Foundations
What a network is, and how the layers divide the work.
Communications Networks
Everything ELEC3506 covers, from what a signal is on the wire up to how a packet finds its way across the Internet. Written to be revised from.
- Topics
- 74
- Worked problems
- 97
- Exam weighting
- 48%
Physical Layer
Turning bits into signals, and what the wire will actually carry.
- Signals — Bit Rate, Baud Rate and Spectral Efficiency
- Channel Capacity — Nyquist and Shannon
- Line Coding — Getting Bits onto the Wire
- Modulation and PCM — Riding Bits on a Carrier, and Back
- Multiplexing — Sharing One Link Between Many Signals
- Switching — Circuit, Datagram and Virtual-Circuit Networks
- Media and Topologies — What the Wire Is, and How It's Wired
Data Link
Framing, catching errors, and getting across one hop.
MAC and LANs
Sharing one medium between many talkers.
Network Layer
Addressing and routing across many hops.
Routing
How routers learn the paths: distance vector, link state, and the protocols that run them.
Transport Layer
End-to-end delivery: ports, UDP, and how TCP makes an unreliable network look reliable.
Application Layer
Sockets and paradigms, then the protocols people use: HTTP, FTP, email, DNS, and managing the network with SNMP and NETCONF.
DHCP and WANs
How a host gets its address, one web request traced through every layer, and the access networks that reach the home: DSL, cable and fibre.
Quality of Service
What a flow needs from the network, how to measure it, and the scheduling and shaping that deliver it.
Wireless Networks
802.11 and its CSMA/CA access method, hidden and exposed stations, association, then cellular, satellite and Bluetooth.
Practical
The lab work, and the tools it runs on.