Course Syllabus

This uses the LOCAL copy of the video files

This information is lists the topics that will be covered. The information here provides a detailed description of the subjects that the site covers.

A road-map provides an easy way to access the on-line information about general topics.

The course will cover the following terms and concepts.

Important Infromation.

The course expects people to understand and be able to reproduce the Ethernet Frame format, and corresponding MAC header format.
The course does not expect people to memorise the headers of packets carried by Ethernet. A summary table of key protocol headers is provided.
The course does not require you to memorise accronyms or abbreviations. There is a list of abbreviations included in this material.

Note: Items in squiggly braces, { }, or coloured grey are not currently examinable in the Aberdeen University Course. Most pages relating to additional material have a background coloured salmon, to avoid potential confusion with assessed material.

Module	Video	Resource
0	Introduction [ video ] The course video Introduction [ video ] A quick video tour of part 1	Introduction Presentation Course Roadmap
1	[ video ]The Origins of the Ethernet LAN	Definition of a Local Area Network Origins of Ethernet Network Interface The Physical layer
1.1	[ video ] Thick Ethernet (10B5)	Media Low loss Co-axial Cable Cable 10B5 Thick Ethernet Types of Network Nodes connected by links to form networks
1.2	[ video ] Thin Ethernet (10B2)	10B2 Thin Ethernet (low cost co-axial cable)
1.x	More About Coaxial Cable Technology [ video ] Introduction to 10B5 [ video ] Introduction to 10B2	Protocol Layers
2	[ video ] Ethernet Frames and the Link Layer	Medium Access Control MAC Layer
2.1	[ video ] Addressing (Multicast and Broadcast)	Medium Access Control Frame Format Format of the address field in MAC; Size of MAC header Destination Address Broadcast, Multicast, and Unicast Addresses Simplex, Duplex and Half-Duplex Information Flow
2.2	[ video ] A Shared Physical Medium	Access to the Shared Medium [ video ] Carrier Sense And Listen Before Talk Checking for Other Users (CS). ALOHA and Slotted ALOHA Loss and Retransmission using Timers
2.3	[ video ] Medium Access Control (CSMA/CD)	Collision Detection (CD) Ethernet Transceiver (Detection of current) Jam Signal Exponential Back-off Need to Avoid Congestion Slot Time Capture
2.x	[ video ] More About Ethernet CSMA/CD [ video ] Introduction to Transceivers	[ video ] Carrier Sense with Collision Avoidance using CSMA/CA] Calculations involving Ethernet (Try the problem sheet)
3	[ video ] Ethernet Transmission and the Physical Layer	Synchronous Transmission Shift Register, Transmission Bit Order NRZ Encoding Manchester Encoding Operation; Bandwidth
3.1	[ video Sending Frames	Movement of Bits Properties of the Physical Layer
3.2	[ video Receiving Bits and Bytes	Transceiver Bit Timing and Clocks Clock Encoding; Need for a DPLL Preamble Start of Frame Delimiter Throughput and Utilisation Calculation of Utilisation and Throughput
3.3	[ video ] Frame Reception	MAC Frame CRC-32 Discard of Frames with an Invalid CRC Discard of frames with an Invalid Length Normal and Promiscuous Modes
3.x	More About 10 Mbps Ethernet	{Additional material, not assessed: Wireless Ethernet (WiFi) Wireless Access using CSM/CA The "Hidden Node" Problem in Wireless Ethernet User Priority }
4	[ video ] Connecting LAN Segments (Collision Domains)
4.1	[ video ] Repeaters Part 1	Operation of Repeaters at the Physical Layer Regeneration of Timing; Ethernet Repeaters as Wiring Hubs
4.2	[ video ] Repeaters Part 2	Repeaters Participation in CSMA/CD
4.3	[ video ] Fibre Cable Segments (10BF)	10BF Fibre Optic Links (Point to point fibre links) Fibre Optic Transceivers
4.4	[ video ] The 5-4-3 Repeater Rule	Examples of Networks using Repeaters
4.4	Unshielded Twisted Pair (10BT)	10BT Twisted Pairs and Differential Transmission UTP Cable Categories 10BT Hub
4.x	[ video ] More About UTP Technology
5	[ video ] Bridges and Switches (Broadcast Domains)	Bridges and Switches Operation at the Link Layer Operation of a Bridge Packet Forwarding to Interface Ports Buffers with Internal Queues of Frames
5.1	[ video ] Forwarding using Address Tables	Forwarding to an Output Port (Observing destination address) Flooding of Broadcast, Multicast and Unknown Destination Addresses Filtering of Specified Destination Addresses
5.2	[ video ] Dynamic Learning Address Entries	Source Address Learning Local Addresses (Observing the source address in promiscuous mode) Aging of Address Table Entries
5.3	[ video ] The Spanning Tree Algorithm	The Spanning Tree Algorithm and IEEE Spanning Tree Protocol Bridge PDUs Root Election Network Partition
5.4	[ video ] Hardware Tables and Managed Switches	Filtering And Security {Over-riding the Normal Learning of Local Addresses} {Network DeviceManagement} {Tracking Usage and Protecting from Misusage}
5.x	More About Ethernet Switches I
6	[ video ] Faster Ethernet	Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps)
6.1	[ video ] Fast Ethernet (100BT/100BF)	Synchronous Transmission 4b5 Clock Encoding MLT-3 Line Encoding Fibre Interfaces for 100 Mbps
6.2	[ video ] Fast Ethernet Part 2	Interference Use of Scrambler for Energy Dispersal Eye Diagrams
6.3	[ video ] Industrial Ethernet	LANs in Other Environments
6.4	[ video ] Virtual LANs (VLANs)	Virtual LANs (VLANs) 802.1pQ Tags and VLAN IDs Use of VLANs to build Enterprise IP networks
6.5	[ video ] Gigabit Ethernet (GBE)	Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbps) 8b10b Clock Encoding Scrambler 4 Physical Layer Channels PAM-5 Line Encoding for UTP Line Encoding for Fibre
6.6	[ video ] 10 Ethernet and Faster	Higher Bandwidth Cable Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP); Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) Cable Types: CAT-5, CAT-5e, CAT-6, CAT-6a, CAT-7, CAT-7a Higher Speed Communication at 10, 40, 100 Gbps, and Higher
6.x	More About Ethernet Switches II (no recorded lecture) Power over Ethernet	{Examples of using Ethernet (e.g. in Enterprise and Data Centres)} Power over Ethernet (PoE)
A	The Upper Layers	The Internet as a collection of inter-connected networks End Systems (ES) (e.g. Client or server) Intermediate Systems (IS) (e.g. Router The Internet as a Wide-area Network Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
A.1	[ ] TCP/IP Reference Model	Datagrams Best Effort Service Protocols Operating Between Layers in the Atack Packet-switched Networks; Pipelining; ; (e.g., The Internet)
A.2	[ ] IP Encapsulation for Ethernet	The Internet Protocol IPv4 over Ethernet Difference between Packets (network layer) and Frames (link layer) IP Header Fields: Source Address, Destination Address, Size, Checksum, Protocol Type. Encapsulation of PDUs Addition of Headers on Transmission Removal of Headers on Reception Maximum Transfer Unit 1500 B MTU Size for Ethernet
A.3	Internet Addresses	IP Network Address IP Source Address of Sender IP Destination Address of Remote
A.4	[ ] The Domain Name Service, DNS	Names and Addresses Flat and Hierarchical Structures Servers and the DNS DNS Protocol
A.5	[ ] Address Resolution Protocol, ARP [ ] The ARP Cache	Hardware Address (i.e. LAN MAC address) Difference between Network Address and Link Hardware (Frame) Address Address Resolution (arp) arp Server and Client Broadcast Address for Request Unicast Reply Information Exchanged by arp Request and Reply Need to cache results for sending later packets Gratuitous ARP (using a host's own IP address)
A.6	DHCP	Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Use of Packets to obtain a Lease of an IP Address The DHCP Server Other netrwork information supplied with the DHCP Lease Caching DHCP information at the client and Use of Addresses
B	IP Routers	Packet Forwarding by Routers Routers Operation of Routers Difference between Routing and Bridging
B.1	ICMP Something fun about latency: Living with Lag - An Oculus Rift Experiment Something slightly more serious: Internet Latency	ICMP Error Reporting Ping: Using ICMP echo request and echo reply Practical familiarity with using "ping" Use to see if a computer is operating (alive) Use to measure round trip response time
B.2	IP Forwarding and the Default Route	Endpoint decision whether to send directly or use the default router Network-layer fields updated during routing (including (TTL) field to prevent looping) Routing Tables Alternate Paths {Routing Protocols to dynamically construct the table} Network Address IP Netmask IP Broadcast
B.3	Routing and Traceroute	Routing Routing Table Using the Time To Live (TTL) field to detect hops The Traceroute tool and difference to Ping Operation of the tool Effect of asymmetric routing, packet loss, etc.
C	Transport Protocols and Applications	Functions of the Transport Service Peer to Peer Communication between Remote Layers Encapsulation by network layer (and demux)
C.1	User Datagram Transport Protocol (UDP)	User Datagram Protocol Source and Destination Port Transport checksum
C.2	Transport Ports	Source and destination ports Demultiplexing to the application using Ports
C.3	IP Packet Decodes	Decoding Ethernet Frames Using the Packet Header Table Frames carrying IPv4 and IPv6 Other frame formats (try the decode problem, and check your answer) Familiarise yourself with the class test for decoding.
C.4	IPv6	IPv6 Packet Header
C.5	Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)	Reliable Transport Service Definition of Reliability Acknowledgment Transmission Control Protocol use of Ports

Copies of presentations:

Tutorial resources:

A set of tutorial questions for each Module
The Spanning Tree Tutorial