Spring 2010 ECEN4533 Data Communications
Instructor: Dr. George Scheets
E-Mail: george.scheets@okstate.edu
Phone: (405)744-6553
Tentative Office Hours: Engineering South 303
1:30 - 2:30 pm, Monday, Wednesday - Friday
1:00 - 2:00 pm, Tuesday
Grading: 560 points total. 2 quizzes (40 points), 2 exams (200 points), 1 comprehensive final
exam (150 points), 2 projects (150 points), 1 homework exercise (20 points).
Late projects are accepted at a cost of 1 point per working day past the due date.
Students missing an exam or the final without notifying the instructor in advance will receive a zero.
At the instructor's option, make-up exams will be available for non-business related reasons, but will be harder. These make-ups will be given on the scheduled make-up time, which is Friday, May 7th, at 1600 hours.
No make-up quizzes will be given.
Grade Scale: 90/80/70 % = A/B/C etc. (initially). Final break points will be curved.
Cheating: Don't do it! Quizzes and exams should be your own work. The projects should be your
own or your team's work. Expect to get an 'F' for the course if you are caught cheating on a quiz,
exam, or project.
Required Text: Computer and Communication Networks, Nader Mir, Prentice Hall, 2007,
ISBN 0-13-174799-1.
Recommended Text: High Performance TCP/IP Networking, Mahbub Hassan & Raj Jain,
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004, ISBN 0-13-064634-2.
Prerequisites: Previous (or concurrent) course in probability and statistics. Knowledge of
spreadsheet use, programming tools such as MathCAD or MatLab, or a programming language
such as C, is highly advised for the design problems.
Course Objectives: To give the student a solid background of design and performance issues
associated with data networks.
Web Assistance:
Homework Solutions: Quiz #1 to Exam #1
Design Problem #1 (1 February 2010: Typo corrected on bottom of page 2)
Homework Solutions: to Quiz #1
Wireshark
wikipedia (acronyms and tutorials)
Online Articles:
Scheets, G., Parperis, M., Singh, R. "Voice over the Internet: A Tutorial discussing Problems and Solutions associated with Alternative Transport", IEEE Communications Surveys, June 2004.
Lubacz, J., "The IP Syndrome", IEEE Communications, February 2000.
Old Tests:
Exam #1 2007 2008 2009
Exam #2 2007 2008 2009
Final 2007 2008 2009
Old Quizzes:
Course Outline:
Channel Capacity (Hertz versus bits/second)
OSI 7 Layer Model
Moving a File: Packetization & Encapsulation
Time to Move a File: Using Time-Distance Diagrams
Internet Protocol
Multiplexing: FDM, TDM, StatMux, CDM
Switching: Circuit, Packet, Cell
Network Building Blocks: Hubs, Switches, Routers
Design Problem #1
Public Switched Telephone Network
Leased Line Networks
Ethernet
Packet Format
CSMA/CD MAC
Deployment: Shared to Switched Network
Flavors
Difference between MAC address & IP address
Frame Relay
The Internet
Routers
Subnets
Performance Issues: TDM vs. StatMux & Infinite Buffers
Review of Probability & Statistics
Important Theories & Axioms
Important Probability Density Functions
Mean & Variance
Autocorrelation Function
Queuing Theory
M/M/1 & M/D/1 Queues
Inverse Multiplexing: M/M/N Queues
Queues with Priorities
The Failure of Poisson Modeling
Hurst Parameter & Self-Similarity
Design Problem #2
Carrying Capacity
Circuit Switched TDM
Packet Switched StatMux
Cell Switched TDM/StatMux
End System Traffic Management
Normalized Propagation Delay
Stop & Wait
Sliding Window
Go Back N versus Selective Repeat
Transmission Control Protocol
Background
Flow Control: Slow Start & Linear Congestion Avoidance
Retransmission Timers
Transmitter Retransmission Policies
Receiver Accept Policies
Window Management
Network Survivability
Real Time Traffic
Voice & Video over IP
Wireless Networks
RF fundamentals
Power Loss & Link Equation
CSMA/CA
IEEE 802.11 WiFi
MIMO
FEC codes
last major update 4 January 2010