CSCI.4220 Network Programming
Spring, 2005

Instructor:	Robert P. Ingalls, Executive Officer, Computer Science Dept
	209 Lally, 518-276-2819 (ext 2819)
	e-mail ingalr@rpi.edu or ingallsr@cs.rpi.edu
	Office Hours: W,F 2:00-4:00
Text:	Unix Network Programming: The Sockets
	Networking API, Vol 1, 3rd Ed, by
	W. Richard Stevens, Bill Fenner, & Andrew M Rudoff
	Addison-Wesley, 2004
Teaching Assistants:	Bouchra Bouqata bouqab@cs.rpi.edu
	Office Hours: T, Th 10:00- 12:00, Science Center 1W01
	Dan Tracy tracyd@cs.rpi.edu
	Office Hours: T,W 12:00 - 1:50, Science Center 1W01
Web Site:	http://www.cs.rpi.edu/courses/netprog/
	There will also be a WebCT site. This will have a
	discussion board, and your grades will be posted here.
	Students are expected to read the WebCT discussion board
	and the course web site regularly.

Course Content: After reviewing some basic networking principles, the first half of the course will cover the socket interface, primarily on Unix, but also on Microsoft operating systems. The second half of the course will cover a variety of network programming methodologies and protocols, primarily for the World Wide Web.

Prerequisites: Students should be strong programmers in C or C++. There will be programming assignments in other languages as well, Java in particular. Students are not expected to know Java, but are expected to be able to learn it quickly. In addition, students should have had CSCI.4210 Operating Systems and all of its prerequisites..

Grading: There will be three exams, each of which will count 18% of the course grade (54% total). There will be no make-up exams. However, there will be an optional comprehensive final exam which can be used to replace a missing test or project or your lowest test or project. There will be about five programming assignments, which will together count 46% of the course grade.

Computing Resources: Programming assignments will be done using both Win32 APIs on a Windows Platform, and Unix system calls using the gnu gcc and/or g++ compilers. You need to find your own Windows computer, but you will be given accounts on the CS Unix network for your Unix computing.

Academic Integrity: All programs submitted must be your own work, and you are expected to develop your programs independently. You may receive as much help as you wish on the use of the operating system, text editors, debuggers, file transfer protocols and so on. You may consult with other members of the class about interpreting the assignment, and you may get help in finding bugs, but not fixing bugs, but you are not allowed to look at or copy another person's code or discuss design decisions with others, and you cannot show your code to others. Students found to be in violation of these guidelines will receive a grade of F for the course. Students found to be cheating on tests will also receive a grade of F for the course.

General Project Guidelines All projects should follow guidelines for good programming practices. Here is my list.

• Your program should have a comment at the top with your name, login id, a brief description of what the program is, and any special compiling instructions.
• main() should be like an executive in a company; it should not do any work, but it should delegate work to other functions
• Most functions should be short, and each should do only one thing. No function should ever be more than 50 lines.
• Each function should have a brief comment describing what it does.
• It is not necessary to comment every line, and if your code is well written, it should not require a lot of in-line commenting. However, you should use comments to describe any unusual code or hard to follow code or complicated code, and describe any non-obvious variables.
• variables and functions should have meaningful names, but you can use single letters like i for loop counters and such.
• You should check the return code for any system call that can fail and have an appropriate error handler.
• Your code should have enough error checking so that no matter what the user does, your program will not seg fault or loop forever, or do other strange things. It is very hard to make your program idiot proof; idiots are very clever.
• All code must be written by you and you alone, except that you can use and modify any sample code from the text or from class as long as you provide credit to the source.
• Minimize the number of global variables.

Schedule
Note: This schedule is very tentative and is subject to changes throughout the semester. If there are topics pertaining to network programming which you would like to cover which are not on this schedule, please let me know.

Date	Topic	Reading
Th Jan 20	Networking, Protocol Stacks	SFR Chap 1
Mon Jan 24	Intro. to Sockets	SFR Chap 3,4,5,8
Th Jan 27	The Transport Layer, TCP and UDP	SFR Chap 2
Mon Jan 31	The Network Layer, IP
Th Feb 3	The Link Layer, LANs
Mon Feb 7	Application Protocols, HTTP, ftp
Th 10	Advanced Sockets, select, socket options	SFR Chap 6,7
Mon Feb 14	Name servers, DNS	SFR Chap 11
Th Feb 17	Exam 1
Tues Feb 22	IPv6	SFR 12
Th Feb 24	Other socket types, Unix, Raw	SFR Chap 15, 28
Mon Feb 28	Server design, daemons, inetd	SFR Chap 13, 30
Th Mar 3	Miscellaneous Socket Stuff	SFR Chap 14, 16, 17, 24
Mon Mar 7	CGI
Th Mar 10	XML
Mon Mar 21	Sockets in Java
Th Mar 24	Cookies, Javascript
Mon Mar 28	Exam 2
Th Mar 30	Servlets, JSP
Mon Apr 4	JDBC
Th Apr 7	Java RMI
Mon Apr 11	Remote Procedure Calls
Th Apr 14	Routing Protocols
Mon Apr 18	Network Security I
Th Apr 21	Network Security II, firewalls, ssl, ssh
Mon Apr 25	Misc.: grid computing, web spiders
Th Apr 28	Misc.: bluetooth, VoIP
Mon May 2	Exam 3