(Latest Revision -- January 05, 2010)
(01/05/2010: Corrected a typo)

Course Description
for Communication Networks: CS 3000

CAMPUS EMPLOYEE FURLOUGHS

For the past ten years the CSU system has suffered chronic under-funding. This year, because of the state economic crisis, the budget cuts are draconian - $584 million - the worst ever in decades. The CSU administration is attempting to manage these cuts by dramatically increasing student fees and by furloughing almost all university employees, including faculty, staff and administrators. A furlough means mandatory unpaid days off for employees. For faculty, the arrangement is eight furlough days in the Fall 2009 Term, two in the Winter 2010 Term, and eight in the Spring 2010 Term

On staff and administration furlough days, many campus offices will be closed. On faculty furlough days, faculty will not be available to perform work, including teaching.

All campus staff and administrators will take their furloughs on the same days (shown here.) However each faculty member will choose his or her own furlough days. My two furlough days for the Winter 2010 Term are shown on our class schedule. Neither of them is a day that would normally be a class day..

If you want to do something about the budget situation, elimination of Winter Term after 2010, and/or the cutbacks in instruction, I strongly suggest that you write to your legislators, and to the President and Provost of our university.

TERM: Winter 2010

CLASS CODES:

10056 CS 3000 001 Communication Networks Lec 3.0 TWR 09:00-12:00 P-101
10057 CS 3002 001 Communication Networks Lab 0.0 Arr Arr

 INSTRUCTOR: John Sarraillé, Professor of Computer Science

OFFICE: P-286, Professional Schools Building (aka: Demergasso-Bava Hall), Cal State Stanislaus

OFFICE HOURS: TWR 13:00-14:00; or by appointment
(The first day of scheduled office hours is Tuesday, Jan 05 and the last is Tuesday, Feb 02.)

E-MAIL: john@ishi.csustan.edu

HOMEPAGE: http://www.cs.csustan.edu/~john/js.html

PREREQUISITES:

You have to be adequately prepared to take the course. Check with me if you have not passed Computer Programming II (CS 2500), or the equivalent.

COURSE COVERAGE & OBJECTIVES:

Networking is something you learn in layers. We will read most of the Comer book (see below) in order to learn networking starting from the lowest level and proceeding upwards. We'll concentrate on how the Internet works, but the lessons will apply more generally.

In parallel, we will work on making sure that everyone in the class has exposure to some basic networking applications. Some of the ones popular with general audiences are file download/transfer utilities (ftp and sftp), electronic mail (e-mail), the world wide web, message & chat service, IP telephone, electronic bulletin boards (Usenet), and logging in to remote computers (ssh, telnet & rlogin). For the more technically minded there are such things as arp, whois, ping, netstat, traceroute, dig, nslookup, WAIS, DNS, LDAP, and (of course) HTML.

We also want to make sure that everybody gets some hands-on exposure to networking.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

  1. Comer: Computer Networks and Internets, 5/E; by Douglas E. Comer; published by Pearson Prentice Hall; ISBN-10: 0136061273; ISBN-13: 978-0136066989. (Click here to go to Comer's "netbook" site.)

  2. Unix Book: You are required to have a good comprehensive unix reference book. Buy one of the books listed below, or something equivalent:

COMPUTER EQUIPMENT:

You are required to have an account that gives you access to all the Computer Science Department Lab computers. Most of the computers share a networked file system, and you get the same home directory, regardless of which which one you log into.

If you don't seem to have access to those computers, then let me know right away, preferably by filling out and submitting this form.

Otherwise send me an e-mail or give me a piece of paper containing the answers to the questions on the form.

NETWORK AVAILABILITY OF COURSE MATERIALS:

Course documents, assignments, supplements, and so on will be available in the class web space:

http://www.cs.csustan.edu/~john/Classes/CS3000/

Also, numerous learning aids are available here:

http://www.netbook.cs.purdue.edu/

at the textbook's web site.

BASIC SCHEDULE INFO:

Class meets Tu-Wed-Th from 09:00 to 12:00 in P-101. Always come to P-101 for the beginning of class, unless it has been announced ahead of time that we are to meet in the lab. Class will be a mix of lecture and lab activities. At times we will go to the lab (P-288) for hands-on computer work.

You will be expected to attend all classes and to keep current with the readings and topics covered in lecture and lab.

TIME COMMITMENT:

For each hour of class time, expect that about two to three additional hours of work for CS 3000 will be required. So, in a week with nine hours of class time, you might spend up to twenty-seven hours or more on CS 3000 work outside of class time.

TESTS & GRADING:

Your course grade depends on three components: quizzes on the material in Comer, three article reviews, and a course project.

Normally, your course grade will be computed by giving equal weight to your quiz average, reviews average, and project grade. The exception is that you have to get a passing score in all three categories to pass the course.