La Trobe University, Bendigo
Division of Information Technology
BITCNE: Computer Networks
Assignment 2 1999
Your task in this assignment is to investigate one only of the
following topics in computer network architecture, and submit a
report on your findings.
Note that the topics are about, or related to, application-level
protocols in the Internet.
Each of the topics has a "theory" section, where you have to look
up the information somewhere (presumably on the 'net), and
a "practical" section where you have to demonstrate how
the particular system under discussion actually operates in
practice. You must complete both sections to gain a high mark.
Note also that additional topics might appear on this page as they
are suggested to me. It could be worth checking back regularly if you
don't like any of those given below.
- HTTP Proxies
-
- Theory
- What gets sent to a
proxy server? What happens at the proxy server? What is a squid
in the context of proxy servers?
Briefly discuss the limitations of proxy servers for HTTP.
- Practical
- How effective is La Trobe's proxy server? Use Telnet
(as described in the lectures) to GET a Web page from the proxy server.
Can you tell if the page was cached? How?
- PUT Method
-
- Theory
- In the lecture, we looked at the GET and HEAD methods
of HTTP/1.0, and later we will look at the POST method. We hardly
mentioned the PUT method at all.
Your task: find out all about the PUT method of HTTP/1.0
and write about how it works. In particular, describe how
authentication is handled in the PUT method.
- Practical
- Use an HTML browser/editor which understands PUT, such as
the W3 consortium's
amaya
(it's possible recent versions of
Netscape
might work as well). Use the PUT feature and
document how it works compared to alternative techniques for achieving
the same result.
- USENET (Newsgroups)
-
- Theory
- Investigate the "Usenet" electronic news system, with attention
to the following points: How does the news system actually work, in terms of
architecture, storage and transfer of "articles"? What is the function of
the
Network News Transfer Protocol
(NNTP) in the news system? Who is Emily Postnews?
- Practical
- Post a message to newsgroup
latrobe.test
,
or some other appropriate group. Save your posted message from your favourite
news reader software and analyse its headers.
- Internet Time Protocols
-
- Theory
- Investigate the use of the network to allow systems to
set their system time accurately. There are several degrees of complexity
in this question: you should not allow yourself to become too
immersed in detail, rather your should provide an overview of the techniques
and protocols which are used.
- Practical
- Assuming have a computer which you use to dial in to
the Internet, configure your system
to set its time from
ironbark
(or some other timeserver if you
know a better one). Document the steps involved. How does your system
handle timezones? How accurate would you
expect your system's clock to be when set from a remote system? Note that if
you don't dial in, you can't really do this question
- TELNET Option Negotiation
-
- Theory
- Investigate the option negotiation techniques used in the TELNET
protocol. Explain what Telnet does in relation to option negotiation
when you use it do debug other application level protocols such as HTTP.
- Practical
- You can only tackle this problem if your version of Telnet
(the program, not the protocol it implements) supports logging.
This is certainly the case in all Unix versions I'm aware of, but may not
be true for all PC or Mac versions. Use the logging feature of Telnet to
examine the option negotiation which occurs when you log into one or more of
our Unix systems on campus from another system. Document what you find.
- Other
- Any other appropriate application protocol-related topic with the
explicit prior approval of the lecturer.
You should expect to write something between 1500 and 3000 words on the
topic of your choice, although this is not mandatory. You can
submit your assignment using either traditional hard copy (paper)
form, or as an email attachment
of MIME type text/html
sent to
cnsubmit@ironbark.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au
, as for the
first assignment. Your choice of submission format will not affect
the mark gained for your assignment.
Submissions must, as usual, adhere to the requirements of the La Trobe
University, Bendigo Assignment Guide.
This assignment carries 15% of your mark for Computer Networks.
Due Date: At the end of May, 1999
Lecturer: Phil Scott, 5444 7277,
p.scott@latrobe.edu.au.
Phil Scott