In addition to the tutorials, a set of practical exercises will (may?) be available as a link from the bottom of each tutorial worksheet. You may wish to work through these in your own time -- class/laboratory time is not allocated for this purpose. These exercises are designed to enhance your learning in Computer Networks, and may be of particular value to any "operational" learners in the class.
Email Protocol: Note that you should always (ALWAYS!) use a subject line of the form:
Subject: [INT21CN] rest of subject lineif you want to ensure that I read your mail. Exercise: why?
Note: later in the semester I will be distributing a guide to electronic submission of assignments. The email address for assignment submission is different from your lecturer's normal email address. Do not attempt to send ordinary email to the assignment submission address.
http://ironbark.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au/subjects/int21cn/
The subject Web pages have all of the lecture material, tutorial work sheets, practical exercises, and news about the subject. You should check (at least) the subject home page regularly. Note that lecture/tute material is now (experimently for 2003) updated in place.
latrobe.bendigo.comp.dcom
-- not much used anymore, and only accessible from within La Trobe
anyway.
This subject is provides a "top-down" overview of the technology and design of computer networking systems. We begin with network applications and application protocols, then progress "downwards" through the various "layers" -- transport, network, link and, finally, physical. Then in (approximately) the second half of the unit we cover a range of "miscellaneous" topics, principally encryption, network security and network management. The Internet ("TCP/IP") protocols are used exclusively: it's fair to say that the Internet is now "The Only Game In Town", and other protocol architectures are nowadays of purely "academic" interest.
One crucial aspect of the subject is that it will not shy away from discussion of the "P" word (politics) where this seems necessary to understand the technology.