must achieve an average grade of at least 50% over all assessment items.
2. You must achieve an average mark of at least 45% on invigilated assessment items.
If you satisfy both these criteria, your grade will be determined by the following University- wide scale for converting marks to grades: an average mark of 50% is sufficient for a C- grade, an average mark of 55% earns a C grade, 60% earns a B- grade and so forth. However if you do not satisfy both the passing criteria you will be given either a D or E grade depending on marks. Marks are sometimes scaled to achieve consistency between courses from year to year.

Students may apply for special consideration if their performance in an assessment is affected by extenuating circumstances beyond their control.

Applications for special consideration should be submitted via the Examinations Office website within five days of the assessment.

Where an extension may be granted for an assessment, this will be decided by direct application to the Department and an application to the Examinations Office may not be required.

Special consideration is not available for items worth less than 10% of the course.

Students prevented by extenuating circumstances from completing the course after the final date for withdrawing, may apply for special consideration for late discontinuation of the course. Applications must be submitted to the Examinations Office within five days of the end of the main examination period for the semester.

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $877.00

International fee $4,438.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Computer Science and Software Engineering .

All COSC364 Occurrences

  • COSC364-21S1 (C) Semester One 2021