MSc: Classical Internet Applications
Classical Internet Applications
- Course name: Classical Internet Applications (CIA)
- Course number: SNE-03
Course characteristics
Key concepts of the class
- Internet applications
- Implementation, configuration, and security of Internet applications
What is the purpose of this course?
CIA course serves as kick-start for the security and network engineering Masters program. Before diving into the depth of the topics, the students must know preliminary concepts related to computer networks services/applications therein. This course is designed to cover the basic services offered by the internet including computer architecture. The concepts from this course will be used throughout the course of whole masters. More precisely, this course will cover the basic computer architecture and assembly language programming, Domain Name Services (DNS), DNSSec, Email, Web, Directories, and Disks. This course will also cover protocols and ABNF. The theory part will strengthen the theoretical aspects of the concepts whereas the lab exercises will provide the students with the opportunity to have hands-on experience of the ideas they learnt in the lectures.
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:
- Identify different Internet applications and understand their working principles from protocols point of view
- Demonstrate the acquired knowledge and skills in classical internet applications including DNS, Email, and Directory services.
- Able to write regular expressions and context-free grammar
- Able to partition disks and remember the booting principles
- 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 describe and explain (with examples)
- Demonstrate knowledge and skills to use web services
- Demonstrate the essential knowledge of disks and calculate particular locations/addresses in disks
- Reason about problems in the current DNS and the need to upgrade to DNSSEC
- 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 apply the acquired knowledge in the following way.
- Install, Configure, update, and manage DNS services over a network
- Configure, maintain, and update the secure DNS over a network
- Update, add, and delete records in DNS
- Configure a secure mail server and maintain it
- Get hands-on experience of the afore-mentioned technologies on their own servers.
Course evaluation
Proposed points | ||
---|---|---|
Labs/seminar classes | 20 | 20 |
Lab tasks assessment | 40 | 40 |
Exams | 40 | 40 |
If necessary, please indicate freely your course’s features in terms of students’ performance assessment: None
Grades range
Proposed range | ||
---|---|---|
A. Excellent | 90-100 | |
B. Good | 75-89 | |
C. Satisfactory | 60-74 | |
D. Poor | 0-59 |
If necessary, please indicate freely your course’s grading features: The semester starts with the default range as proposed in the Table 2, but it may change slightly (usually reduced) depending on how the semester progresses.
Resources and reference material
- Lecture slides
- RFCs
- Link to the online material will be provided (if any)
Course Sections
The main sections of the course and approximate hour distribution between them is as follows:
Section | Section Title | Teaching Hours |
---|---|---|
1 | Intro, DNS and DNSSEC | 12 |
2 | 4 | |
3 | Booting | 2 |
4 | Directory Services, Disks, Web, and Protocols | 12 |
5 | Labs | 56 |
Section 1
Section title:
Introduction, History of Internet and Security, DNS and DNSSEC
Topics covered in this section:
- Introduction
- History of Internet
- History of security
- Computer architecture and assembly language programming
- DNS
- DNSSEC
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 & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 1
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1
Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section
- Hows does DNS query get resolved?
- What is iterative and recursive DNS server?
- How does wildcard work in DNS?
- What is zone walking in secure DNS?
- What is delegation in DNS?
- What is NSEC and NSEC3 records in DNSSEC?
Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section
- Configure DNS and DNSSEC (with specific tasks)
Test questions for final assessment in this section
- How does DNS query get resolved in DNS?
- How zones are formed?
- How delegation works in DNS?
- How resource records are verified in DNSSEC?
- What is meant by zone walking and how is it avoided?
Section 2
Section title:
Topics covered in this section:
- Email architecture
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 & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 1
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1
Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section
- What are different protocols used in email?
- What are the different agents used in email system?
- How to avoid spamming in email?
- How to configure email servers?
Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section
- Configure email server
- Configure anti-spamming techniques
Test questions for final assessment in this section
- What are different agents and their roles in email architecture?
- How MX records work?
- How to configure different anti-spamming policies?
Section 3
Section title:
Booting
Topics covered in this section:
- Secure booting
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 & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 1
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1
Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section
- What are the different steps in booting?
- What is secure booting?
- Explain UEFI booting
Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section
- Implement secure booting
Test questions for final assessment in this section
- Same as above
Section 4
Section title:
Deep Learning
Topics covered in this section:
- Directory services
- Disks
- Web
- Protocols
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 & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 1
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1
Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section
- How directory services are implemented?
- How permissions are set?
- How disk partitions are made?
- How different web protocols work?
Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section
- Implement different web services
- Configure active directory
Test questions for final assessment in this section
- As above