TL;DR

• Easy
• Avg 5-7 hrs per week (if that)
• Cannot work on assignment ahead of time
  • Assignments are locked until week of due date
• Took it during Summer 2022, easily manageable during shorter term
  • Would be a good 2nd class candidate during Fall/Spring

What is Computer Networks?

In this course, you’ll learn how basic computer networks, work (ha ha 😅)

Graded course material

• 2 Exams
  • Closed-notes
  • Each exam is 15% of final grade
  • Difficutly level: Easy, they mirror the quizzes (which are open-note) closely
• 12 Quizzes
  • Open notes
  • See correct answers after taking them
  • Very similar to the exams
  • Each quiz is 0.83% of final grade
  • Difficutly level: Extremely easy, can just ctrl+f in each Canvas module for the answers
• 4 Projects
  • Difficulty level: Easy, each lab comes with very detailed instructions
  • Time spent on avg per project: 5 hrs
  • Each project is weighted ~15% of final grade
  • Unlimited number of submissions on Gradescope
    • *Except* SDNFirewall, you get 1 submission for that through Canvas, but can test it locally first
• Extra-credit
  • This class offers a 3% extra-credit project
  • I did not do it, but it’s a lot of extra credit if needed!

Project overview

Course Virtual Machine Setup

This was not a graded-project, but was necessary for 2/4 projects.

Basically, you just need to follow some instructions to download a Virtual Machine image that the TA’s made for the class

I used a Macbook Pro with an M1 chip using Parrallels Desktop, and found no issues

Parrallels Desktop student edition set me back $40.

For non-M1 chips, setup was free and easy through VMWare

Spanning Tree project

The idea behind spanning tree, is to find the minimum spanning tree between a graph of nodes:

You are given each node’s:

• ID
• Neighbors

The algorithm is given to you in the lectures, and covers the logic completely.

Took about 6-7 hours to complete, including lecture reading/video watching.

You get an unlimited amount of submissions through Gradescope.

Distance Vector Routing project

Basically the same as Spanning Tree, but now the edges have weights, but now you want to find the least-costly paths between nodes that spans the graph:

Unlimited submissions allowed on Gradescope

Most of the logic is in the videos/reading

Total time spent was probably like 6-7 hours, including reading/video watching.

SDN Firewall project

This was implementing a firewall through code that you write

The nice thing is, that you just give some settings to a code package called pox, and pox handles the actual filtering/selection of packets for you.

PRO TIP ONLY read the appendix A for pox guidelines, it has everything you need to know to complete the project:

Total time spent on this one was more like 10 hours including reading and video watching.

Are only allowed one submission on Canvas, but you can test your code locally through a given code package in the repo.

BGP Measurements

This one is filtering out packets of interest from rib files that have historical data of BGP records being passed around the internet.

It’s really just a leetcode-type problem of using sets, hashmaps, for-loops etc.

Total time was about 4 hours, including reading.

Unlimited amount of submissions on Gradescope

Exams and Quizzes

Exams are fairly straight forward, and you can easily get an A in the class by getting 100% or close to it through Projects, then not really needing a good score on exams.

My case was:

• Projects: 60/60%

• Exams: 24.71/30%

• Quizzes: 6.27/10%

Total grade: 90.98% or an A