This class meets on Tuesdays, 3:30 PM - 6 PM

Week 1

September 4?

Concepts:

  • Introductions
  • What do you think of when you think of networks?
  • Technological Metaphor as a way of seeing the world:
    • Medieval: Clock, gave rise to mechanical view of universe, Netwonian physics
    • Victorian: Steam engine, gave rise to thermodynamic view of universe (Boyle, et al)
    • Late 20th century: Computer, computational view of universe (Hawking et al)
    • Early 21st century: Network, network view of universe (Linked, et al)
  • Network dynamics
    • Centralized, distributed, and decentralized networks
    • Dyads, triads, and the links between them
    • Complete networks and incomplete networks
    • Link dynamics: Conversation, aggregation, broadcast, unicast, multicast, group
    • Rings vs stars vs complete nets
    • Link direction and symmetry
    • Density of links and its effect on robustness
    • Some interesting math on links, Johannes Putzke,University of Cologne
  • Networks of all flavors
    • Internet, PSTN, power grid, transportation

Reading:

  • Linked introduction, Chapters 1 - 4

How networks can transform government and international relations(login is required, but free)

Week 2

September 11?

Concepts: From serial to sockets: A review and expansion of serial communication

  • How bits become data: layers of a serial protocol
    • voltage agreement
    • timing agreement
    • logic agreement
    • TTL vs RS-232 serial
    • RS-485, USB, DMX-512 and other differential signaling protocols
    • ASCII
  • The reference lie: the OSI stack as a metaphor for communications networks
    • Physical - connectors, wires, electrical protocols
    • Datalink - Ethernet
    • Network - IP
    • Transport - TCP, UDP
    • Session - telnet, http, ftp, etc
    • Presentation - html, xml, etc
    • Application - email, web, etc
    • The TCP socket: access to the internet.
  • Opening and closing sockets
  • What sockets can do:
    • HTTP
    • Mail
    • Socket-to-serial
    • Application-to-application

Technique:

  • Processing net library chat client sockets
  • Ethernet in Hardware: Arduino Ethernet shield, WiFi shield
  • Arduino Ethernet library

Assignment: Socket exercise: communicating in realtime. I will give you a game platform and the protocols to log in and communicate with it. Make a client to log in and play. Work in Processing, Flash, Arduino or whatever environment is comfortable to you. You will not play with your own client, but you'll show someone else how to use it. Making Things Talk Chapter 5 will be very helpful with this.

Reading:

Week 3:

September 18?

  • Questions on the socket assignment

Concepts:

  • Packets vs. Circuits
  • Smart networks and dumb networks, end-to-end principles
  • How the Internet gets to you
    • Hubs, routers, switches, and endpoints
    • Addressing: IP, DNS, DHCP, etc.
    • Tiers of ISP -- turtles all the way down
    • IXPs
  • How the phone network gets to you:
    • What's the PSTN, what's POTS?
    • LATAs, LECs, RBOCs, and IXPs

Technique: BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, and other embedded processors

Week 4:

September 25?

Presentation: Socket Project

Concepts: basic networking tools:

  • nslookup -- what's your name
  • ping -- are you alive and can I contact you? (wired only)
  • whois -- who owns you?
  • traceroute -- how do I get to you?
  • arp -- address resolution protocol: what MAC address is linked to what IP address?

Technique:

  • Command line network tools

Reading:

Assignment:

Traceroute at least three of the sites you regularly visit: Facebook, gmail, bank, school, etc. Do it from all of the locations you regularly connect from. Save the trace in a file, and make a map of the routes, indicating the network providers that show up every time. Identify who the major tier 1 providers are in your life. Feel free to obfuscate the endpoints if you don't want us to know what sites you visit. We'll compare notes on each others traces next week.

Week 5:

October 2?

Field Trip: zColo, 60 Hudson St.

Please be at the lobby of 60 Hudson ready for class at 3:30 PM sharp. Directions are here. You need to bring a government-issued photo ID to get in. A passport (any country) will do fine if you don't have a US driver's license.

Please come prepared with questions for our hosts based on our discussion of internet structures so far. You will also find it useful to read these articles from the NY Times,

Power, Pollution and the Internet

Data Barns in a Farm Town, Gobbling Power and Flexing Muscle

and these rebuttals, for more questions.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/09/the-big-data-digital-divide/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=twitterclickthru

http://www.forbes.com/sites/siliconangle/2012/09/24/response-to-the-ny-times-datacenter-is-about-innovation-advancement-not-about-power-and-pollution/

30 billion watts and rising: balancing the internet's energy and infrastructure needs

Why The New York Times Story 'Power, Pollution, And The Internet' Is A Sloppy Failure

Presentation: Traceroute Project. May be postponed if field trip goes long.

Week 6:

October 9?

Concepts: Representational State Transfer

Technique:

  • HTTP from the ground up: headers, GET and POST requests, etc.

Reading:

Assignment:

Control surface. Pick an environment and an activity that could benefit from a control panel: driving a vehicle, operating heavy machinery, managing a transportation system, etc. Research control surfaces for your environment and activity, if they exist. Wireframe a better control surface, and design a RESTian scheme for the messages from the control panel to the control system.
Your control panel need not be virtual in design: physical control panels could be designed with network interfaces as well.For inspiration, consider a visit to the NYC Transit Museum in Brooklyn to see the Old Harlem River Bridge control panel, or a trip to the City Hall station on the 6 line to see the train control panel at the south end of the downtown platform, or the Intrepid Air and Space Museum to see the controls of the Growler submarine.
work in pairs on this assignment

Week 7:

October 23: No Class -- Tom Out of town

October? October 18 - Makeup class

Presentation: Control surface wireframes and REST schemes.

Concepts:

  • Event-oriented network thinking
  • Data exchange formats

Technique:

Reading:

  • Interop chapter 5,6

Recommended:

Assignment:

  • Introductory Node assignment TBA

October 30No Class -- Hurricane Sandy

Week 8:

November 6?

Concepts:

  • WebSockets and events cont'd.

Technique:

  • More on node and network tools in javaScript

Reading:

  • Interop, chapters 7, 8

Assignment:

Control panel part 2. Swap surfaces and REST schemes with someone else in the class. Implement their control surface as a web service or physical interface, with network connection.
work in pairs on this assignment

Week 9:

November 12? Monday Makeup class

Concepts:

  • Radio and how it changes network dynamics
  • Location and Identification

Technique: Intro to RFID and NFC

Assignment:

Week 10:

November 13?

Presentation: Control surface demonstrations

Concepts: Corporate and working structures of the internet. ICANN, IANA, IETF, ITU, etc.

Reading:

  • Interop chapters 12, 13

Assignment:

Final project: Take any of your earlier projects and develop it into a full network application, applying the principles we've discussed. Or, take one of the discussion topics and produce an introductory guide to the topic (confer with tom on breadth of the topic). Use visuals, animations, etc, as needed

Week 11:

November 20?

Presentation:

  • Final project concept presentations

Concepts: Voice and SIP

Week 12:

November 27?

Presentations:

  • Final project system presentations (for production projects) or written outlines (for written projects)

Week 13:

December 4?

Final presentations. Class will present and demonstrate working projects or reports on this day. First half of the class as needed.

Week 14:

December 11?

Final presentations. Class will present and demonstrate working projects or reports on this day. Second half as needed.

Discuss semester, critique, suggest improvements, review.