Week 2: Performance, Protocols, and Applications
Goals:
- Learn about the (perhaps surprising) process by which
Internet protocols are designed and standardized.
- Read some RFCs.
- Begin learning about application protocols and their design considerations.
- Practice computing and measuring performance characteristics.
Monday, January 30: How protocols are made
Read:
Answer
the following questions. Send your answers in the body of
an email to me (davisjan@cs.grinnell.edu)
by 9 a.m. Please use "CSC-364 01-31" as the
subject line of your email.
- What was the muddiest or most confusing point from class on Friday?
- What is the most important thing you learned about the Internet standards process?
- What is the most surprisign thing that you learned about the Internet standards process?
- What's your reaction to all this? Can a volunteer
organization really control a technology?
- What's a question you still have about the reading?
- Kurose & Ross 1.R18
We'll tackle some more problems related to delay in class.
Due:
Assigned:
Wednesday, February 1: Principles of Network Applications; Throughput
Read:
- Kurose & Ross 2.0 - 2.1, pp. 85-100
Answer
the following questions. Send your answers in the body of
an email to me (davisjan@cs.grinnell.edu)
by 9 a.m. Please use "CSC-364 02-01" as the
subject line of your email.
- What is the most important difference between client-server architectures and P2P architectures?
- Select a sentence from the reading that best illustrates the
difference between TCP and UDP. Explain why you chose this sentence.
- Can you conceive of an application that requires no data loss and that is also highly time sensitive?
- What's a question you still have about the reading?
- Kurose & Ross 1.R19
We'll tackle some more problems related to throughput in class.
Friday, February 3: HTTP & FTP
Read:
- Kurose & Ross 2.2 - 2.3, pp. 100-120
- RFC 2616 (Read
section 1. Then read the table of contents and anything more that
interests you. I do not want you to read this RFC in detail; I do
want you to see what an RFC that defines a protocol looks like.)
Answer
the following questions. Send your answers in the body of
an email to me (davisjan@cs.grinnell.edu)
by 9 a.m. Please use "CSC-364 02-03" as the
subject line of your email.
- Why do HTTP and FTP run on top of TCP rather than UDP?
- Select a sentence that illustrates a key difference between FTP
and HTTP. Explain why you chose that sentence. Why do you think
the designers of FTP and HTTP made different choices?
- Explain how a web cache is similar to another kind of cache,
either in computer systems or in everyday life. (Note: Caching is one
of the "big ideas" of computer systems; it shows up all over the place.)
- What was the most surprising or intriguing thing you saw in RFC 2616? Cite a sentence or a section listed in the table of contents.
- What further question(s) or problem(s) would you like to discuss in class today?
Suggested problems: 2.P1, 2.P4, 2.P5, 2.P6, 2.P11
Janet
Davis (davisjan@cs.grinnell.edu)
Created January 27, 2012
Last revised January 27, 2012