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 all of 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 Web, or in an RFC), 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.
NB: Students using MS-Windows systems might find these telnet hints useful.
squid
. Find out about this software, and
discuss briefly how it can be used to implement distributed
caching.
telnet
(as described in the lectures) to GET some external Web pages
via the proxy server (NB: port 8080 is used for the proxy
function). Can you tell if the page was cached? How?
Demonstrate fetching a cached page from the proxy. What other
HTTP/1.1 headers are present in the proxy response?NB: If you're outside the University networks, you won't be able to use its proxy server. In this situation you may be able to connect to your own ISP's proxy, or you may have to choose a different question!
Network News Transfer
Protocol
(NNTP) in the usenet
"news" system. NNTP is the basis of usenet and has many
interesting features. You should restrict yourself to the
features which relate to simply reading and posting articles:
descripion of the entire usenet
system's
operation is too big a task.
telnet
to connect to port 119 on a
nearby news server -- within La
Trobe,news.latrobe.edu.au
is available. If
you have commercial Internet access at home or work, your ISP
will probably have informed you of the name of your news server
when you signed up. It's often something like:
news.ISP-NAME.com.au
-- substitute your own
ISP's name in the obvious place.. Most NNTP servers support a
"HELP" command so you can easily discover what features they
offer. Use the protocol to learn what newsgroups are carried on
the news server, to obtain a list of article headers, and to
deliver an article. If you're really keen, try using the
protocol to post an article to one of the "test" newsgroups
(eg, latrobe.test).
telnet
to connect to a POP server. If
you're on a La Trobe campus, you can probably use
students.latrobe.edu.au
. Exercise some of
the protocol features mentioned in the "theory" section.
telnet
. Explain why you
can't fully debug an "active-mode" FTP session using
telnet
alone. For maximum possible marks,
demonstrate a "passive-mode" FTP file transfer (or directory
listing) using passive mode and telnet
.
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:17th May, 2002
Lecturer: Phil Scott, 5444 7277, p.scott@latrobe.edu.au.