There are two types of projects in this course:
14:332:423 Computer and Communication Networks
Course Projects
See example reports for student TCP projects. More examples of student project reports will be made available
to course instructors upon inquiry.
The purpose of this project is to provide the students with hands-on experience with computer networks. I believe that hands-on experience leads to deeper understanding of the class material.
There are three deliverables for this project:
First go to this web site and download the TCP protocol simulation software and its PDF documentation. To run the software, follow these simple instructions.
This software, written in the Java programming language, implements a simple network simulator which simulates the TCP protocol. See the lecture notes for description of the TCP protocol. Curently the simulator supports Tahoe, Reno, and NewReno versions of the TCP congestion control algorithm.
Each team consists of ≤5 students. All students in a team are working on the same project. Requests for working individually or with a smaller team cannot be accommodated due to the staff shortage.
You should form the team by the date given here and notify by email both the TA (if any) and the instructor about the team member names and their email addresses.
All team members must take part in all project activities, although responsibilities may be divided so that different members take lead in different activities. But, no activity should be done exclusively by a single person. While the volume of work of each group member on each project component may not be equal, their contribution to the overall project should equal out.
Many students find team work difficult due to different personal interests and working habits. Therefore, each student should keep track of his or her contributions to the project. The exact breakdown of individual contributions must be provided to the instructor for each deliverable, so the individual grades can be fairly assigned.
The team meetings should be structured to involve:
What is the role of a team leader?
First, keep in mind that having a team leader is optional. You should elect the team leader only if you believe this would facilitate your group work.
The role of a team leader should not be misunderstood. The team leader is expected to provide organizational and logistical support, that is, to organize team meetings and keep track about work progress. The team leader is not expected to set the objectives, partition the tasks, and devise solution strategies. These responsibilities must be shared equitably by all team members.
It is a good idea to select the team leader based on his or her social/personal skills, rather than their technical skills and knowledge. Past experience has shown that people with poor social skills turn out to be poor leaders and their teams end up being dysfunctional, regardless of their technical knowledge.
There are neither benefits nor responsibilities for the
team leader. The leadership is a voluntary responsibility, just to
facilitate the team work: help organize the meetings and remind the
team members about commitments and deadlines. The team leader will
not receive any rewards (e.g., higher grade) for serving in
this capacity. The leader is also not accountable for “failing to lead” and cannot be blamed for the lack of communication skills or
general lack of success of the team’s project. For example, the
leader has no such responsibilities as “knowing what needs to be
done,” assigning work loads (fairly or otherwise), or distributing the
responsibilities. This must be agreed upon by consensus. Most
importantly, each team member must be proactive, rather than
waiting to be assigned the duties by the team leader or anybody
else.
Remember, All team members are equally
responsible for all aspects of the project. Each deliverable will be graded as a whole so all team members should ensure that a bad part does not downgrade the whole.
What if your team is not functioning well?
If you notice that your team does not function well or the team
leader tries to misuse his or her role, and this could negatively
impact your project performance, you should make every effort to
discuss this with other team members. If the “problematic” team
members (including the team leader) refuse to cooperate, you should
discuss your concerns with the instructor, the sooner the better.
Complaints about poor team functioning expressed
at the end of semester will be ignored.
For this deliverable, every team is expected to submit a document describing the design of the software for their project. The due date is given here.
The design document should contain the following:
Where to find information about TCP:
RFC-2581: http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2581.html RFC-2001: http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2001.html
Email your algorithm design as a single PDF document on or before the due date (get a PDF
writer you can use from Windows).
Submit only one design document for each team.
For this deliverable, every team is expected to give a live demonstration of the software they developed for their project. The presentation date is given here.
The project demo will be held during a class period in the regular
classroom. Each demo shall last no more than 15-min. If you
have preferences regarding the order of presentation, please send ASAP
an email to the TA to schedule your demo.
If you cannot bring
your own notebook/laptop, please contact the TA immediately to arrange
a computer to demo your software. In this case you should bring your
presentation software and slides on a USB thumb memory card.
Each group should email us at least one day before the demo, stating explicitly that they will present their project. Do this even if you will use your own computer and do not care about the presentation order.
We need this notification to plan the presentations. If we do not receive an explicit notification, we will assume that this group does not plan to present and will not be able to accommodate last minute requests.
The students who did not send this notification will not be allowed to present.
All team members should attend the demo presentation. We will assume that the
absent students were not involved in the project work.
The students
who cannot make it should send email before the demo, with the
reason for their absence explained.
The demo should include:
For this deliverable, every team is expected to submit a document describing the design, implementation, and experimental results. The due date is given here.
Only one report is required for the project, to be submitted by the
whole team (one report per team). This report should be a
self-contained document, including any and all flowcharts or
other documents that you handed in earlier in the semester.
Example reports from past years can be found here.
Every report must have a cover page containing:
.
the course title,
. group number,
. project title,
. submission
date, and
. all team-member names.
Negative points
will be assigned to reports missing- or having an incomplete cover page.
The second page of each report must detail the breakdown of
individual contributions of each team member to the project.
Quantify, as a percentage, each student’s contribution to the project
components:
. algorithm design,
. coding,
. debugging,
. analysis
of results
. report preparation,
. Other:
any other project-related effort.
The reports missing- or having an incomplete contributions breakdown
page will be returned for revision before grading.
If all team members feel that everyone contributed equally to the project, just write “equal contributions”.
The rest of the report must contain the following sections:
When you get your program working, run it and plot the charts similar to those in the class notes. Calculate the sender utilization, where applicable.
Email your report as a PDF file (get a PDF
writer you can use from Windows).
NOTE: Do not mail any other formats, such as Microsoft Word.
Each student must be aware that a major part of his or her final grade depends on the team project. The failure to cooperate and invest equitable amount of effort may lead to undesirable outcomes. To help us assign the grades fairly, you are required to exactly specify the individual contributions to the project (as described above).
Each report will be graded as a whole and the grade will be assigned. Next, the total grade will be divided up to individual team members, based on the reported contributions breakdown and the judged quality of the components of the project. Hence, it is quite possible that members of the same team receive different grades.
Late reports will be levied a late penalty of 10% per day, up to 3 days late. After that, no credit will be given, unless more than 40 % of team members (e.g., at least 3 out of 6) provide a written excuse from a physician. Since the deadlines are known well ahead, there will be no extensions for any of the deadlines. Please don’t bother asking.
See also the overall course grading policy here.
Contact the instructor immediately should you have any questions or concerns about the grading policy.