Internet Technologies and Standards

The lecture is aimed at providing students with basic knowledge
concerning the architecture and functioning of the Internet, a vital
element of the present information infrastructure. The goal is to
present both the network and service architecture, as well as network
technologies that are used or offered by today?s Internet.

The lecture will present the fundamental concepts and principles of
organizing packet networks utilizing the TCP/IP protocol suite, and
discuss the functions of particular layers, showing their realization
and cooperation. The particular problems of traffic routing and route
selection as well as realization of network and transport layer
services will be investigated in detail.

The presentation of the capabilities and the realization of Internet
services will cover all the following basic groups of services: mail
services, web services, voice services, P2P file sharing services. With
each group of services posing specific requirements in the areas of
performance, reliability, quality of service or security, all major
requirements will be discussed in detail. The discussion will provide
insight into the evolution of the Internet, in particular the evolution
of network architecture and network protocols, and show how the
evolution has been related to satisfying still new requirements.

The idea of structuring the lecture is to present consecutive groups of
Internet services and at the same time to discuss the issues of
implementing those services in the network.


Lecture contents

1. Introduction (2): realization of the telephony service in
   ISDN/GSM networks: functional and physical network architecture; user
   and service identification and authentication, user mobility
   management; connection setup scenario: number analysis, route
   selection, connection setup on a link; connection rating and service
   charging; intelligent network services; auxiliary network functions.


2. WWW service implementation (6). Sending a request to a given URL
   address and receiving a Web page in reply (WWW client and WWW server,
   HTTP protocol; HTML Web page description language). Establishment of a
   TCP connection (server`s and client`s IP addresses, domain name
   translation, DNS service; identification of processes/ program
   instances of the server and the browser - TCP ports; TCP protocol).
   Passing data in the IP datagram (IP protocol; IP network structure;
   gateway router identification in the local area network). Passing the
   IP datagram to the network card (Ethernet card and card driver, ARP -
   translation of IP addresses to physical MAC addresses, forming Ethernet
   frames, Ethernet protocol). Transmission in the physical medium
   (transmission impairments, collisions; transmission errors, error
   detection and error correction).


3. Overview of the WWW service-related networking concepts (4).
   Functional network architecture. Layered protocol architecture: TCP/IP
   stack; OSI-RM model (layers and services; service access points SAP and
   services; interfaces and protocols; protocol data units; encapsulation,
   multiplexing and de-multiplexing). Addressing: identification and
   localization of entities; address space, address registration and
   address assignment; URL and URI; IP addressing; MAC addressing; address
   mapping: DNS, DHCP, ARP. Directory services X.500, LDAP.


4. Email service implementation (4). Sending a request to a given
   URL address and retrieving received emails (email client and email
   server, POP3/SMTP and IMAP protocols). Web-mail service. Security
   issues: from spam and malicious content through taking the control over
   the computer and intercepting confidential information.


5. Overview of email service-related networking concepts (4).
   Identification and authentication of the sender. Identification and
   localization of the recipient. Representing text data and other data
   types. Ensuring reliable transport and delivery of information. Data
   routing: addressing and address hierarchy, IPv4 and IPv6 protocols;
   multi-domain network structure; intra-domain and inter-domain routing;
   IGP and EGP protocols. Network management; SNMP architecture.
   Security-related techniques: filtering; data encoding, IPsec protocol.


6. Realization of the telephony service in the Internet (4).
   Establishing and releasing a connection (communicator and VoIP server,
   SIP protocol). User presence. User profile. Calls to/from ISDN/GSM
   networks. Conference and multimedia calls.


7. Overview of VoIP service-related networking concepts (4).
   Signalling and media. SIP protocol. Speech coding and transfer; UDP and
   RTP/RTCP protocols. Transfer quality: QoS networking architectures
   (IntServ, DiffServ; performance issues); QoS mechanisms of the router;
   IPv6 protocol; MPLS technique. Network node architecture and
   implementation - the router. Interconnecting the Internet with ISDN/GSM
   networks: signalling gateways and media gateways, VoIP gateways; next
   generation convergent networks - NGN.

Total score is a sum of 2 parts:

• there are 13 short tests during lectures, up to 6 points each;
  best 10 scores are summed (max 60 in total)


• the lab scored up to 50 points based on the reports submitted

• 5.0: 91-110 points


• 4.5: 81-90 points


• 4.0: 71-80 points


• 3.5: 61-70 points


• 3.0: 51-60 points


• 2.0: 0-50 points