CS 420/520: Data Communication

Welcome to CS420/520 Data Communication. This course is offered in the Spring Semester 2006 at the University of Idaho in Moscow and is also available though Engineering Outreach for off-campus students. The course is taught by Dr. Axel Krings.

This web-page contains information about the course, e.g. syllabus, class notes, pointers to interesting places etc. Material can be down-loaded in pdf (or postscript) format, and will be made available in the updated form as the class goes on. To get an idea of what this class is about, take a look at 2002 semesters page. However, materials and topics constantly change, and this class will be no exception. If you have comments, please let me know.

Engineering Outreach students, there are several things you should know. First of all, if you are trying to contact me, you can call 800-824-2889 ext. 4078 (toll free). Please download the class material from the web page. This speeds up the distribution process and avoids shipping delays. If you do not have a pdf viewer, you can get it free at adobe, if you need a postscript viewer, check out the aladin viewer. If for some reason you are not able to download the material, please contact Engineering Outreach. There are several assignments that require access to local simulation tools. Engineering Outreach students need to have web access with telnet capability in order to use this software. Accounts on local workstations will be made available.

Course description: this course covers the concepts and terminology of data communications, electrical interfaces, data transmission, protocols, local area networks, wide area networks, internetworking, network management, architectures, transmission alternatives, as well as some regulatory issues. Please refer to the Complete CS420/520 Class Handouts of the Fall 2002 semester page for the sequence of topics. Note: This class has a CS341 (operating systems) co-requisite. This implies a prerequisite of Computer Organization and Architecture (CS245). In a 400/500 level computer science class I expect working knowledge of unix and MS operating systems as well as programming ability.

• Contact information:
  • Axel Krings (PhD), JEB 320,
  • Phone: 208-885-4078, fax: 208-885-9052.
  • Engineering outreach students: dial toll free 800-824-2889 ext 4078
  • Mailing address: Engineering Outreach, PO Box 441014, Moscow, Idaho 83844-1014.
  • Office Hours: (see here)
  • Live-taped: TR 9:30-10:45, EP 203.

• News Group
  • We will be using webCT, a service of the University of Idaho. If you have confidential or personal issues, please send me an email or call me. Any other issues, i.e. all course related questions, should be handled using this distribution mechanism. I will inform you when the site has been established for the course.

• Spring 2006 Term Class Handouts:
  • The handout numbers refer to the lecture in which the handout was made available. This does not necessarily mean that this material was covered in this particular lecture. (Most likely there is some overlap). If the course is offered Tuesday/Thursday, the "lecture numbers" do not correspond to the lecture date at all, but should be seen as a "sequence number".
  • If there are any problems with accessing the handouts, please let me know (email, phone, smoke signs, drums, ...)!
  • Corrections: some slides may contain formatting errors, typos etc. which have been addressed in class, but have not been reflected in the notes posted here.
  • WARNING LOCAL STUDENTS: Do not send pdf files (i.e. files in pdf format) to the printer! Pdf files are binary files and printing them "directly" will result in a big printer mess!!! If you do not know how to print out pdf files, then you are probably in the wrong class.
  • Syllabus.

  • Lecture 1 (01/12/06): ( Sequence 1 pdf ) Introduction
  • Lecture 2 (01/17/06): ( Sequence 2 pdf ) Protocol Architectures, OSI Layers
  • Lecture 3 (01/19/06): ( Sequence 3 pdf ) TCP/IP Architecture, Analog and Digital Data transmission
  • Lecture 4 (01/24/06): Transmission Impairments, Attenuation, distorion, noise, NEXT canceling, Nyquist and Shannon formulas
  • Lecture 5 (01/26/06): ( Sequence 4 pdf ) Thermal noise, signal delay, Guided transmission media, Wireless transmission, Wireless propagation, Line-of-Sight transmission
  • Lecture 6 (01/31/06): ( Sequence 5 pdf ) Signal encoding, Digital Data -Digital Signals (NRZ, Bipolar AMI, Pseudoternary, Mancester, Diff. Manchester)
  • Lecture 7 (02/02/06): Signal encoding cont., (B8ZS, HDB3), Digital Data - Analog Signal (ASK, FSK, PSK, Pread Spectrum)
  • Lecture 8 (02/07/06): Digital Data - Analog Signal cont. (Binary FSK, Mutliple FSK, QPSK, OQPSK, QAM), Sampling Theorem, Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM), Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), Nonlinear Encoding
  • Lecture 9 (02/09/06): ( Sequence 6 pdf ) Delta Modulation, Analog Data - Analog Signals, Async and Sync. Transmission, Error Detection (codes, hamming distance, parity, checksum)
  • Lecture 10 (02/14/06): ( Sequence 7 pdf ) ( Sequence 8 pdf ) Error Detection cont., Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC), Lince Configurations (tolology, full/half duplex), Interfacing (V.24/EIA-232-F, ISDN interface), compression, Data Link Control Protocols, Data Link Basics
  • Lecture 11 (02/16/06): Data Link Control Protocols (Stop-and-Wait Protocol, Sliding Window), Error Control (Stop-and-Wait ARQ, Go-Back-N ARQ, Selective-Reject ARQ)
  • Lecture 12 (02/21/06): ( Sequence 9 pdf ) High Level Data Link Control (HDLC), Multiplexing (TDM, FDM, WDM, DWDM),
  • Lecture 13 (02/23/06): ( Sequence 10 pdf ) Digital Carrier Systems, DS-1 transmission format, TDM Carrier Standards, SONET/SDH, Statistical TDM
  • Lecture 14 (02/28/06): ( Sequence 11 pdf ) Cabel Modem, ASDL, Discrete Multitone (DMT), Spread Spectrum, Frequency Hopping (FHSS Using MFSK), Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS Using BPSK), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA for direct sequence spread spectrum)
  • Lecture 15 (03/02/06): ( Sequence 12 pdf )
  • Lecture 16 (03/07/06): Switched Communication Networks, Circuit Switching (space division, time division), Blockin/non-blocking switches, Mulit-stage switches, Butterfly, Delta switch
  • Lecture 17 (03/09/06): Control Signaling, Signaling functions, Signaling System Number 7 (SS7), Packet-Switching Principle, Datagram, Virtual Circuits, Frame Relay
  • Spring Break (03/13/06 - 03/17/06): UI is closed
  • Lecture 18 (03/21/06): EXAM1 (over sequence 1-10)
  • Lecture 19 (03/23/06): ( Sequence 13 pdf ) ATM, Virtual Channel, Virtual Path, Transmissino of ATM Cells, ATM service categories, ATM Adaption Layers, AAL Services/Protocols
  • Lecture 20 (03/28/06): ( Sequence 14 pdf ) Routing in Circuit-Swithing Networks, Routing in Packet-Switching Networks, Least-Cost Algorithms (Dijkstra's Algo., Bellman-Ford Algo.)
  • Lecture 21 (03/30/06): ( Sequence 15 pdf ) Congestion Control
  • Lecture 22 (04/04/06): continuation of congestion control in Packet-switching Networks, Frame Relay, ATM, ATM-GRF.
  • Lecture 23 (04/06/06): class canceled, read chapter 14: Cellular Wireless Networks
  • Lecture 24 (04/11/06): ( Sequence 16 pdf ) Cellular Wireless Networks
  • Lecture 25 (04/13/06): ( Sequence 17 pdf ) LAN overview, Topologies, Media, LAN Protocol Architecture, Bridges, Layer 2 and 3 Switches
  • Lecture 26 (04/18/06): ( Sequence 18 pdf ) High-Speed LANs, Ethernet (IEEE 802.3, 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, 10Gbps Ethernet), Token Ring Fibre Channel
  • Lecture 27 (04/20/06): ( Sequence 19 pdf ) Internet Protocols, basic protocol functions, principles of internetworking, Internet Protocol, IPv6
  • Lecture 28 (04/25/06): EXAM II (on-campus - closed book/notes)
  • Lecture 29 (04/27/06): ( Sequence 20 pdf ) Internetwork Operation: Multicast, Routing protocols
  • Lecture 30 (05/02/06): ( Sequence 21 pdf ) Transport Protocol, TCP, UDP
  • Lecture 31 (05/04/06): ( Sequence 22 pdf ) Lost and Found: ARP protocol, Internet/Intranet Fragmentation, some IP issues, Gateway/Router example.
  • Final Exam (05/09/06): 7:30am (outch - set your alarms!)

  • CS420/520 old exam questions:
    • Note that some of the material covered in an old exam might not overlap with the material covered this term.
    • Midterm 1 (2002), (2000), (1999), (1998).
    • Midterm 2 (2002), (2000), (1999), (1998).
    • Final (2002), (2000), (1999), (1998). (links fixed)

  • Complete CS420/520 Class Handouts of previous semester: Fall 2002
  • Interesting Links: Pointers to Research Areas.
  • William Stalling's book: I like this text and we will be using is from this book. Take a look at his support material.

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