Welcome to the home page for ECE230X "Introduction to Communications and Networking" for D-term 2007.

announcements and lecture slides

[25-Apr-2007] Some links for traceroute. As you now know, traceroute is all about pirates and parrots. Traceroute man page. An interesting paper from the late 1990s by Vern Paxson called End-to-End Routing Behavior of the Internet. Vern Paxson used traceroute for a massive experimental study of routing behavior in the internet. This paper discusses also sorts of interesting pathologies like loops, errors, and dynamic routing problems. Check it out!
[24-Apr-2007] Prof. Lou's network security lecture notes from 19-Apr.
I will be attending a communications and signal processing conference the week of April 16-20. In my absence, I've scheduled two guest lectures and a 30 minute video during our regularly scheduled lecture period. Here is the class schedule for that week. Monday 16-Apr: No class (class is canceled). Tuesday 17-Apr: No class (project presentation day). Wednesday 18-Apr: 30 minute video about Claude Shannon produced by UCSD. Thursday 19-Apr: Want to know more about the hot topic of network security? Prof. Lou will give a guest lecture on Network Security. Friday 20-Apr: Ever wonder how BitTorrent really works? Vanessa Castro (WPI ECE 2007) will give a guest lecture on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol.
Slides for lectures 19-20.
[11-Apr-2007] A revised statistical multiplexing demo with bugs fixed (Matlab).
[9-Apr-2007] Homework assignment 3 posted.
An excellent TCP sliding window animation with user-controllable parameters for loss rate, window size, etc. Found by Nikki Benecke.
Slides for lectures 14-15.
Some information about HD-Burn technology. Here are some other links: Press coverage, an image of pit size and error correction, and some more information from Sanyo. Found by John Temple.
It appears that the (7,4) Hamming code animation link is still down. Wikipedia has a pretty good page on the (7,4) Hamming code that you might find useful.
Some fun and interesting links on DIY antennas from John Temple. Images of John's cantenna, Antenna Howto, and AC6V Homebrew antennas.
[02-Apr-2007] An example of a simple error correction technique: the (7,4) Hamming code (developed by Prof. Robert McEliece at Caltech).
[02-Apr-2007] Want to know more about the likeliood of undetected errors in systems using CRC error detection? See this paper (IEEE Xplore access required).
[29-Mar-2007] Analog modulator Matlab script used in Lecture 11 to demonstrate PSK/ASK/FSK/QAM.
[28-Mar-2007] Slides for lectures 10-11.
[26-Mar-2007] Slides for lecture 9.
[23-Mar-2007] SNR examples Matlab script. Also needs this sound file.
[22-Mar-2007] Attenuation calculator. Edit this script with your link parameters and run it in Matlab to see the attenuation of the link under both wireless path loss models discussed in class. The script also plots the attenuation of a cable for comparison.
[22-Mar-2007] Cellular antenna picture taken in New Jersey by Eric Ruscitti. Some other antenna pictures from Hans Jensen's job at a WISP last summer: Pic 1, Pic 2, Pic 3, Pic 4.
[21-Mar-2007] US frequency allocation chart (pdf).
[16-Mar-2007] Supplemental slides for lecture 4.
[14-Mar-2007] Interesting article in IEEE's The Institute on new standards for upcoming vehicular networks.
[14-Mar-2007] Supplemental slides for lectures 2-3. Also, here is another view of the TCP/IP and OSI protocol layers.
[12-Mar-2007] An interesting book on the early history of data networks.
[12-Mar-2007] An email was sent to the class mailing alias ece230x@wpi.edu today. If you did not receive this email, please contact Prof. Brown.

general

The required course textbook is Data and Computer Communications, 8th edition, by William Stallings.

The course syllabus (pdf format) including expected course outcomes, grading information, and late policies.

ECE230x academic honesty policies.

ECE230x students with disabilities statement.

homework, projects, and other assignments

Homework assignment #1 (50 points): Due by 1:50pm on Tuesday 27-Mar

Read "Bits, Symbols, Bauds, and Bandwidth" by Roger L. Freeman (IEEE Communications Magazine, April 1998) You can obtain this paper by visiting IEEE Xplore (you need to be on the WPI network to have full access to papers on this site).

Write a report summarizing, in your own words, the key points of the Freeman paper. In addition to this summary, discuss the bandwidths, symbol rates, and bit rates of at least three real communication standards. Try to choose communication standards with different types of media (e.g. copper, fiber, and wireless). Compare and contrast the spectral efficiencies (bits per second per Hz of bandwidth) of these communication standards.

You can use any source of reliable information (your textbook, books in the library, magazines, journals, and/or reliable web pages) for your research on communication standards. You may want to explore some of the papers cited by Freeman as well. Please be sure to properly cite your sources.

Your report should be no longer than two pages and the font should be no smaller than 10 point.

Homework assignment #2 (50 points): Due by 1:50pm on Friday 6-Apr

Stallings problems 5.3, 5.7, 5.9, 5.14, 5.16. Note that, for Problem 5.14, you may need to refer back to Chapter 3 to understand the meaning of the ratio Eb/No and its relationship to SNR.

Solution.

Homework assignment #3 (50 points): Due by 1:00pm on Friday 20-Apr

Stallings problems 8.12, 8.13, 10.4, 10.5, 10.11. Note that 10.11 is an open ended question. Please be sure to justify your answer.

Also, not that this assignment is due at 1:00pm (at the start of class). We have a guest lecturer scheduled for this date; please turn your homework in to the guest lecturer at the start of class.

Solution (updated).

Homework assignment #4 (50 points): Due by 1:50pm on Tuesday 1-May

For this assignment, you will need to download and install Ethereal. Ethereal is a very powerful open-source tool for inspecting and analyzing network traffic and runs on most common operating system. You may want to read the Ethereal QuickStart Guide if you have never used it before.

Note that Ethereal is no longer maintained. You should use it for this project but you may also want to check out Wireshark. Wireshark is picking up the development where Ethereal left off and should be around for a while. Thanks to Brian Loveland for pointing this out.

Using your local installation of Ethereal, Please do all five Ethereal exercises listed in the Ethereal Exercises document. You will also need the following data files for the first three exercises: Exercise one, Exercise two, and Exercise three.