COURSE DESCRIPTION
CS4/55231 INTERNET ENGINEERING
Department of Computer Science
Kent State University
Page last updated: April 1, 2008


COURSE DESCRIPTION

Welcome to the web-site of Internet Engineering.

This course covers the 'under the hood'  technologies that constitutes the modern Internet.

There is a gap between what is covered in a typical Computer Communication Network  (CCN) course in US universities and a robust understanding of the Internet. This course is aimed at filling up this critical gap.

The course covers in depth the core internet protocols from traffic engineering, BGP, HTTP, caching  to web services infrastrcture.

At the end of this course the students are expected to gain a handsome understanding about the key technology components and the grand design that togather makes the high performence Internet running.

COURSE FORMAT

The course generally demands considerable involvement including project implementation.

WHO SHOULD TAKE?

  • If you are curious about the Internet and its inner design and working mechanisms. If you want to know it with reasonable technical depth.
  • If you want to develop your own Internnet applications/ servers/ browsers/services.
  • If you want that solid edge in real job. Be the confident technical lead among your future collegues about matters Internet. From ISP engineers, system administrators, to web services guru- which technical job is not riding on the Internet today?
  • If your /thesis/dissertation/research is directly on networking, Internet games, security, distributed systems, etc.
  • If your project/thesis/dissertation is in any other field (Math, CS, business ad, fashion design, psychology, physics, etc.) but releated to the Internet (e-goverment, e-commerce, e-learning, e-fashion, e-journalism to e-forensic).

WHATS SPECIAL?

Project Server/ Browser:
To complement the classroom learning this course also involve programming project. Since, 1998 students are building their own mini Server and mini Browser. Students start from hello.world!

Internet Engineering Teaching Laboratory: It is an unique  laboratory and is a piece of the real Internet backbone with industrial strength routers and high performance links.

The students in the class use this lab, and get first hand experinece internet backbone traffic engineering. This experince will be invaluable in understainding the technologies running large networks (such as national backbone or ISP network). There is only few such facilities in USA.

WHAT STUDENTS WILL LEARN?
  • The infrastructure of Internet.
  • ISP traffic engineering.
  • How to develop software that communicates over Internet.
  • How Webservers and Browsers are designed.
  • How plug-ins, Java and CGI programs are run.
  • How streaming audio and video is delivered to a Browser.
  • What is a proxy server and firewall and how they secure intranet.
  • How certificate, digital signature, etc. works.
  • How to connect your own specialized client/server/service with Internet server.
PREREQUISITE

Courses in Computer Networks & Operating Systems, Solid programming skill in C/C++, or Java will help  survive the projects. If you are not sure about your background please contact me.


TEXT BOOK

The couse  makes extensive use of online materials and uses reference texts.

WHATS NEXT?
 Graduate student looking for research engagement? You may plan to take the sequel courses:

1. CS 6/755999 ST: Peer-to-Peer & Distributed Networked System. Here we will continue our journey and learn about the ‘research’ frontier on emerging new Internet systems (peer-to-peer computing, social networks, etc.) that is transforming the future leading to thesis and dissertation topics.

2. CS ST: 6/755999 ST: Complex Networks: Here we learn about the fascinating recent developments on large network based systems. We learn about new mathematical and analytical tools for robust understanding of the emerging internet/ web based transformations.

While the previous course focuses on protocols, and system designs the later focuses on the theoretical and formal tools to bettern understand and engineer such system.