Quick Information

Who?

• Venkat Arun (instructor), Office Hours: after class or by email appointment
• Ritul Satish (ritul@utexas.edu) (TA), Office Hours: TBD

Where? GDC 1.304

When? Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30–5:00 PM

Pre-requisites: CS 439 (Principles of Computer Systems) or equivalent, programming experience

Course Content

This is an introductory course in computer networks suitable for undergraduate and beginning graduate students. We cover the foundational ideas, architecture, protocols, and software that constitute the Internet, with hands-on work that makes those systems concrete.

1. How does the Internet work today, and why has it been designed this way?
2. What alternate designs exist, and what are their tradeoffs?
3. How can we use, program, and write applications for the Internet?

We will use the open-source Computer Systems: Systems Approach textbook by Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie.

Optional textbook: Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach by James F. Kurose and Keith Ross is available at a discounted rate through the Longhorn Textbook Access (LTA) program. Access to this book is optional.

Syllabus: Design requirements and principles behind the Internet; physical and link-layer protocols; naming and addressing (including DNS and DHCP); inter- and intra-domain routing; and transport and application-layer protocols. Advanced topics include CDNs, VPNs, overlay networks, address scarcity, and network security.

Quiz: You may bring three pages of notes per quiz: 3 pages for Quiz 1, 6 pages for Quiz 2, and 9 pages for Quiz 3. This cumulative allowance means you may reuse notes from earlier quizzes. Further, the course staff will be available during the quiz. You may ask us specific and factual questions during the quiz. If we decide that the question is regarding nitty-gritty details about network protocols, we will answer it (e.g. how a particular routing algorithm works or what port number is used for what protocol).

Sample quizzes

These quizzes are provided as examples from prior offerings of the course.

Quiz	2025	2024
Quiz 1	PDF	PDF
Quiz 2	PDF	PDF
Quiz 3	PDF	PDF

Grading

• Programming assignments (40%)
• Three quizzes (60%)
• Class participation (5% bonus)

Accommodations: If you are a student with a disability, or think you may have a disability, and need accommodations, please contact Disability and Access (D&A). See disability.utexas.edu for more information. If you are already registered with D&A, please deliver your accommodation letter as early as possible in the semester.