The Final Exam Main Topics
1.
Internet Architecture
and Protocols
The focus should be on
understanding the basic functionalities of Internet
Protocols (IPv4) and
relate these functionalities
to
the basic fields of the
corresponding IP datagram
a.
Principles of best-effort service
i.
How do the
service semantics relate to E2E argument?
ii. What are the limitations of such a service?
b.
IP Protocol
basic features
i.
Fragmentation and reassembly
1. Pros and Cons
ii.
Stateful vs. Stateless Addressing
c.
Subnetting
and Supernetting
i. Subnets and Network Masks
ii.
CIDR and Longest Prefix Matching
Rule
d.
You should be able to develop an address scheme which meets best the
requirements of an organization, in terms of
number subnets, number of
hosts per subnet,
potential for extension
in the future,
etc.
a.
Understanding the
sliding window mechanisms
TCP
used to provide
flow control
b.
Understand the effect
of Window size on the
performance of TCP
c.
Be prepared
to discuss the retransmission strategy TCP uses to deal with errors and absence of positive
acks
d.
Understand the adaptive
retransmission timer TCP
uses to estimate the current RTT delay
a.
Understanding the mechanisms TCP uses to control
congestion
b.
Understand RTT variance estimation
c.
Understand window management
i.
Slow start, dynamic window sizing
on congestion,
ii.
Fast retransmission,
Fast recovery, Limited Transmission
d.
Be prepared
to solve problems similar
to
those asked in
homework assignments.
4.
Traffic Engineering Design Issues
and Mechanisms for QoS Support
a.
QoS Support and
SLA
b.
Traffic Descriptors
i.
Constant Rate, Average
Rate and LBAP
c.
Traffic shaping and policing
i.
Leaky Bucket and its variants
ii.
Token Bucket
d.
Be prepared
to analyze the performance of a token-bucket
algorithm for different
scenarios, including how to use leaky
and token buckets to police and shape
traffic
a.
Be prepared to discuss scheduling disciplines
with respect to the basic criteria we discussed in class: Ease of implementation,
performance bounds, ease of implementation
and fairness and isolation.
b.
Understand the concept
of min-max fairness, including weighted min-max fairness
i.
Be prepared
to apply this
concept in a different context and
show the resulting min-max allocation.
c.
Work conserving
scheduling disciplines, non-work
conserving, and the main
issues related to these disciplines in
terms of performance, traffic shaping, etc ...
d.
Fair Queueing, GPS and its derivatives
i.
Be prepared to discuss formal
definition and prove
some
basic properties of these disciplines, especially GPS.
ii.
Be prepared
to discuss the criteria
used to typically
to evaluate GPS approximation and compare different approximation of GPS.
e.
Packet Dropping
i. RED
Design Principles and algorithms
ii.
Be prepared
to answer relevant to
the basic idea
and mechanisms that drive the
design of RED.
6.
Homework Practice
Thee test will
involve problems very similar
to those that have
been
asked in the homework
assignments. You are strongly encouraged
to re-work
these problems and understand the techniques
used for their solutions.
Click here for a pdf file