Computer Networks Overview

The lecturer

Phil Scott. I will normally be in my office during working hours. My office phone number is 5444 7277. See also, electronic mail

The tutor

Phil Scott and Ross Brown will be sharing the tutorials. A tutorial selection sheet will appear near my (Phil's) office this week.

The subject

This subject is special in 1997, because it can be taken as an "Internet-offered" subject, or in a conventional lecture and tutorial mode.

Textbooks and references

In particular, how come there's no text book? What should we do in relation to buying a book? Are there other sources of information for this subject?

Assessment

Comes in two parts:

The Exam
Assignments. In particular, what's this first assignment?

Internet Offering

This subject is one of three being offered in "Internet" mode. This means that you can study Computer Networks from home in a kind of distance education environment. All subject material will be available on the Web, and students can dial in to the campus or connect to the Web pages via their own local Internet Service Provider.

The difference between this Internet mode and traditional distance education is that of interactivity. We will be using various techniques to allow on-line discussion, attempting to simulate the environment of the traditional tutorial. Because this is the first time we have tried this mode, and because the subject concerns the actual technology being used, we should try lots of different approaches as the semester unfolds.

Conventional Classroom Offering

For those students who are resident at or near the Bendigo campus, the subject is also being offered in conventional classroom mode.
Issues which are relevant to this mode of delivery are:

When are the lectures?: Monday at 2pm and Friday at 9am.
Can the lecture times be changed?: No.
What happens with tutes?: You have to choose one tute to follow the Monday lecture, and one for the Friday lecture.
How do public holidays affect this subject in 1997?: Badly. This semester we have two Monday public holidays (Labour Day and Queen's Birthday), and two Friday public holidays (Good Friday and Anzac Day). This means we lose four lectures, meaning only 22 lectures are available. As a result, the subject will be pretty tightly constrained for time.

Support Services

Electronic mail. This should be your preferred method of contacting your lecturer, whose mail address is: P.Scott@latrobe.edu.au Early in the semester, I will expect you to communicate with me using email to confirm that my mail alias for this subject is up-to-date. Note that you should use a subject line of the form:
```
Subject: [BITCNE] rest of subject line
```
if you want to ensure that I read your mail.
Note: later in the semester I will be distributing a guide to electronic submission of assignments. This will involve an email address different from my normal email address.
Newsgroup: latrobe.bendigo.comp.dcom - Less important now that the WWW page is available.
The World Wide Web (WWW). This is the important one. All students should have a current userid on the Unix systems, and should be able to use netscape, xmosaic or lynx or similar to access the Computer Networks home page.

The Subject Area

Computer Networks are the biggest Big New Thing for decades. They are now of central importance to all of Information Technology. With the recent explosive growth of the Internet, they are rapidly becoming of crucial importance to all of modern society. It is absolutely certain that you will need to know about networks and network technology to survive in the IT workplace.

This subject aims to give a solid overview of the technologies and philosophies that are needed to understand how computer networks are built, and can be used. It also examines, in part, why some apparently illogical things are the way they are, and how human foibles can affect technology.

One crucial aspect of the subject is that it will not shy away from discussion of the "P" word (politics) where this is necessary to understand the technology.

This lecture is also available in PostScript format. There is no tutorial for this lecture.
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Phil Scott