MSc: Advanced Networking

Advanced Networking

• Course name: Advanced Networking
• Course number: xyz

Course Characteristics

Key concepts of the class

• Principles of designing and implementing advanced networking concepts
• Developing research interest in the modern network applications

What is the purpose of this course?

Advanced Networking is the core course for SNE program that provides the students with advanced knowledge about computer networks. The course starts with advanced networking topics such as quality of service (QoS), Multiprotocol Label Switching, and software defined networking (SDN). Furthermore, this course also covers some state of the art networking paradigms such as 5G Wireless Networks, and content delivery network (CDN). This course includes hands-on exercise and the students will practice their skills on the real hardware and software. Students will have the opportunity to apply the knowledge obtained in the class, on real hardware.

Course Objectives Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy

What should a student remember at the end of the course?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to understand advanced networking concepts

• Key principles involved in designing and implementing Quality of Service (QoS) in existing networks
• Multi protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and its variants
• Virtual private networks and its implementation
• Wireless networks
• Optical networks

What should a student be able to understand at the end of the course?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to understand the key approaches and techniques for enabling advanced networking services

• Circuit switched and packet switched networks
• Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and its variants
• Connectivity for mobile users
• State of Art and future wireless networks

What should a student be able to apply at the end of the course?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to develop and implement the followings:

• Implementation of QoS in existing networks
• Designing and implementing software defined networks based routing policies
• Orchestration and management of networks
• Designing resource sharing approaches for scarce wireless resources in wireless networks

Course evaluation

Course grade breakdown

		Proposed points
Labs/seminar classes	20	20
Interim performance assessment	30	50
Exams	50	30

Grades range

Course grading range

		Proposed range
A. Excellent	90-100	90-100
B. Good	75-89	75-89
C. Satisfactory	60-74	60-74
D. Poor	0-59	0-59

Resources and reference material

• Recent research papers and online materials

Course Sections

The main sections of the course and approximate hour distribution between them is as follows:

Course Sections

Section	Section Title	Teaching Hours
1	Introduction of advanced networking	20
2	Advanced networking concepts	20
3	Wireless and future Networks	16

Section 1

Section title:

Introduction of advanced networking concepts

Topics covered in this section:

• Quality of Service in networks
• Multi protocol Label Switching (MPLS)
• Content and Multimedia
• Enterprise Network Management

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 1
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 1
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 0
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. What is the major issue in providing Quality of Service (QoS) in existing networks?
2. Why QoS has become essential in current networks recently?
3. State the types of delays a packet experiences in a network?
4. Define transmission delays and the approaches to control it?
5. Briefly explain about the overprovisioning technique to enhance the QoS in networks?
6. What is the effect of attenuation in optical communication and how to resolve this problem?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. Test and deploy your QoS rules to prioritize the downloading of a file (or any other scenario) over the bandwidth test.
2. Try to set QoS rules to traffic allocation once and then set it to priority-based QoS, what are the differences?
3. What are CoS, ToS, Diffserv, DSCP, DS?
4. What is LDP, LSP? and how can you list them?
5. Does VPLS require disabling PHP?

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. State the problem that can arise if we use global labels for MPLS?
2. How does shaping of traffic enhance the QoS in networks?
3. What is policing and its benefits
4. What is jitter and what types of applications are the most affected by jitter? Propose a solution to overcome the jitter problem?
5. Briefly explain Integrated services (IntServ) and differentiated services (Diffserv)?
6. Briefly explain what is Optical burst switching and its benefits compared to optical circuit switching?

Section 2

Section title:

Advanced networking concepts

Topics covered in this section:

• Software-defined networking (SDN)
• Network Function Virtualization (NFV)
• Virtualized Networks and network slicing
• Orchestration and management of Networks (MANO platform)
• Introductory network security

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 1
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 1
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 0
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. What is virtual network function?
2. Define the benefits achieved by virtualizing the networks?
3. State the benefits of reactive and proactive models for populating OpenFlow switch tables?
4. How SDN enables centralized control in the networks?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. What is NVF? and what is the main goal of using it?
2. What kind of problem does NVF solve?
3. What is the difference between SDN and NFV?
4. What are the pros and cons of NVF anf SDN?
5. What are the security challenges in SDN ?

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. State benefits of using SDN controllers in exiting networks?
2. What is a network slice and state its benefits?
3. How does the MANO platform enable management and orchestration of networks?
4. State the pros and cons of virtualizing the networks?

Section 3

Section title:

Wireless and future Networks

Topics covered in this section:

• Wireless Local area network
• Bluetooth Networks
• Cellular Networks and its generations
• 5G and beyond networks
• Information-centric networking (ICN)

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 1
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 1
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 0
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. State the challenges of wireless networks?
2. State the reasons of using CSMA/CA in wireless networks?
3. Why do we need a back off timer in IEEE 802.11 networks?
4. What is the difference between OFDMA and OFDM?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. Simulate an IEEE 802.11b network.
2. Simulation of resource sharing for different networking services in 5G.
3. Performance analysis of wireless networks in terms of streaming applications.

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. Briefly explain about the Exposed node problem. Additionally, discuss how IEEE 802.11 addresses this problem?
2. State the usage of short Inter-frame spacing (SIFS) in IEEE 802.11?
3. Briefly explain the usage of RSVP-TE and what additional information is present in RSVP-TE compared to RSVP?
4. Briefly explain about the Hidden node problem. Additionally, discuss how IEEE 802.11 addresses this problem?