We are going to focus in this semester on what will be called the infrastructure of networks. That is, the hardware that we use to interconnect them, the concepts on which our communication over these connections is based, and the protocols that prescribe the behavior of examples of those concepts.
All computing is now based upon networking, whether we realize it or not. Communicating with peripheral devices such as disk drives, or terminal devices such as keyboards or displays or sound cards, is based upon the same principals as communicating across a wired ethernet or a wireless network. Although at a high level you need not, and should not, be aware of what is going on in the lower levels, you will often find that there are major limitations, or possibilities, at a higher level, based upon the properties of the infrastructure in use, so a general understanding of that infrastructure is always very helpful.
The situation is very similar to one that is already quite familiar to most of us, from the time we are born. In computing we do not encounter this so early in life (although the initial encounter is getting earlier every year) so we may not realize its importance. The familiar situation is that of plain old human transportation. From very early in our lives we know the difference between being carried and carrying ourselves, being conveyed in vehicles or on animals (yes, your parents are animals underneath:-), and what the possibilities opened to us, or closed to us, by travelling on airplanes or horses. The situation is the same with the transport of ideas and information, but we are somewhat less familiar with those forms of transport. So part of a course like this should be to show us what is involved, and help us later to understand what it means even for those who only wish to focus upon applications.
Your instructor believes that the only way to learn is to do (although unfortunately for you your instructor is one of the worst at forcing people to do things). I am going to constantly suggest things you should do, and these suggestions are based upon substantial experience with students of every background. It is however going to be up to you to do those things, and to ask questions if you problems.
I added this section to point to a description of what you should
do to get started with your student account. You can do your
work wherever you want, my recommendation for most of you is that
you login to our student machine
ahd make yourself a directory called
and do your work there.
At some point you will want to publish your Assignments so I can read them, and the page customizeHow tells you what to do.
Since I really do not care about the "bells and whistles" (this is a course in networking, not in web design) I have prepared an entire set of files that you can just copy in to the directory you create to get started. It has the world's simplest home page, and it has 12 bare assignment pages. You can just edit them to put in what you have done, or point to other pages showing what you have done. Or you can do a much better job yourself. This is just posted so none of you are blocked from learning networks because you do not yet know how to create websites!
Get into your
directory, and execute the following command:
and in your directory will appear a Santa and eight tinyXXXXXXXXXXXX
index.html page and 12 pages of the form
You can then "fix these up" as needed for you assignments.