Course Information for "Communication Nets"

(COGS 3100 & CS 3000)

Winter Term 1996

PROFESSOR:      John Sarraille

OFFICE:         CS 102B, CSS, Turlock CA

OFFICE HOURS:   Wed-Thurs-Fri, 11-12 and 4-5, or by appointment

EMAIL ADDRESS:  john@ishi.csustan.edu

PHONE NUMBERS:  (209) 667 - 3345 (my office),
                (209) 667 - 3185 (CS Dept.)

BASIC SCHEDULE INFO:

Class runs from 1:00 to 4:00, Wed-Thurs-Fri in D-28.  Class
time will be allocated about equally to lecture, discussion,
and lab work.  Outside of class, you should figure on having to
do at least three hours of additional lab work per week.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

1) "The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog" by Ed 
Krol, published by O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.

2) "Learning the Unix Operating System" by Grace Todino, 
John Strang, and Jerry Peek.

3) Some on-line text materials will also be employed.  
You will be told more about this later.

REQUIRED EQUIPMENT:

Each student in the class must have an account on the Computer
Center DEC machine (Toto), OR on the Computer Science Suns
(Altair and the rest) OR on the Computer Science NeXT network
(Yokuts and the others).  The main thing is that each student
must have access to a sufficiently rich set of networking
facilities and applications.  Students without such an account
will sign up for one during the first class.

COURSE COVERAGE & OBJECTIVES:

We will begin by making sure that everyone in the course
understands some basic things about operating Unix workstations.

We will then cover electronic mail (Email), Internet electronic
bulletin boards (Usenet), file transfer utilities (FTP), and
logging into remote computers (telnet and rlogin).

As we gain familiarity with the Internet utilities above, we
will move into an investigation of the various utilities and
"front ends" available for locating and accessing resources on
the Internet:  Whois, Archie, Gopher, WAIS, WWW, HTML, and so
on.

Along with the studies indicated above we will work to build up
a reasonably sophisticated understanding of how the Internet is
implemented

Moreover, throughout the course we will be examining questions
of proper net etiquette and ethics.

ASSIGNMENTS:

The students who are taking this course for credit fall into
two broad categories:  1) those taking it to receive elective
credit as CSS Computer Science Majors, and 2) everybody else.

Each student in EITHER category must complete FOUR HOMEWORK
ASSIGNMENTS, FOUR QUIZZES, and FOUR ARTICLE REVIEWS.

Students in the FIRST category are ALSO required to do EITHER
A) a software implementation and presentation project, OR B) a
paper and presentation project.

FOR EVERYONE IN THE CLASS:

The HOMEWORK assignments will demonstrate that you have learned
to use various computer and network services.  They will be due
Wednesdays: January 10, 17, 24, and 31.

QUIZZES will be given on January 10, 17, 24, and February 2.
They will cover material from lectures, discussions, readings,
and labs.

You must read four magazine articles on topics related to the
class.  You must do an ARTICLE REVIEW for each paper (in your
own words), in which you give a brief summary of the article,
explain why you chose to read it, what you learned from it, and
what questions it left you with.  The article reviews are to be
sent to me via electronic mail.  They must be between one and
two pages in length, double spaced, 70 characters or more to a
line.  They must cite the article, giving the author's name,
title of the article, title of the magazine, publication date,
volume or issue number(s), and page numbers.  The reviews will
be due as follows:  Reviews 1 & 2 on January 17; Reviews 3 & 4
on January 31.

FOR ELECTIVE CREDIT (COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJORS ONLY):

CSS computer science majors who have passed some programming
courses can do A SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION AND PRESENTATION.
Students will be allowed and encouraged to work in groups on
these projects.  If you choose this option, I will meet with
you, help form your group, and assign you a project based on
your skills and the needs of the Department.  You will be
expected to get the software and install it on one of the
computing systems in the CS Lab.  It is quite possible that you
will have to search for it on the Internet.  Once the software
is installed you will be expected to do a presentation in class
explaining what the software does and how to use it. 

Computer science majors who have passed Data Structures (CS
3100) or File Processing (CS 3050) may choose to do a PAPER AND
PRESENTATION.  They will read two related scholarly articles on
a topic closely related to internetworking, write an
informative summary of the articles, and do a half-hour
presentation on the material for the class.  The articles will
be chosen from issues of the ACM Communications, IEEE Computer,
and other materials I will make available.  I will also provide
a set of guidelines for how the paper will be written and how
the presentation should be done.

CS majors must settle with me all the details of what they will
do for their project by January 12, else they cannot receive
credit.  January 26 is the deadline for completing the work on
the project, including the presentation.  Presentations may be
made earlier, and I prefer this, so that we don't have all the
presentations on the same day.  Groups can contact me by email
anytime to arrange a time slot for their presentation.

GRADES:

CSS Computer Science Majors taking the course for elective
credit will be graded by giving equal weight to their chosen
project grade, homework grade average, quiz grade average, and
article review grade average.

The other students in the course will be graded with equal
weight given to homeworks, quizzes, and article reviews.

FREE LUNCH!

I hope to be accessible and helpful to you during this course.
I want you to get as much as possible out of it.  Remember that
education is a two-way street.  You have to do your part by
participating.  Attend class.  Listen.  Take notes.  Review
your notes before each class.  Do assignments and reading on
time.  Reply to questions.  Ask questions.  Make remarks.  If
you have something half-way interesting to say, say it!  You
don't have to stand on ceremony.  Come to office hours or see
me after class if you want to discuss something one-on-one.
And come to class prepared to have fun!

(There is no free lunch. :-)