Course Syllabus

• [ video ] A Quick Tour of Part 1

• Introduction Presentation
• Course Roadmap

• Ethernet Media
• Low-Loss Co-axial Cable
• 10B5 Thick Ethernet
• Types of Network
• Nodes Connected by links to Form LANs
• Protocol Layers

• {10B2 Thin Ethernet (low cost co-axial cable)}

[ video ] Link Layer Ethernet Frames

• Medium Access Control Frame Format
• Format of the address field in MAC; Size of MAC header
• Destination Address
• Broadcast, Multicast, and Unicast Addresses
• Simplex, Duplex and Half-Duplex Information Flow

• Access to the Shared Medium
• [ video ] Carrier Sense And Listen Before Talk
  Checking for Other Users (CS).
• ALOHA and Slotted ALOHA
• Loss and Retransmission using Timers

• Collision Detection (CD)
• Ethernet Transceiver (Detection of current)
• Jam Signal
• Exponential Back-off
• Need to Avoid Congestion
• Slot Time
• Capture

• [ video ] Introduction to Transceivers

• Carrier Sense with Collision Avoidance using CSMA/CA
• Calculations Involving Ethernet (Try the Problem Sheet)

• Movement of Bits
• Properties of the Physical Layer
• Synchronous Transmission
• Shift Register; Transmission Bit Order
• NRZ Encoding
  
• Manchester Encoding Operation; Signal Bandwidth

• Transceiver
• Bit Timing and Clocks
• Clock Encoding; Need for a DPLL
• Preamble
• Start of Frame Delimiter

• Throughput and Utilisation
• Calculation of Utilisation and Throughput

• MAC Header
• CRC-32
• Discard of Frames with an Invalid CRC
• Discard of Frames with an Invalid Length
• Normal and Promiscuous Modes

• {Wireless Ethernet (WiFi)}
• {Wireless Access using CSMA/CA}
• {The "Hidden Node" Problem in Wireless Ethernet}
• {User Priority}

• Collision Domains

• Operation of Repeaters at the Physical Layer
• Regeneration of Timing
• Ethernet Repeaters as Wiring Hubs

• Repeaters Participation in CSMA/CD

• 10BF Fibre Optic Links (Point-to-point fibre links)
• Fibre Optic Transceivers

• {The 5-4-3 Repeater Rule}

• 10BT
• Twisted Pair Cable
• Differential Transmission
• UTP Cable Categories
• 10BT Hub

• Forwarding to an Output Port (Observing destination address)
• Flooding of Broadcast, Multicast and Unknown Destination Addresses
• Filtering of a Specified Destination Address

• Source Address
• Learning Local Addresses (Observing the source address in promiscuous mode)
• Aging of Address Table Entries

• IEEE Spanning Tree Protocol
• Bridge PDUs
• Root Election
• Network Partition
• Spanning Tree Tutorial

• {Filtering And Security:}

• {Over-riding the Normal Learning of Local Addresses}
• {Network DeviceManagement}
• {Tracking Usage and Protecting from Mis-usage}

• Synchronous Transmission
• 4b5 Clock Encoding
• MLT-3 Line Encoding
• Fibre Interfaces for 100 Mbps

• Interference
• Use of Scrambler for Energy Dispersal
• Eye Diagrams

• {LANs in Other Environments}

• {Use of VLANs to Build Enterprise IP Networks}
• { 802.1pQ Tags and VLAN IDs}
• {Virtual LANs}

• Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbps)
• 8b10b Clock Encoding
• Scrambler
• Four Physical Layer Channels
• PAM-5 Line Encoding for UTP
• Line Encoding for Fibre

• Higher Bandwidth Cable
• Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP); Shielded Twisted Pair (STP)
• Cable Types: CAT-5, CAT-5e, CAT-6, CAT-6a, CAT-7, CAT-7a
• Higher Speed Communication at 10, 40, 100 Gbps, and Higher

• [ video ] Power over Ethernet

• {Power over Ethernet (PoE)}
• {Examples of using Ethernet in an Enterprise, and VLANs}
• {Examples of using Ethernet in a Data Centre}

• Format of Exam

• The Internet as a Collection of Inter-Connected Networks
• End Systems (ES) (e.g., Client or server)
• Intermediate Systems (IS) (e.g., Router
• The Internet as a Wide-Area Network
• Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

• Datagrams
• Best Effort Service
• Protocols Operating Between Layers in the Stack
• Packet-Switched Networks and Pipelining; The Internet

• The Internet Protocol
• IPv4 over Ethernet
• Difference between Packets (network layer) and Frames (link layer)
• IP Header Fields: Source Address, Destination Address, Size, Checksum, Protocol Type.
• Encapsulation of a Protocol Data Unit (PDU)
• Addition of Headers on Transmission
• Removal of Headers on Reception
• Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU)
• 1500 B MTU Size for Ethernet

• IP Network Address
• IP Source Address of Sender
• IP Destination Address of Remote Destination

• Names and Addresses
• Flat and Hierarchical Structures
• Servers and the DNS
• The DNS Protocol

• Hardware Address (i.e. LAN MAC address)
• Difference between Network Address and Link Hardware (Frame) Address
• Address Resolution (ARP)
• ARP Server and Client
• Broadcast Address for Request
• Unicast Reply
• Information Exchanged by an ARP Request and Reply
• Need to cache results for sending later packets
• Gratuitous ARP (arp using own IP address)

• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
• Use of Packets to Obtain a Lease of a Source IP Address
• The DHCP Server
• Other network information supplied with a DHCP Lease
• Caching DHCP information at the client and use of Addresses

• Packet Forwarding by Routers
• Routers
• Operation of Routers
• Difference between Routing and Bridging

• ICMP
• Error Reporting
• Ping: Using ICMP echo request and echo reply
• Practical familiarity with using "ping"
• Use to see if a computer is operating (alive)
• Use to measure Round Trip Response Time

• Endpoint decision whether to send directly or use the default router
• Network-layer Fields Updated during Routing (including (TTL) field to prevent looping)
• Routing Tables
• Alternate Paths
• {Routing Protocols to dynamically construct the table}
• Network Address
• IP Netmask and subnets
• IP Broadcast

• Routing
• Routing Table
• Using the Time To Live (TTL) Field to Detect Path Hops
• The Traceroute Tool and Difference to Ping
• Effect of Asymmetric Routing, Packet Loss, etc.

• Functions of the Transport Service
• Peer to Peer Communication between Remote Layers
• Encapsulation by the Network Layer (and demux)

• User Datagram Protocol
• UDP Packet Format
• The Transport Checksum

• Source and Destination Ports
• Demultiplexing to the Application using Transport Ports
• {Sockets programming interface - not assessed}

• Decoding Ethernet Frames
• Using the Packet Header Table
• Frames carrying IPv4 and IPv6 Packets
• Other Frame Formats (try the decode problem, and check your answer)
• Familiarise yourself with the Class Decoding Test.

• IPv6 Packet Header