Sergio Servetto

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ECE 446: Digital Communications over Packet-Switched Networks

Welcome to the web site of ECE 446, Fall 2005. Here are a few things you need to know about the class:

First lecture: 8/25.
You should subscribe to the mailing list for the class, as this is how we are going to handle all course-related communications.
To subscribe: send an email to listproc@cornell.edu with a single line in the body saying: SUBSCRIBE ECE446-L Yourfirstname Yourlastname.
To post a message: once your request to subscribe is approved, you can send email to ECE446-L@cornell.edu, and your message will be distributed to all list subscribers.

Please do NOT send messages with questions on the course material to our individual email addresses -- if you do, and we deem it appropriate, we will post your message to the list, together with our response. Also, you are very much encouraged to use the list to discuss course materials with your peers.

Lectures and Handouts:

Lecture #1 (Course presentation).
Handout: Probability Review (small update added on 8/26, 4pm).
Lecture #2 (Basic Network Elements -- TA lecture).
Lecture #3 (Error Control / Layered Architectures -- TA lecture).
Lecture #4 (OSI and IP models).
Lecture #5 (Ethernet and Token Ring).
Lecture #6 (FDDI/DQDB/Frame Relay/SMDS -- TA lecture).
Lecture #7 (Internet Protocols -- TA lecture).
Lecture #8 (More on Internet Protocols).
Lecture #9 (Circuit Switching).

About the course:

Instructor:

Sergio Servetto.

TAs:

Ron Dabora.

An-swol Hu.

Georgios N. Lilis.

Mingbo Zhao.

Meeting times and place:

TR 2:55-4:10pm, 407 PH.

Office hours (tentative):

Instructor: W, 4-6pm.

TAs: MF, 1-2:30pm.

Prerequisites: ECE 301 or 320, and 310 (required), ECE 220 (recommended), and some knowledge of computer programming. Some useful related courses, recommended for either concurrent registration, or for the previous/following semester: ECE 425, ECE 426, ECE 467, ECE 468, CS 414, CS 519.

Course description/objectives: By the end of this course, you should be able to do all of the following:

List all the components of the OSI layered model, and describe how each of the protocols work.
Execute those protocols on given network examples.
Compute various measures of performance on various network examples.
Evaluate the performance changes resulting from design choices.
Design a (crude) image/video compression algorithm.
Implement a toy application (video on demand) on a simple network overlay.

Overall, the goal is that by doing all of this, you will develop an understanding of how existing packet-switched networks function today, and of how they are able to support some modern applications involving transport of audio/visual signals.