CS4270: Internet Lab

College of Computing, Georgia Tech

Fall 2008

Course Objectives

The main objective of this course is to offer students hands-on experience with networking technologies (routers, switches, hubs), networking protocols (RIP, OSPF, BGP, DHCP, NAT, DNS, TCP, UDP, SNMP, IP multicast), and networking tools (tcpdump, netstat, ping, traceroute). Additionally, the course covers the main Internet protocols in greater technical depth than a basic networking course. The only prerequisite is CS3251 or an equivalent first course in computer networks.

Instructor

Teaching Assistant

Table of Contents

Course Information

``What's New'' and Important Reminders

Textbooks

We will use the following two textbooks. The first (referred to as the "lab manual") describes the lab exercises. The second (referred to as the "textbook") is a quite technical description of the key Internet protocols and technologies that we will cover in the lectures.

Other good references:

Syllabus - Lectures and lab schedule (subject to minor changes)

Lab exercises: rules, schedule and notes

The lab exercises are described in the Lab Manual. Each exercise has a "prelab" section that you will need to study before doing the lab.

Also, each exercise has a number a questions that you will answer during the lab session. A report (in electronic form) that includes your answers is due one week after your group was assigned to complete that lab exercise. Your report should focus on qualitative facts and explanations; you do not need to submit lengthy traces and raw data.

The lab exercises, and the lab reports, will be done by groups of THREE students.

Each group will have access to the lab for a specific day of the week, either in the "morning time slot" (until 2pm) or in the "evening time slot" (after 3pm). The lab will be open in the weekends in case you need some extra time. Each group will pick a time slot on the class of Friday, August 22 (make sure that you attend that class). The lab schedule will be posted at this web page in the second week of classes.

It is very important that you clean up the lab after your time slot. Additionally, you should unplug all network cables and return them to the cable box, undo any changes you made in host or router configuration files, and report any potential problems with the equipment to the instructor (and to the next group).

You should NOT leave data files saved on the PCs. You need to leave the machines in a ``clean state''.

The same goes for routers. ROM-monitor mode recovery is not fun, so make sure that you do NOT save the router configurations.

Shutting down PCs: Do NOT just switch off the power of the PCs. It makes the routers unhappy and the PCs will sometimes fail to boot. In the router case, the 'reset' command will get them started normally. The PCs should work after a power cycle.

Unfortunately, the PCI eth1 cards often come out of their sockets in the PCs. If a card all of a sudden stops showing up in the output of 'lspci', it is likely that the card has come out of its socket. In that case please notify the TA as soon as possible. We need to unlock that PC and reposition the card.

Grading

Miscellanea

Course Policies